Trump $464 Million Penalty Tossed & New Citizenship Hurdle

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1:44This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. Nearly 2 ,000 National Guard troops are now in D.C. as federal authorities deploy checkpoints around the city and sometimes ask people for their immigration status after stopping them. And tonight, President Trump visited with police and National Guard units that are patrolling D.C. Hey guys, how you doing? Yesterday, chants of free D.C. could be heard as Vice President J.D. Vance delivered hamburgers to National Guard troops at Amtrak's Union Station. I think you hear these guys outside here screaming at us. Of course, these are a bunch of crazy protesters.

2:29Top Trump aide Stephen Miller had some harsher words. These stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old. Immigration enforcement has been a core part of the crackdown in D.C., rattling people in some of the city's neighborhoods. My guest is immigration law expert Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight. Leon, D.C. is a sanctuary city, but the Metropolitan Police Department is now required to share information with immigration officials and even assist in transporting detainees, according to a directive from the police chief. So does that sort of destroy the sanctuary city status?

3:15there's the law and there's the policy and there's what's actually happening and so yes the dc city council had this ordinance or this provision that said that they would not report during arrest information to ice but now if the police chief is saying they are going to do this then the question is going to be fine will there be an organization within dc that sues about this and this is also a bit complicated because if it's the D.C. police chief that's doing it, then does the D.C. attorney general sue or does an individual immigrants rights group sue? But the point is, for now, if you are stopped in a traffic stop in D.C.

3:59and the D.C. police believe there's some reasonable suspicion that you are not here in the United States lawfully, they can extend the time of your stop and call ICE to determine if you are here lawfully or not. And so that is happening as we speak. And they are claiming on a daily basis that they're arresting some number of people who are here unlawfully, and they're placing them into the removal process or, you know, in detention because they've already been ordered removed. So that is something that is happening in D.C. And the only way that that would stop at this point would be to get a judicial order in joining it.

4:41So despite this huge push, you know, crackdown, arrests by U.S. immigration agents dropped by nearly 20 percent in July. And by the way, the Trump administration disputes that data, as they have been disputing a lot of data lately. Why would it go down? I think there's a couple of reasons, and I don't think they're necessarily indicative of a reduction overall in immigration enforcement. It's just what happens is a couple of things happen at the same time. Number one, there was that moment where there was this sort of ramp up in arrest, and then the money sort of dried out until the quote-unquote big, beautiful bill was passed, and now the money is starting to ramp back up so they can actually start making more arrests.

5:29That's number one. But number two, they were able to put more people into the removal process without needing to actually make an arrest, so to speak. So if they were giving people papers at USCIS or they were giving people papers in court or whatever, the arrests are tied into whether you have detention capacity or not. And because all of the detention facilities were full, they weren't really able to make more arrests in the sense of actually arresting someone, putting them in a detention facility and holding them. But they are putting many, many more people into the removal process, even if they aren't effectuating an arrest and a detention.

6:10And so from that standpoint, I think these numbers, it's not that they're right or they're wrong. It's that they're all representing different snapshots in the process. But what I can tell you, and I think no one really would dispute this, is that the panoply of enforcement is much greater today than it's been in the last decade. And so even if that doesn't mean that in July particularly there were more arrests that led to detention, because, again, there was not space that would have been available at that moment to put people in, that space is starting to ramp up. those detention beds will be available, which means more arrests can be done to put people in those detention beds.

6:55And then writ large, more people are being placed into the removal process than before. On the topic of sanctuary cities, last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to officials in 19 cities, four counties, and 12 states that Justice Department accuses of engaging in sanctuary policies and practices, threatening to revoke federal funding and press criminal charges if they don't identify immediate initiatives they're taking to eliminate laws, policies, and practices that impede federal immigration enforcement. She set Tuesday as the deadline for their response. So far, there appear to be no cities, counties, or states that complied with that deadline.

7:42And in fact, some cities like Boston have been defiant. What do you think will happen in this standoff between the Trump administration and sanctuary cities? The issue of sanctuary cities and the Trump administration is going to depend on what specific method and what specific type of enforcement we're talking about here. If the only thing that the cities are being penalized for is for refusing to affirmatively cooperate with ICE, then those cities are at least currently under the current existing precedent in the courts of appeals, know that they aren't going to lose their federal funding just for that because there's Supreme Court law that talks about anti-commandeering, that says you can't force states and localities to enforce federal laws.

8:35And that was within the context of criminal background checks back in the day, where they wanted cities and states to actually conduct background checks before people could sell guns. And there were local officials that said, we don't believe in that. We don't want to make those background checks. And the Supreme Court agreed in the Prince case. And so this has been held in the same concept of sanctuary cities, that the states and the localities don't have the duty to actually affirmatively cooperate with ICE. Now, there is a issue that is still pending in the Supreme Court that they haven't fully decided yet, which is even if that's not affirmative cooperation, is it information sharing?

9:19Meaning if the federal government says to a state, do you know when Joe Smith is going to be released from detention, that if they don't give that information, perhaps they can be penalized for that because that's just information sharing as opposed to affirmative cooperation. So that issue gets to be decided, and I think that issue will go to the Supreme Court, and we're going to see what happens. Now, there are other issues, which is, are there states and localities that are actually assisting and quote-unquote harboring or impeding the enforcement of immigration laws. And in those areas, then that's where the Department of Justice is going to try to either get injunctive relief to prevent them from doing that, or perhaps other sanctions with respect to doing that.

10:08And they're going to be working with the Congress to try to see if the Congress will pass laws that actually place congressional restrictions on some of this grant money for some of that type of behavior. But again, that's what's going to be needed in order for the states and localities to lose their funding, is there's going to need to be specific congressional provisions that say they will lose their funding. Those have to be tied because there's also the Obamacare-Sibelius decision that says that these kinds of funding restrictions have to be very, very narrowly tied to what the provision is.

10:47Otherwise, they're considered like extorting the states, essentially. You're not allowed to do that. And so it has to be very, very closely tied together. So things like transportation grants aren't going to work or housing grants or these other type of things. They'd have to be grants related to, in some way, immigration and immigration enforcement. But then the issue will be, is it just the impeding that can be penalized or is it the lack of sharing of information? But there will not be, unless the Supreme Court overturns its decision in print, an ability to sanction these states for just not affirmatively helping ICE or the Department of Homeland Security.

11:31So this week, also, 20 states and D.C. sued the Trump administration, saying they're unlawfully requiring states to assist with federal immigration enforcement efforts in order to receive grants that fund resources for crime victims. Correct. This is all in the same mode in that those cases were very successful in the first Trump administration to say that those grants that were restricted on the basis of their law enforcement grants and they're being restricted on the basis of an unwillingness to cooperate on immigration enforcement. enforcement, that that's not a basis to restrict the grant funding, that there has to be something more than that.

12:12And so, number one, the states have to not qualify for the grant in some way, but just not cooperating with ICE in terms of not affirmatively cooperating is not a basis, again, under the anti-commandeering laws to deny them this money, but also, again, that these grants are not narrowly tailored for that purpose. And so, again, these same lawsuits were filed at the first Trump administration. They were successful on behalf of the states and the cities. They didn't get to the Supreme Court. We'll see what the Supreme Court has if decides to change anything, either by overruling the Prince case on anti-commandeering or by saying, fine, the states and the cities don't have to affirmatively cooperate with ICE, but if ICE asks them for information that is readily in their possession, they have to at least do that or they can lose their grant funding.

13:01So those are the possibilities of where all these cases are going to end. So on the ground, let's say the state isn't harboring undocumented immigrants, but they're just refusing to cooperate with ICE. How many more undocumented immigrants will ICE be able to arrest if the state did cooperate? I mean, it would be dramatic in terms of numbers because it's a lot less resource intensive to go into a jail and take someone who's already handcuffed and place them into ICE custody than it is, as you see on the street, some of these operations, for whatever reason, take 10, 20 agents. And, you know, one could say, oh, it's for safety, or I don't know what the reasons are that some of these operations are so resource intensive.

13:48But sometimes you see, like I said, 10, 20 agents getting one person. So from that perspective, if you had one or two agents that could take someone in a jail, as opposed to having a situation where, again, you needed to start grabbing people in either work sites or where they live or somewhere else, that would be freeing up of many more people to be arrested. and then the issue would just be, well, okay, how many spaces are there in the detention facilities or how much room is there in the court system to actually finish these cases? But it actually would increase the number significantly because, again, you wouldn't need too many agents to achieve a specific arrest or removal in a case where someone had been arrested or was coming out of prison who was in the non-citizen population.

14:38Coming up next, why it might be harder to get your citizenship. This is Bloomberg.

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16:27Remember, Wasabi is up to 80 % less than market competition and doesn't charge a cent for businesses to access their own data. Wasabi, another championship story. Check them out for free at wasabi.com. Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage, proud partner of iHeart Podcast Network. In addition to cracking down on immigration, the Trump administration also seems to be cracking down on the pathways to citizenship. According to a recent policy memo, U.S. Citizenship and immigration services officers must consider the positive attributes and contributions of immigrants seeking citizenship rather than just the absence of misconduct.

17:13Those positive attributes can include factors like community involvement, family caregiving, and educational attainment. I've been talking to immigration attorney Leon Fresco of Holland and Knight. So, Leon, what is this change about? This is very interesting. So, this is for citizenship application. And when someone applies for citizenship, that means they've basically done everything correctly, and now they're applying for citizenship. And there's a question in there or a consideration that is, does the person have good moral character? And the interesting thing is that good moral character is actually defined in the statute, and it has a negative definition, meaning it says that you have good moral character unless you have certain negative things.

18:00So the negative things are what make you not have good moral character, but absent those negative things, you have good moral character. And so what USCIS is doing is it's going to actually test this definition a little bit and try to see if it can get it to a more extreme definition, which is to say good moral character is not going to be something that is just an absence of negative factors, but it's going to also include something positive about your characteristics. Now, what's interesting is some of these things that they talk about, you know, these are in the eye of the beholder. If you have family, well, maybe if you have family, that's taking more resources.

18:47So why is it better that you have family? Maybe it's better that you don't have family and you're taking less resources. Some of these things are pretty subjective in terms of those things that they're looking at. And so from that perspective, I think that if that ends up getting challenged in a court of law, they're going to have a pretty tough time trying to say that these positive factors are necessary. Now, what may happen is in a case where there are some negative factors that don't actually lead to a denial, so to speak, because they can't legally. So, for instance, you were arrested a bunch of times but never convicted.

19:27They may then try to say, OK, well, you have all these negative factors, so you need something positive to get you over the limit here. But again, I just think that because of the way the negative definition is written, I don't think that it's going to end up being something that they're going to be able to push too much further there with regard to needing it. Now, there are some crimes where then it's in the discretion of USCIS to decide whether to give you the citizenship or not. And so there they may want the way if you have more positive factors, such as community service or family or other contributions that you've made to the United States.

20:12But again, I just think someone who's never been a criminal, who's never done anything wrong, who's done everything they're supposed to do, they're not going to now suddenly need to have 30 hours of community service in order to get a naturalization. I think if that's added, the courts will overturn that. I was just going to say, if you're planning to apply for citizenship, start doing community service. The memo also says that other disqualifying actions could include behavior that is technically lawful, but is inconsistent with civic responsibility within the community, like habitual traffic infractions.

20:47Do people often appeal when they're denied citizenship? Well, yes. If you are denied citizenship, the way it works is there's first an administrative appeal that you can take, which is, you know, I've actually won those cases, even though they're kind of tough because it's literally one person in the office reviewing the decision of another person in the office. And they're just, these are colleagues that work together and you don't necessarily know how likely you are to suddenly get somebody else to overturn what their colleague did, but that does exist. And then if that's denied, you can go to a federal court where a district judge actually has the novo review and they just start from scratch.

21:25They don't look at anything that was done in the administrative thing, and they decide the citizenship case. And so it would be in that scenario where you would actually then test the legal definitions here of good moral character. And depending, those could work their way up to a court of appeals or a Supreme Court if the sides wanted to keep fighting on the basis of that issue. But again, for instance, to say that a bunch of traffic offenses is going to lead to a sort of bad moral character finding is, again, probably stretching the statute beyond what it's able to accomplish. But we'll have to wait and see.

22:07So I found this very interesting. The budget bill that Congress approved set aside almost$47 billion for continued border wall construction and maintenance. And Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary, said that President Trump has ordered that the border wall be painted black to make the metal hotter and deter migrants. Despite the fact that Trump this week said, congratulations, Texas, that July border statistics were in and it's the lowest number of border crossings in history. So why bother to paint the wall black? Well, I mean, he gave the reason, which is to deter people from coming in.

22:51If they try to touch the wall, it'll be much hotter, so it'll be more painful. But the question is, what will that accomplish? And so you've got to be very careful when you start actually saying that that's your intent, because there is state-created danger, which says that if the government actually tries to lawfully create that dangerous condition by which you can be injured, you can sue the government for that. So, for instance, you know, if a mail delivery person suddenly starts taking the mail and throwing it into your house with a brick on it or something, you could sue the government and say, hey, that's dangerous.

23:28This new practice of using a brick to attach the mail to throw it is causing a lot of problems. And so you could sue under that. And so if somebody is saying that they are trying to deliberately make something inflicting of harm, that does create a potential issue that the government needs to be sensitive to. Now, there are instances of people cutting holes through the fencing that was done, or trying to climb, or trying to build tunnels under the fence. But most people who crossed the border tried to look for some of the areas that didn't have fencing, so they could cross through and just ask for asylum, meaning they would see that someone was there.

24:11They would actually see a Border Patrol person that was there, and they would just walk to the border patrol agent and ask for asylum. At the moment, the Trump administration has said anyone who asks for asylum won't be allowed to do so. They'll just be sent back. That is currently still being challenged in the courts. And so it's unclear if a year from now there will still be able to be this ban where you literally just can't ask for asylum by crossing the border. We're in a temporary period where that's permitted because it's working their way through the courts. But I don't know that that will always be the case.

24:46If that is the case, then people won't be able to do that. And then they might actually be incentivized to the extent needed to touch the fence, either to cut it or to try to climb it. But at this point, that's not really happening. And then we can also talk about sort of 22nd century, now that we're in 2025, you know, people always talk about 21st century. But, you know, 22nd century issues, you have all of these drones and paragliding and everything else. Soon the idea of a fence is really not going to be an issue because you'll be able to use any device you want to sort of fly over this fence.

25:27And so I don't know long term the$40 billion or whatever that's being spent in the fence is probably not going to be able to keep up with modern technology in terms of all the devices people will be able to have to either fly or navigate above or around these fences. But again, that may not be for 2025, but it may be for 2030 at this point. Who knows? Yeah, and Noam also said that more is going to be added to the wall as far as technology, cameras, sensors, a waterborne infrastructure. And they've been building about half a mile of barrier of wall every day. I mean, with the Rio Grande there, is it even possible to have wall built across every inch of the border?

26:13There's a couple of issues. So some of the fencing at the moment is inside of Texas, meaning there are parts of Texas that are on the Mexico side of the border fence, even though they're on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande. So you have Mexico, you have the Rio Grande, you have Texas. So you would want the fence to be right where the Rio Grande is so that there isn't some parts of Texas that are on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande where the fence is. But you do have some of that. And the question is, what happens when people reach there? And again, at the moment, people are being turned back who reach those places because they're not being allowed to apply for asylum.

26:56During the Biden administration, they were being allowed to apply for asylum, except during the last six months of the administration when these asylum bans started. So they started under Biden and they were continued and extended under the Trump administration and made even stronger. And so from that perspective, the question is going to be what happens. I mean, there's also another part of Arizona that is an Indian reservation that belongs to the Tohono O 'odham tribe that they would need to give you the consent to build fence on their Indian reservation. And they haven't been willing to do that either.

27:32So those gaps exist, and I don't know how they're going to solve that problem, but they will theoretically be able to put sense, if they're willing to spend enough money, on all the other parts of the 2 ,000-mile border between Mexico and the United States. I would think that$47 billion will go a long way, but you never know. Thanks so much, Leon. That's Leon Fresco of Honda Night. So there's a lot of noise about AI. But time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions.