What one senator saw inside Delaney Hall

0:00Marjane Satrapi:Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

0:16Kate Santaliz:WBUR Podcasts. Boston. When I'm in there and I'm talking to a high school senior who just is trying to graduate high school, why are we wasting money detaining her? Inside the Delaney Hall Detention Center, where some immigrants are on a hunger strike. It's Thursday, June 4th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

0:50Kate Santaliz:Today on the show, Republican Senator Tom Tillis said President Trump's new acting director of national intelligence is a joke.

0:58Marjane Satrapi:Whoever these people are in the White House need to get the hell out of the White House. I am tired of amateur hour.

1:04Kate Santaliz:It's one of several examples of Republican senators going against Trump lately, after years of supporting him. We'll ask what it all amounts to, whether it's a passing fad, and what it means for legislation that affects you, including war powers. Also, we'll listen back to a little of our past conversation with Marjan Satrapi, the Iranian-French author known for her series of graphic novels, Persepolis. Satrapi has died at just 56 years old. The problem is that today, in today's world, we talk about everything but about the human being. We're always, you know, going towards abstract notion. We forget that people are just people just like us.

1:45Kate Santaliz:Persepolis was a portrait of a girl growing up after the Islamic revolution in Iran. Some of the things she told us in 2008 are really prescient for the situation there today. You can hear it in about 10 minutes. But first, we've been following the protests outside Delaney Hall, a privately run immigration detention center where some detainees say they've been on a hunger strike. The government is holding several hundred immigrants there, including some married to American citizens. We've heard from lawyers, for some of them, who say conditions inside are deplorable. But few people have been in to see for themselves.

2:24Kate Santaliz:New Jersey Governor Mikey Sherrill says immigration officials will not let her visit. Senator Andy Kim was able to visit this week. He's a Democrat, and he told Scott Tong what he saw. Well, I saw, first of all, about 800 detainees are there. And many of them were telling me just about the hardships that they've been having talked to several women who were pregnant that were not getting the care that they needed. You know, I met a person who has stage three lung cancer and not getting the medical care that one would need. And just over and over again, people not getting their medication, I saw how they were organizing the medication.

3:05Kate Santaliz:They just do it all by handwritten lines in a notebook. There's no real coordination in any sophisticated way to be able to handle this. They have one doctor, one full-time doctor for about 800 detainees, at least that's what they told me. One person is in a wheelchair and the facility can't handle a wheelchair. So they put him in medical isolation. He's been in there for four months in one room, not able to go to other parts of, I will say that the detainees wanted me to make very clear that it's not just about the conditions inside Delaney Hall. It's the fact that many of them have been there for eight months, 10 months, 12 months without any movement in their case.

3:43Kate Santaliz:And that's what I wanted, Senator, to ask you about is whether it's clear to these detainees when their immigration cases will be heard. I've been reading about judges who have too much on their plate. Yeah, zero. They have zero idea when their cases will be heard. Many of them have cases. Many of them have filed habeas petitions as well and just uncertain about what's going to happen next. They've been there for a long time. They went and actually showed me this document. They had a document posted on the wall, which showed the court docket for the following few days. and it showed that on the Tuesday after Memorial Day, one judge had 74 cases before her in one day, which is about five minutes a case if everything goes perfectly.

4:31Kate Santaliz:And they also need interpretation, many of them. It's a huge mess. And I just want the people to know, we're paying for this. We're paying upwards of$70 ,000 to$100 ,000 a person in there every year. They're not these worst of the worst that the Trump administration keeps talking about. I think we have a large agreement that they're violent felons and criminals. We get it. But when I'm in there and I'm talking to a high school senior who just is trying to graduate high school, why are we wasting money detaining her? Many of them were also spouses of American citizens, mothers and fathers to American citizens.

5:13Kate Santaliz:So I just wanted to give people a greater context of who's inside these facilities. Early this week, Senator, you and other lawmakers appeared outside the center where protesters were and were pepper sprayed. The Department of Homeland Security said your appearance there was a political stunt. Now, these protesters have been turning up for several days. I want to play some sound from their DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen. He spoke on Fox & Friends last week. This isn't a holiday in, Brian. We're not providing luxury housing. What we're doing is we're providing a sanitary place for them to be detained.

5:47Kate Santaliz:Remember, we're detaining murderers. We have some real serious criminals there. Plus, every one of them broke the law. That's why they're there to begin with. And we're providing them three meals a day. We're meeting the calorie standard. How do you respond to that, Senator? Was this a political stunt? Look, like my job is to try to protect my state, protect my constituents. And when I see ICE agents in a standoff with civilians outside of this detention facility, look, I'm going to try to do my best. I was actually there to try to deescalate. I was not there to rile anybody up. I was there to do my inspection inside and then I was going to leave.

6:26Kate Santaliz:But when I left the detention facility and saw the standoff with armed ICE agents and armored vehicle in a standoff with this crowd, and I talked to the ICE officers there and they told me that they're just going to move their vehicles through this crowd. And I told them, you cannot simply plow your way through a crowd of civilians. You need to try to de-escalate and do this in a nonviolent way. And they just didn't care. You know, they escalated it significantly from the ICE side, and then things really spiraled out of control. Senator, before we let you go, today, senators are voting on immigration funding for the administration's enforcement, deportation work that the administration plans to do.

7:07Kate Santaliz:What do you expect from today's debate and vote? Well, what I hope the American people see is that about$70 billion is on the line today with this vote in the Senate. There are billions, tens of billions of dollars for ICE, for GeoGroup, these for-profit companies that are running Delaney Hall and making a fortune off of this. That's where your money's going. I don't think that that is the priority of this country. Is this bill going to go through? It could very well go through. the Republicans are trying to be in lockstep and the president is pressuring them because this is the president's top priority.

7:45Kate Santaliz:We've been talking to Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey. Senator, thanks much for the time. Thanks for having me.

8:01Kate Santaliz:We're going to dig deeper into that immigration bill the senator just mentioned, as well as a lot more happening in Congress. Robin Young has that story in just a minute.

8:14Marjane Satrapi:President Trump is facing a fresh setback to his agenda in his second term, and it's coming from his own party. Last night, four Republican representatives joined with House Democrats to pass an Iran War Powers Resolution. It's an example of the growing opposition to the president's handling of the war, largely a symbolic one. Even if the Senate advances the House resolution, it will land on the president's desk and likely end up being tossed from there. Still, there are things being said that make one pause. Here's North Carolina's Republican Senator Tom Tillis. Whoever these people are in the White House need to get the hell out of the White House.

8:50Marjane Satrapi:I am tired of amateur hour. Okay. Kate Sanaliz is a congressional reporter for Axios. Hi, Kate. Hi, thank you for having me. And we're also thinking that the Treasury secretary was asked in a hearing if he wanted to punch Trump's acting head of national security in the nose. He said, no, I wanted to kick him in the butt, for lack of a better word. It's just exchanges like this. Just to start, are you having a sense that there's something,

9:19Sen. Andy Kim:you know, really roiling? Yeah, I mean, I think we are seeing pushback from congressional Republicans to this White House for the first time this entire administration. You know, Republicans and this White House, they've been in lockstep since Trump came back into office. But over the last couple of weeks, we've really started to see some calculated takes from congressional Republicans about pushing back against this White House. And a big part of that is the fact that President Trump has gone after some of these lawmakers in a way to prevent them from having their reelection prospects. You know, Senator Cornyn just lost his primary.

9:54Sen. Andy Kim:Senator Cassidy also lost his primary. And now we have this group of senators who are part of this, quote, YOLO caucus who don't feel like they need to be in lockstep in the way that they have been in the past and are pushing back against him. And we're also seeing other Republicans that are upset with some of this administration's actions like the war in Iran, like this one point eight billion dollar weaponization fund, like the ballroom. And it's all coming at a time where congressional Republicans need to deliver on Trump's agenda. And these things are all stalling it right now.

10:21Marjane Satrapi:YOLO, you only live once? Yes. So why not? Yeah, yeah. So why not?

10:28Sen. Andy Kim:It's really because, you know, when these senators were running for re-election, they didn't want to do anything to be in the bad graces of President Trump, right? They needed his support. We know that Trump's endorsement means a lot when it comes to Republicans winning their primaries. And if they don't get it, like we saw with Senators Cornyn and Cassidy and Congressman Thomas Massey, they end up losing. So that's why we did see a lot of pushback before that. But now that we have this group who are lame ducks, they're not running for reelection, we're starting to see some of them really push back against the president that we haven't seen in a way.

11:01Sen. Andy Kim:And again, it's some of the administration's actions, too, that are contributing to this, taking things too far for some Republicans.

11:06Marjane Satrapi:Well, let's talk about that. The war, for instance. The House vote last night and this resolution now headed to the Senate. You know, as we said, it's just symbolic. And we mentioned there was pushback from Republicans. It's just four. But at one time, it wouldn't have been one. And the president did lash out at them.

11:26Sen. Andy Kim:Yes, he did. Yeah, we did see four Republicans yesterday. That was Thomas Massey, Tom Barrett, Warren Davidson, and Brian Fitzpatrick join every House Democrat in voting to force President Trump to end this war. And it is symbolic. But again, we do have small margins in the House, which is why it only took four of them. But either way, President Trump is really not happy about this result. He took to Truth Social this morning. He called the vote meaningless, noted that it was just four bad Republicans who did this in the middle of his negotiations to end the war. But still, this was really a stunning result from the House after we saw so many failed attempts to rein in the president's campaign in Iran and other military operations overseas.

12:05Sen. Andy Kim:And Republicans overall have largely backed this war since the beginning in February. But this unease within the GOP has continued to grow, especially as gas prices continue to rise. That's not something that they want to be dealing with so close to the November midterms. Yeah.

12:20Marjane Satrapi:And as what appears to be a deal would put the U.S. pretty much where it was, you know, before all of this money and, of course, loss of life. Look, it doesn't seem like a good time for the president to have this fracture. The Senate is launching into a voting blitz on that budget reconciliation package that would fund immigration enforcement agencies. Democrats have been holding out because of the ICE funding. But this bill now also doesn't have that$1.776 billion so-called weaponization fund in it. That might have paid out money to Gen 6 rioters. That was a bridge too far for Republicans. But might some Republicans balk on this for any reason?

13:03Sen. Andy Kim:Yeah, I mean, we're already seeing that now. Of course, they're on their sixth voterama of this Congress, which allows any senator to offer an unlimited number of amendments. And we've seen this weaponization fund really dominate this conversation around it. They're on their first vote of that will be several votes throughout this day. And it's already taken a little bit over two hours. They're still stuck on this. And if this vote were to pass, it would send the entire bill back to the committee, ban the weaponization fund. And so GOP senators would be forced to start this entire process over again and not be able to finish out this immigration funding that a lot of them want and the president really wants to see.

13:41Sen. Andy Kim:So we're going to have to see what happens here today. We're seeing a lot of Republican senators struggle with the fact that there is no language right now in this bill banning this fund. That's something that they want to see right now. I know we have Senators Bill Cassidy, John Houston, and Dan Sullivan all withholding their votes on this first vote, debating whether they should vote for this Democratic motion that would kill the fund. So we're going to have to see what happens here.

14:04Marjane Satrapi:Well, there's so many other issues that have floated up. The president's appointment of Bill Pulte to be the acting director of national intelligence and the ballroom. But we are hearing that just in the few seconds we have, the money for the ballroom has been stripped out of that bill.

14:20Sen. Andy Kim:Yes, that happened a couple weeks ago. We knew that that didn't have support. That was another thing that we saw a lot of Republican senators push back on. And Trump did relent on that one a little bit and was like, let's just let this immigration funding go through. So that's not going to be in this bill now.

14:35Marjane Satrapi:Axios, congressional reporter Kate Santeliz, thank you so much. Busy time for you. Thank you. Thank you.

14:55Kate Santaliz:We are also following a few new rulings by the Supreme Court today. One about pharmaceutical patents, giving more latitude to generic drug makers. A unanimous decision, by the way. Another making it a little easier for the Securities and Exchange Commission to go after financial fraudsters. And a third keeping in place the government's mechanism for fining telecom companies like AT &T and Verizon for data privacy violations. Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter on that one. He said it was unfair to the companies. Noah Feldman at Harvard said, while there are still many major cases we are waiting for decisions on, the court has already left a legacy this term.

15:39Kate Santaliz:It's a blockbuster term in which the court did hold back Donald Trump's power in the tariffs case, and will probably do so in the birthright citizenship case, but has made huge, huge strides towards ending voting rights law as we know it in the United States, and that's going to be remembered. You can listen to that whole conversation about the Supreme Court, including a preview of the big cases the justices have yet to decide right now at hereandnow.org.

16:09Kate Santaliz:We are also remembering Marjan Satrapi today. She was an Iranian-French author known for her series of graphic novels, Persepolis. Satrapi died at 56. Persepolis is the story of a little girl who, like Satrapi, grew up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Satrapi moved to France in 1994. Back in 2008, Persepolis was made into a movie, and Satrapi spoke to Robin Young. I grew up with the idea that the Shah was, you know, the king and, you know, because we didn't have really the freedom of speech. So even my parents said they were not very much for the Shah. They never talked anything against him because, you know, for me not to repeat it in the school.

16:53Kate Santaliz:So suddenly, you know, you're at the age of nine and they tell you the guy that was supposed to be the king and the best man in the universe. Actually, he's not a good man. So that was a big shock. I had to concentrate to understand what was really happening, which was not always obvious, of course.

17:08Marjane Satrapi:Can you describe that disconnect between being someone who loved Western culture but lived with this police, you know, cultural police?

17:16Kate Santaliz:But what I wanted to show also, you know, is that adolescents, wherever they are in the world, you know, they want the same thing. You always want to poster of this pop singer in your room, and you always want to listen to this kind of music, because, you know, that is the thing that happened everywhere. Plus, for us, it was something even more than that. Because since, you know, the border of the country were closed in Haiti and, you know, we didn't have any connection with outside, listening to the pop music, you know, wanting to, you know, have the posters in our room was also meaning that we had a connection with outside.

17:47Marjane Satrapi:Because of the different contrasts that you see in Iran, you said you wanted this film to show Western audiences that Iranians are human beings. They're not just abstract notions like a fundamentalist or a terrorist. Yes. Do you think you've achieved that?

18:00Kate Santaliz:I don't know if I have achieved that, but I hope that I will achieve it. You know, I mean, my pretension, I don't think that with a movie you can change the word or, you know. But the problem is that today, in today's world, we talk about everything but about the human being. We're always, you know, going towards abstract notion. We forget that people, they are just people just like us. If by this movie, you know, people, they can say to themselves that, you know, the people that they're so scared of, They're just people like them, and these people are exactly the first victim of fanaticism. They're the people themselves.