109. Trump's Deportation Army

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2:22Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. and not with Anthony Scaramucci because he's back on the yacht in the South France or somewhere. No, he's off today. But I'm very lucky to be joined by my friend and colleague, Sam Stein. Sam and I share the joys of covering the White House. Actually, what we really share is the joy of getting up ridiculously early in the morning to go on MSNBC's Way Too Early program, which is, as it says, way too early, where Sam is an occasional host and a guest with me early in the morning when I'm on Morning Joe, but comes from the Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Politico, where he was political editor.

3:00And of course, now, Sam, you are at the Bullwalk. So thank you for joining me. A reasonable hour of the morning, if I may say so, here in Washington, D.C., nine o 'clock on Thursday. I was going to say joy is such an interesting way to describe getting up at 3.30 a.m. to do that show. I wouldn't know. I don't know if I would use the word joy, but it is a duty and responsibility and I enjoy it. But maybe also actually joy is an interesting word to use about anything at the moment. Yeah, fair enough. If we're going to get existential right at the top of the program, I'm not sure how much joy there is.

3:34So today we're going to talk about ice raids around the D.C. region. In the first half of the program, what I'm seeing parents being kind of terrified to send their kids back to school. And it's all getting pretty grim and tough if you are in this area of the country, particularly as an undocumented worker. And then the second half of the program, we're going to talk about the Epstein files and ask whether there are two Americas, one where if you're rich and powerful, you get protected like Epstein and perhaps Trump and other people. And another where victims suffer in silence. But we heard them speak out yesterday on Capitol Hill.

4:11So we're going to talk about what might change in the Epstein files and the political implications of that. So, Sam, let's talk about D.C. The reason I wanted to talk about these ICE raids is that I don't know about you. I live in Washington, D.C., have done for 25 years. And in the last week or two, anecdotally, I've just been hearing a lot more stories of people who have either been picked up by ICE or who are afraid to go to work, take their kids to school. because of ice raids, there's just been a real pickup. And actually, we see it in the numbers as well, where the numbers of people who are being picked up has accelerated during the course of August.

4:52But last week was back to school week here in Washington, DC. And a friend of mine, actually, who had done some reporting told me that he went and witnessed back to school scenes at one bilingual Spanish English school in Northwest Washington in a Hispanic area. It's an area of the town where there are a lot of Hispanics living. And it was this extraordinary scene of local neighbours standing on street corners with whistles to blow the whistle to warn people if there was an ice raid or if there were ice vehicles coming. I mean, it's just like anxious parents walking along the street with their five and six-year-olds to take them back to school.

5:24And I think these images of parents having to dodge ice raids to get back to school is chilling. And then I heard a guy who comes to our house to fix some of our electric work sometimes said, I'm just not coming into Washington, D.C. He's actually documented, but he says, I can't come into work because the people I work with are undocumented. They're not coming into work. A friend of mine who is a child caregiver says that in a park where she takes the little girl that she looks after, two nannies got picked up. And then I just have to call the parents and say, OK, your five year old is with us because we've taken away the nannies.

6:00And I'm hearing this from Virginia, too. But Washington, D.C. seems to be the kind of epicenter of people's fear about ice raids. The city just feels not like itself at the moment. We know that restaurant bookings are down, federal workers have been fired already, and this is all just adding to that sense of anxiety around the city. Are you hearing, feeling some of that too? Oh, yes, 100%. Let me just start off by saying I think you're describing it accurately as ice raids. We've been talking about this, including on air, a lot as sort of a crime crackdown, And certainly the administration has been presenting it like that.

6:35But in reality, when you talk to people in D.C. and when you watch what's happening, this is disproportionately targeting migrants and immigrants. This is an immigration operation predominantly. What you mean described as a kind of crime crackdown. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I guess the administration would say, well, they committed the crime of overstaying their visas or being here illegally, but they are taking the brunt of it. And there's a couple of neighborhoods in particular where if you walk around there, if you talk to people who live there, I'm talking about Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant, which have larger Hispanic populations, you are seeing much more aggressive confrontations.

7:14I had friends who were hanging out on 14th Street. Some of these neighborhoods, maybe the listeners have no clue. 14th Street is a pretty bustling commercial area, very hip, or was, I guess, when I was there. Maybe it's not hip anymore. Because you left, you mean. Yeah, exactly. Once I left, it went downhill. No, but it's filled with nice restaurants and things like that. I had friends who were sitting out having a brunch a couple weeks ago, and a delivery guy was confronted by a dozen officials and slammed to the ground and handcuffed. And, you know, one of these anecdotes is enough to sort of send a chill up your spine, but this is happening repeatedly over the course of several weeks now.

7:53And it's creating this kind of anxiety in D.C. that I think, I mean, I've never experienced before since I've been here since 2004. So the city's already been on edge. You were right. Like we, I'm sure you and I know tons of people who either have lost their job or part of institutions that have been gutted and are thinking about leaving public service or just, you know, their businesses are suffering because the government's being hampered by the administration. And then on top of that, you have this and it feels to a degree like we are under siege. What is interesting though, and I'm kind of curious what you think about is how the mayor's handled it.

8:27I mean, she came out, I guess she's kind of in a tough spot, but she's been overly nice to the White House about it, saying, well, we welcome the resources. It's helping with carjackings. And I guess it probably is because if you throw 2 ,000 plus law enforcement officials into any city, it's going to help. But two, three years ago, she was presenting herself as a thorn in the side of Trump. And now she's playing footsie with the guy and it's causing some interesting conversations in the city. I've heard different things. I mean, kind of Latino advocacy groups. And she acknowledged that, yes, Mayor Muriel Bowser, who's the mayor of D.C., has been more accommodating.

9:13And people are often citing her on political shows at the moment as saying, OK, yes, we have a crime problem. Please come and help us fix the crime problem. She has said that she doesn't want the ICE raids to be happening around the city. But D.C. is in this weird position where actually the federal government has a lot more power over the city. And they acknowledge that they also have power over the budget, right? She's already lost a billion dollars from the DC budget. And what this advocate said for Latinas was she's sort of in a rock and a hard place. She can't afford to lose any more money.

9:44But I mean, it's worth pointing out to people why there's like, so the area that I'm hearing that at the moment undocumented workers feel safe to go to is Maryland. And Maryland, in theory, ICE is allowed to work wherever they want, right? It's kind of they have free access to every state. But Maryland is what's called a sanctuary state. And so the local officials don't cooperate with ICE in the same way. And D.C. was a sanctuary city, but Muriel Bowser has not stood in the way of ICE and these ICE raids, which is why it's in the city that you'd get undocumented workers. I've been told they won't go to church.

10:22They're afraid to take their kids to school. Yeah, that school thing was crazy because when there was a lot of rumors circulating right when back to school was happening that ICE officials were going to be just stationed outside of schools. There have been some. Yeah. And that was causing a lot of anxiety among parents being like, well, what happens if they just start snatching, you know, nannies or God forbid, you know, a kid? And there was questions about whether parents were going to send their kids to school, how teachers would react to it. I think that's what's causing the uncertainty is that when there were clear lines about cooperation with ICE officials, you could have some sort of calm and peace of mind about it.

10:59But it's been upended completely in the past couple of weeks, right at the time when people are sort of emerging from summer vacation, going back to school. And the anxiety among parents is quite palpable. Understandably, outside this Sacred Heart School, there were a couple of ice vehicles, unmarked ice vehicles parked. And it made teachers and parents super anxious and kids, I imagine, as well. We know that Donald Trump in the last election got a high proportion of Hispanic voters compared to previous Republican presidents, except for, I think, George W. Bush back in 2004, who got a higher percentage.

11:37But anyway, he upped his numbers with Latino voters. And there was a poll out by Equis, which is a polling group for Latino voters that came out a couple of weeks ago, showing that a third of Latinos who voted for Donald Trump now say they won't vote Republican again. A quarter of Latinos who voted for Donald Trump in competitive congressional districts say they regret their vote for Donald Trump. And I wonder if you think this, if there is a risk of ICE overreach. ICE is hiring 10 ,000 agents and they've got this massive recruitment drive going on. They're offering people to join ICE. They're offering you a$50 ,000 signing bonus.

12:18Right. I've never had a signing bonus in my life. You ever had a signing bonus? No one's ever offered me$50 ,000. I have, not$50 ,000. Well, there you go. You've got a whole new career option for you. $60 ,000 in student loan forgiveness. they've lowered the recruiting age from 21 to 18 they had a big recruitment drive in arlington texas a couple of days ago and literally that was a wild story that was wild right that story about i mean hundreds of people showed up including hispanics showed up to that recruitment drive and some of the people applying were real i mean the reasons they're applying we can get into they were deep and dark to your point about what does this mean for the hispanic votes that's why interesting because if you've got Hispanics turning up to join ICE right it's not like there are all Hispanics looking at this and saying this is terrible I hate Republicans I wish I hadn't voted for Donald Trump I don't think you are I mean I don't know it's I've I kind of told myself after 2024 that uh never to get too predictive about a certain voting box and how they would react to Trump and of course the lesson I think the conventionalism that came out of it was that But Hispanic voters actually are fine with immigration enforcement.

13:31They think they and many have played by the rules and that the people who didn't deserve to be deported. So, you know, they don't vote on immigration specific policies. I think what's happening, though, is that the ICE raid stuff and the mass deportations, the detentions, it's having these kind of compounding effects probably that are turning the Hispanic voters off. And by that, I mean, and we've reported about it a lot. it's not just that like communities are seeing like people who they thought were you know upstanding citizens deported that is happening but i'm not sure that's totally what can explain why a third of these people say they regret uh voting for republicans you're seeing a lot of like economic ripples around this stuff so you know restaurants are closing you know churches are shuttering um one of the pieces we did that i thought was kind of interesting was that uh the the latino music scene in america was you know really suffering because of this stuff artists weren't coming in and performing anymore.

14:22And when you're not selling at these shows, you're not having local restaurants and communities benefit from it. And so, on an election that was driven so much on getting the economy moving, getting costs under control, things like that, to then be nine months in or so and have the economy kind of sputtering a little bit, costs definitely not under control, and then have that concentrated to a large degree in hispanic communities i think that's really the vulnerability for trump like you know he's making it harder for that community on the economic grounds uh in addition to of course all the sort of psychic terror that he's putting on some of these communities through the ice raids anecdotally a friend of mine who owns a restaurant here one of their chefs got picked up has just disappeared they have absolutely no idea where they so what do they do what do they do at the restaurant then right like they got to find someone they so they got to find somebody else then they got to find somebody else who is not working somewhere else.

15:20They've got to find somebody else who is not afraid to come into the restaurant, right? So who has papers? Does that drive up labor costs amongst immigrants who have papers compared to immigrants who don't? I don't know. I mean, it's not easy at the moment. I mean, also, I think to your point, more than a half of those who have been removed from the country since January the 20th don't have a criminal conviction. So Hispanic communities are starting to see this. Do you know who Mike Madrid is? He's a And he's written great books about Hispanics, the Latino century. And I spoke to him yesterday for this.

15:53And he said, Latino voters, the big difference between Latino voters is between those who've been in the country a long time and those who came into the country and those who were born into the country. And the biggest growing group, actually, and which is why this whole anti-immigrant thing is a bit crazy, the biggest group of growing group of Hispanics in the country are those who are actually born in America, who are kind of born Americans. They didn't come into the country. But he said that the Hispanic voters were becoming not identity voters, but they were becoming class voters. So it was it really was, as you say, it's interesting that you raise that was really about economics.

16:29And if you look into that poll, that Equis poll, the reason that a third of Hispanic voters no longer like Donald Trump, it's not about the ice raids. It's about inflation. It's about affordability. Their number one priority is economics. He thinks Mike thinks that the ICE raids are not helping. And what's happening with the ICE raids is that it's pushing this group of voters who are starting to see themselves as economic voters back into some kind of identity because they're starting to feel that their whole community is being targeted. In other words, you are suspect just because you have brown skin and you speak Spanish in a way that you weren't.

17:05If you're not a friend of mine who's Hispanic, was walking down the street with her son the other day and they were speaking Spanish. And suddenly this cop car opened a window and the guy just leaned out the window. Maybe it was random, but he was definitely staring at them. She suddenly felt, wow, that's so weird. I suddenly feel that just speaking Spanish and having brown skin on the street makes me feel like I'm being targeted. Well, if before you were voting as an as a kind of average American on economic grounds, that is the kind of thing that might make you think, oh, actually, they are talking about me.

17:36They are targeting me. Yeah, I guess the question that comes from this is like, well, just because they're sour on Trump or souring on Trump doesn't mean that they'll vote Democratic. Right. Like that's a good point. And such a great point. I don't know what Mike would say about this, but, you know, I sort of am confounded by just like, how do you reach that community? Like, what kind of like, what kind of media are they getting the news from? How are Democrats even conceiving of reaching them? What are they doing in terms of messaging? You know, I don't see anyone talking about comprehensive immigration reform, because it would be silly right now.

18:10But like, is there, is there a immigration platform that could be more sensible and economics focused that would appeal to that community? And I don't know. And even if you had one, like, could you reach it through traditional media or do you have to do things differently? Again, I don't know. I'm smiling because you might ask, what are the Democrats doing about anything? We're looking. I'm looking under the desk to see if they're there making a noise about anything very much at the moment. I don't know. I think they do something about it by not just showing up. Certainly, this is what I've heard from Hispanic voting groups.

18:45Don't show up every four years and say, please vote for us because we're not Donald Trump, which seems to be part of what they say. The other reason I want to talk about this this week, you know, I kind of see this disconnect between the economy that is still booming. We keep getting told there's going to be inflation. Hasn't really happened. Is it still booming? Do you think it's still booming? I don't know. Well, stock market still. OK, let me phrase this. Get out of here. Stock market is still booming. Inflation has not gone crazy. Right. With tariffs. Yeah, I'll give you that.

19:42better and trump loves that when does that start knocking up against if you deport as they are hoping to do half a million people this year a million people next year and we know that 50 of you know the labor market's growth came from foreign born workers since the recovery from covid and we know that they contribute whatever it is i've got the notes 47 of agricultural workers are undocumented 23 of construction workers are undocumented seven percent of child care workers are undocumented. Look at you and your stats. I know, look at this. I actually did. I have no stats. Oh, I'm sorry, Sam. I need numbers.

20:18That's kind of host prerogative. Yeah, pull some out of some way. So on the economy, it's kind of interesting. This is like, it's not the same conversation, but it has echoes of the Biden conversation where everyone's like, oh, the economy's doing great. What are you talking about? Stock market record highs. You know, inflation's coming down, things like that, because it was at 9 % at one point. And yet no one felt it. And I feel like we're kind of still in that place where everyone has got this great uncertainty. If you look at the stock market, too, so much of the growth has been driven by, I think, it's like six companies.

20:52So much of it's like AI related. And you take out those companies and it would be really flat. And so the vast majority of people aren't benefiting from that growth. And then you look at the underlying elements of the economy, to your point, It's like, how much of this just we're waiting for those costs to keep going up because of the tariffs? How much are we going to see a real labor shortage? Because we're eliminating so many people and taking them out of the labor market. And then you have like the really sort of existential things. Like I was listening to Justin Wolfer as the economist who goes on all these shows.

21:29My son loves him. He's great. I don't know what it is. It's like the Australian vibe. It's the Australian vibe in the hair. It's like the Australian surfer vibe. Yeah, exactly. And he was talking about crypto. He's like, it's just going to blow up at one point. We're going to have like, you know, people... Oh, don't tell Anthony that. I'm sorry. I know. He's not here. Okay, so we can say it. We can cut it out if you want. But like, even if you believe that crypto is like solid as hell, there's a lot of uncertainty around it. I think that's fair. And, you know, I think that gets at a larger picture, which is nothing feels quite so certain right now.

22:02Everything feels a little bit shaky. the status quo is not you know it's not a fun status quo and so i think that the economic vibes are not particularly great i think polling is very evident that people don't feel very good about this economy trump's numbers are horrible compared especially compared to his first term when they're pretty good across the board add to that that we might get a government shutdown in a couple of weeks. And, you know, you're looking at like uncertain times going forward. It's a very scary time if you happen to be living in the Washington, D.C. area and you are an undocumented immigrant.

22:40We'll come back and talk about Jeffrey Epstein. Stay with us.

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23:56Hello, welcome back. I want to take a moment to tell you about the latest series that Anthony and I have recorded for members of The Rest is Politics US, and it's all about Ronald Reagan. We are digging into the real Reagan story. It's the rise, the drama, how his world has been turned upside down and his philosophy has been turned upside down in the age of Donald Trump. Across this five episode series, we're going to trace his rise from Hollywood to the White House, from his role in ending the Cold War to reviving the American economy. But we're also going to confront some of the scandals, Iran-Contra, of course, the attempted assassination against him and the way that he failed to show leadership on the AIDS epidemic.

24:42I've loved doing this series because it's taught me a lot about Ronald Reagan, the sort of rather enigmatic character that he was, full of bonhomie, charm, great communicator, but also surprisingly reserved. People felt even those who knew him very well, including his children, feel they really never got close to him or never got to know him very well. It's a great look at the man, his role, of course, in ending the Cold War. Was it really him or was it Mikhail Gorbachev, who we should owe a debt of thanks to for that? And we've got a couple of people as well who we've interviewed for the series, one who worked in the Reagan White House and one who wrote an amazing biography of the president himself.