Trump policies leave historic number of legal immigrants at risk for deportation

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of Matlab and Simulink software for technical computing and model based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at MathWorks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. These were like legal pathways. People like did the thing the government asked them to do. And this government went and is kind of preemptively trying to revoke that status. In just 11 months, the Trump administration has stripped more than 1.6 million immigrants of their legal status.

0:52It's Tuesday, December 23rd, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBWR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, the new editor-in-chief of CBS spiked a 60-minute story critical of the Trump administration, and outrage has been swift. Also, the American pressure campaign against Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro is also hurting Cuba. Cuba cannot survive a situation where the Venezuelan regime falls. That is part of the plan for some Trump administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who have wanted regime change in both Cuba and Venezuela for years.

1:37That story coming up in about 10 minutes. But first, in the just about 11 months he's been in office, President Trump and his administration have successfully stripped more than 1.6 million immigrants of their legal status. NPR reports that this is the largest removal of deportation protections from legal migrants in American history. In its haste to ramp up deportations, the administration has used aggressive tactics, sometimes violent ones. It has arrested American citizens and deported migrants with little to no due process. More from NPR's Ximena Bustillo in this conversation with Peter O'Dowd.

2:17Let's start with the news. A federal judge has ruled that nearly 140 migrants deported to El Salvador in March were not given due process, and the administration was ordered to do something about that by January 5th. What do we know? Right. Essentially, Judge James Bosberg issued an order late last night, and he ordered that the administration return men that were sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador and then later Venezuela to have some sort of due process hearings or even be returned from from where they are right now in Venezuela. It's not clear how the government would facilitate this.

2:58You know, this original lawsuit was brought by about six men in that group. Bozberg certified a class in his order. And by doing that, they can represent an entire group of about 137 men who were removed. And you might remember that these were the Venezuelan men that the Trump administration quickly removed overnight out of the country using an 18th century wartime power called the Alien Enemies Act. And we don't know whether this means they would have to be brought back to the United States. The order seems to make it a little bit flexible that, you know, it's returned them or provide some sort of due process hearing for them, even from abroad.

3:39We also expect the administration to challenge and issue an appeal request on this order. Separately, the question of due process comes up in other immigration stories as well. NPR found there is a skyrocketing number of no-shows in immigration courts across the United States. Why is that? So, you know, let's say that you are in the country illegally. You might get a notice to appear in immigration court, and that usually comes in the mail. You don't have to be arrested or detained in order to get one, but it tells you the specific place and time to show up before a judge. And if you don't show up, the government may have the right to order your deportation, to request that of the judge, and the judge can approve it.

4:24And that is called an in absentia removal. Now, there's many reasons why someone may not show up. One reason is a concern of being detained at immigration court, as we have seen in many viral images and videos since the summer months. But immigration attorneys have also said that there are several other reasons why people might not show up. That includes mail delays in getting these notices to appear or notices even being sent to completely wrong addresses. And, you know, this had been an issue in prior years and prior administrations, even though we are seeing that rate of in absentia removals seemingly, according to our early analysis, you know, nearly triple in this last fiscal year.

5:07You spoke with Andrew Arthur from the Center for Immigration Studies about this. It's a group that advocates for lower levels of migration. And here's what he told you. In essence, by failing to appear, they were given their due process. They simply opted not to take the government up on the offer and are now amenable to removal. Jimena, it sounds like these no-shows may actually benefit the Trump administration and its priorities. Right. You know, in order for the administration to remove someone, there does need to be an order of deportation. And immigration judges, you know, rubber stamp many of those.

5:45And so the administration wants more judges to issue that approval. Now, it is unclear how many of the people with these in absentia removal orders have been detained, much less deported. And, you know, some lawyers have even told me that it is possible some of these people left the country on their own or, you know, missed appointments because they may have been detained. In some cases, you know, immigrants can try and legally fight to have their cases reopened, though it is important to note that most people in immigration court at this stage are not represented by a lawyer. You've also got reporting out today that more than 1.6 million immigrants have lost their legal status in the first 11 months under this second Trump administration.

6:27That, as I said, is the largest removal of deportation protections for legal migrants in the history of this country. So just briefly, what do we know about this and how that happened? Right. You know, since the start of the administration, the White House and its various agencies have moved to cancel several programs, revoke visas, you know, kind of do things like that that provided some sort of protection from deportation. You know, a good example of this is temporary protected status or TPS has been canceled for about 10 countries. And that's been, you know, terminated throughout different months of the year for different countries.

7:02That's just one category, but it does make up about one million people. So some people will see their status run out next year. Others may have found other pathways to legal status, but it is still this mass cancellation of broader protections. The State Department is another agency that has revoked 85 ,000 visas of all kinds this year. And that is double the number of the year prior, they've said. All right. Jimena Bustillo, NPR's correspondent covering immigration. Thank you very much for your reporting. Thank you.

7:38Of course, it's not just NPR investigating the administration's immigration agenda. 60 Minutes was about to air a report about the Central American prison where the U.S. has sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants. Until Barry Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS, stepped in to pull the story shortly before it was set to air. Peter has more on that after the break. Thank you.

8:33to find you the best fit for your health, your lifestyle, and your budget. And they work for you for free. Get the right life insurance for you and save more than 50 % at selectquote.com slash anytime. That's 50 % off at selectquote.com slash anytime. A 60-minute story that CBS News chose not to air is now spreading across the Internet after it was released by a distributor in Canada by mistake. The segment investigates allegations of abuse at a detention center in El Salvador, where the Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants deported from the U.S. The journalists that produced the story say the top editor's decision to pull the segment was political.

9:17NPR's media correspondent David Fulkenflick is here. And, David, I'm sure you've seen this now. As far as what we've learned from this story, did it break any new ground? Well, I mean, there's learning and then there's learning. You know, this had been reported in The New York Times and some other places about the abuses that detainees had alleged that they had received at the hands of their captors in this notorious Salvadoran detention center. At the same time, you're exposing it to a broader and different audience. And there is something very powerful and compelling about hearing a detainee since released in his own words describe his accusations of severe physical abuse and beatings and maltreatment of these hundreds of Venezuelan migrants that have been sent down there by U.S.

10:02authorities. The controversy around this story, of course, blew up after the editor-in-chief at CBS News, Barry Weiss, pulled the segment just before it was set to air. Now, she spoke with the newsroom yesterday to explain her point of view. What did she say, and how did that go over with the journalists in the meeting? Well, what she said was the following. She said she wasn't going to be pushed into approving something just because of a production schedule. She had issues that it was not fully reported enough. She wanted to make sure that there were voices from the administration being able on camera, on the record, to articulate both why they had done what they had done and defend their positions from the toughest accusations and the toughest evidence that 60 Minutes' journalists had been able to summon.

10:47Which, by the way, David, I mean, that seems, from a journalistic point of view, that seems like a pretty reasonable request. Do you think the journalists at 60 Minutes did enough of that in the story that was supposed to air? You know, it's a little hard for me to evaluate. Certainly Sharon Alfonsi, the correspondent on the segment, as you alluded to in a email that she circulated to colleagues 38 minutes after the show announced that her segment would not be running Sunday night, said that she had reached out to Homeland Security, to the Department of State, to the White House to try to get people that they had said no comment.

11:25and that as a result, Barry Weiss was effectively handing a veto or a kill decision over to the White House. I will say this morning, Axios' Sarah Fisher reports, and I find her reporting over time to be credible, that there were actually comments from those agencies and that it was a little surprising, in effect, that they were not incorporated. We don't know what the text of those comments are. I think the real problem in terms of the question of good faith is that Barry Weiss did so late in the game. Is that the sort of thing that the editor-in-chief should be weighing in on 36 hours before broadcast?

12:03Well, David, we should say Barry Weiss, the editor, she was a controversial pick for this role at CBS News. And she reports directly to Paramount CEO David Ellison. The family, of course, has close ties to President Trump. Is your thoughts on why that's an important part of this controversy? It's impossible to look at the reaction to what she did in the absence of that fact. You know, she was brought in as David Ellison, the head of Skydance, was making a series of concessions to President Trump's chief broadcast regulator. That's the chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, to show that CBS and CBS News would be more hospitable and welcoming to conservatives and particularly to sort of Trump minded conservatives.

12:45Her appointment was not a formal part of that, but it's clear that Ellison wanted to acquire her website, the Free Press, a startup that she founded with a couple of other folks, which really has built into its formula the idea that most of the mainstream press is reflexively liberal and unfair to conservatives and to President Trump. And, you know, her site was acquired by Ellison and she was appointed to that job in part to show people that things would be different and in part to make things different at CBS. Now, that's not to say her voice isn't a valuable one, but it is part of the context.

13:19In addition, not only did they achieve the takeover of CBS's parent company, Paramount, this past summer, but David Ellison and his father, the founder of Oracle, and as you say, an ally and financial backer, President Trump, are also seeking to make a hostile bid to take over Warner Brothers Discovery, the parent company of CNN. CNN's fate is something in which President Trump has explicitly and repeatedly taken a strong interest. And if their bid is to succeed both with shareholders and with federal antitrust regulators, they're seeking to show President Trump that they will be accommodating to him and welcoming of him.

13:55And right now, President Trump has not been happy with coverage on 60 Minutes in recent weeks. So the context of Barry Weiss's decision on this is not being evaluated on its own terms. It's part of this larger corporate and political context that it's hard to disentangle from, even if at its heart this looks like a new leader coming in, wanting things to be done in a different way, not understanding the rhythms and the mores entirely of the franchise, the valuable franchise that she's seeking to reshape. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik, thanks as always. You bet. Well, we've got one more story for you today.

14:33It may not have been the target of deadly missile strikes on boats or the seizure of oil tankers, but Cuba is also suffering from the American campaign against Venezuela. More after the break.

15:03The U.S. Coast Guard says it's tracking another oil tanker leaving Venezuela. It's already seized two tankers, and now President Trump says the U.S. will keep or sell the oil that it took. Trump has said the goal of taking those tankers, which Venezuela has called piracy, by the way, is to force out the country's president, Nicolás Maduro. But the American blockade in Venezuela is also hurting another country, Cuba, which is already in a deep economic crisis, in part because it's been under its own American embargo for decades. The Wall Street Journal's Juan Ferreiro has been reporting on Cuba, its connection to Venezuela, and why some in the Trump administration see punishing both countries as killing two birds with one stone.

15:52He spoke to Scott Tong. And Juan, as you've written recently, Venezuela's economy, its oil economy is so connected to Cuba. And even before this, everyday life in Cuba has been so impoverished. One activist in Havana told you in your piece, this is existential, we are just surviving day to day. What is a day like right now trying to get by in Cuba? I think it's very difficult for the ordinary Cuban who does not have access to U.S. dollars because everything is just so expensive. You, as a Cuban, basically spend your day trying to figure out how it is that you're going to feed yourself and your family.

16:34And then in provincial Cuba, they have to live through blackouts that could last 18, 20 hours a day. So people talk to me about how they can't make it through the night because it's just so stifling hot. They don't have fans. Some people sleep outside on the roof, on a porch, on the street. So it's a very difficult situation. A lot of the Cubans I spoke to simply said, we're becoming Haiti. And Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It does have a problem that the Cubans don't have, which is gangs and violence. But you have all the rest, the poverty, the despair, the lack of hope, etc.

17:16And Juan, as you report, this could get so much worse because Cuba is dependent on cheap, subsidized Venezuelan oil for transportation, for fueling power plants to make electricity. Could the American threats against these tankers from Venezuela actually cut off this flow of oil to Cuba? Yes. They used to depend on about 100 ,000 barrels a day. This was when things were good in Venezuela, when the price of oil was high and Venezuela was still producing two and a half million barrels, almost three million barrels a day. But now Venezuela is in crisis. It has been in an economic crisis for more than a decade.

17:56And so the amount of oil that goes to Cuba has little by little been reduced. And now it's about 30 ,000 barrels of oil a day. So this is a monumental crisis for them. This is, of course, a two-way relationship. One thing that Cuba sends to Venezuela is security and intelligence officers. And I want to ask you about that. Why is that important to President Maduro and keeping him in power? The most valuable thing that the Cubans could offer to the Venezuelans was the ability to root out traitors, people who would go against the regime. First, against the regime of Hugo Chavez, who was the founder of the far-left populist movement in Venezuela and who died in 2013, and then his successor, Nicolás Maduro, the current president of Venezuela.

18:43Venezuela has also gotten help from the Russians and from other governments. But Cuba, because of its historical ties, because of Spanish, because, you know, the shared ideology and so forth, they were really the two closest of allies on this. Yeah. So is Maduro kind of, as we speak, kind of surrounding himself with loyalists, including some from Cuba, to protect him? Yes. They can't really provide military muscle. In other words, there aren't troops, Cuban troops in Venezuela, but the Cubans can provide counterintelligence to help the Venezuelans root out any internal threat. And I think that they can also provide advice.

19:27One thing that we suspect that they're being told is to hold on, that they're going to be able to ride this out. This is very important for Cuba because Cuba just cannot survive a situation where the Venezuelan regime falls. Juan, some key voices in the Trump administration have suggested regime change, not just in Venezuela, but also in Cuba. And that includes Cuban-American Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, also the White House National Security Advisor. For those who see this as all linked, tell me more about that. Well, it's no secret that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who's the son of Cuban exiles, has wanted to see the Cuban regime fall.

20:11Something like 2.7 million people, a quarter of the population, have left since 2000. Many of them are the young, the ambitious, people who protested in the past. And the Cuban population is just tired. They're just trying to make it day to day. So it's not an ideal situation for a revolt. And the Cuban regime, I just don't see how they would suddenly just get up and leave. I think these guys are in it for the long haul. Juan Ferreiro. is South America Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal. Juan, thanks very much. Thank you.

20:54That's our show for today. Here and Now, Anytime comes from NPR and WDUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Kalyani Saxena, Ashley Locke, and James Mastromarino. Today's editors were Todd Munt, Mikaela Rodriguez, and Kat Welch. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Alison Hagen and Grace Griffin. Here at NOW's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.