Immigration Debate with Scott Jennings and Ryan Grim - ICE Crackdown Tactics, and Who Deserves Citizenship

>> Thank you everyone so much for being here. I want to start by welcoming you all to a very special edition of After Party. Tape tear up my alma mater, George Washington University. The show airs live Mondays and Wednesdays on YouTube and as a podcast. So please subscribe, help us keep doing our independent journalism like tonight's unprecedented

meeting of the minds. We're very excited. I want to thank everyone for taking the time out of your evening to be here, whether you're with us in person or watching or listening to this online in the future. I also want to thank the Lindi and Harry Bradley Foundation for sponsoring this debate.

Thank you to Young America's Foundation for hosting this event with the kids at GWF tonight. And in full disclosure, I am on the Yaf board and I co-host a show with Ryan. So while I'm conservative, I'm confident we will have a very fair exchange here this evening. Otherwise what's the point? So let's now welcome our debaters who will be focused on an enormous and timely question

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If you've been meeting to fix your sleep, this is the time, get dream their best selling sleep powder for up to 40% off. All right, to my right is Ryan Graham, he is a reporter and co-founder of the enormously successful and still very young, drop-sight news, what they've been able to build over there.

He's already got fans on the audience, is really incredible.

He's also the author of We Got People, The Squad, and this is your country on drugs, and he's also a co-host over at breaking points. Scott Jennings, you know him from television, television, Scott Jennings, I thought so from radio, he's of course a contributor over at CNN, he's the best selling author of Revolution of Common Sense, and he's the host of The Scott Jennings Show on Salem.

So, tonight's question, as I mentioned, timely, do all immigrants deserve citizenship. What makes an American? Now this question is intentionally broad, because we don't want to get bogged down in the weeds of immigration policy, but we want to focus on the core core question that faces the country right now after what was, according to David Leighenhart of The New York Times,

the largest immigration surge in US history. That's the reality.

“We're here, whether we like it, or we don't like it, that's what happened.”

And that includes the Ellis Island wave, by the way, Leighenhart reports a net migration

surge during the Biden years of at least 8 million with 5 million of those people lacking

legal authorization, and for some context, that is the entire population of Virginia. From Arlington to Norfolk to Lynchburg, it's roughly the combined population of Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, and New Mexico, it's well over to Los Angeles and just under one New York city. And I actually say this not to put my thumb on the scale here for Scott, although it might

sound like that's what I was just doing, but there are many good people around the world who love America and want to come here and be good citizens. But of course, we don't have room for literally every person in the world, and yet now many people are already here. That's the reality that we face.

So can they be Americans? Should they be Americans?

“Is deporting the equivalent of New York City feasible or moral?”

And if not, then do these immigrants deserve to become citizens, deserve to become Americans.

So first, Scott is going to kick us off with a five-minute opening statement, followed

by one from Ryan, and you'll each get three minutes to respond to one another after which I'm going to ask the two of you questions, and then we're going to open it up to

of you.

So Scott Jennings, the floor is yours.

Okay, thank you and appreciate the invitation to be here tonight, Emily. It's honored to be with you, congratulations on your podcast and all of your success. You're one of our faves and we're proud to know you, Ryan, we don't know each other,

“but I followed you for many years, and I just want to start by saying that I think we are”

in need of more debate in the United States of America, where a nation founded on debates. Some muskets, but also mostly debates. We need debates. That's sort of what I'm doing on CNN with our embrace of the debating format, and I applaud all of you for coming to a debate on what is otherwise a beautiful evening because we need

to be able to embrace this confrontation is okay, debate is okay, as long as we're doing it in good faith and with good humor, which is what I endeavor to tonight. So thank you both for taking part in this. I'll just start my arguments with something that I don't think should be controversial. The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of the world.

Now you probably don't hear too many folks saying that on this campus or many campuses these

“days, but the fact is it is true, it is downright tragic, in my opinion, that campuses and”

other places have become hotbeds of anti-American and anti-Western radicalism, particularly among people who are not citizens of the United States, but we're in fact invited here because of our good nature and our goodwill. But we are the greatest nation, not because of our geography, not because of our military, and not even because of our wealth, but because of our ideas.

We are the inheritors and the defenders of Western civilization, and this is a tradition that is grounded in the belief that individual liberty matters, that our rights come from God and not government, that the rule of law is important and applies equally, and that free people can govern themselves. That's what makes America exceptional.

It is precisely because of that exceptionalism that tonight's question matters so much,

do all immigrants deserve US citizenship, the answer is quite obviously, no, they do not.

This is not an anti-immigrant statement, but it is a pro-American position. Citizenship in the United States is not an entitlement, it is the most precious political inheritance on the face of this Earth, as Reagan said, citizenship in the United States is the most precious right in the world, and you think about what people do to become Americans when they follow the law, when they wait their turn, when they take the oath

of loyalty to our country, and they mean it. They did not demand that America changed for them, they changed themselves to become part of America. I don't consider this to be oppression, I consider it to be a simulation, and this is not a new idea Teddy Roosevelt said that we have room for but one language here and one

sole loyalty, and that is a loyalty to the American people, but what we're being told today is something altogether different, that anyone who arrives regardless of how they arrived

or what they believe should ultimately be granted citizenship.

I don't consider this to be a compassionate view, I consider it to be chaos. If everyone who shows up is entitled to citizenship, then citizenship literally means nothing at all, a nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation, a country that cannot define its citizenship cannot sustain any sort of an identity. I do want to make clear that I respect immigrants, I admire the courage that it takes

to come here, but I think respect cuts both ways.

“If you want to become an American citizen, at a minimum, you should respect and love America,”

and that means following our laws, contributing to our society and embracing the principles that make our country what it is. America is not a place, it is a set of ideas, and they are not compatible with lawlessness or with ideologies that reject liberty, equality, and the American identity itself. And I'll have one more point, because this goes directly to who does deserve citizenship.

Countless thousands of people who have been given extraordinarily privileges to study and be in the United States of America, have in many cases abused that opportunity, instead

at its core, and even advocating for its decline and demise, and even for the downfall

of Western civilization. You're free to hold those views, which are also free to hold them where you came from if you want. You do not have an entitlement to come to the United States and work for the downfall of the very country that welcomed you, and we as Americans have no obligation to tolerate

it, nor do we have any obligation to reward it with American citizenship.

“I think citizenship means a commitment to a nation, and if someone despises that nation,”

we should take them at their word. I think the current administration has taken steps, necessary steps to curtail the presence of anti-Western radicals, and remove them, where appropriate under U.S. law. I don't consider it to be cruelty, but rather common sense. I think it's good for our national sovereignty, and it is consistent with the idea that

citizenship and even presence in the United States of America must be respected and earned

and, ultimately, good for the United States of America and her people.

Citizenship is about responsibilities as Calvin Coolidge said. We must not only be willing to pay the price for freedom, but also be willing to accept the responsibilities of citizenship. So no, I'll argue the point tonight that not all immigrants deserve U.S. citizenship, but many do.

Those who follow the law and come here to work, who believe in freedom and believe in the fundamentals of the United States of America and people who want to be Americans. Those are the kinds of people who might actually strengthen this country. And those are the people that we should welcome into the greatest nation that this world has ever known.

Thank you, and I yield the floor.

Perfect. All right. Well, luckily, there is one anti-Western radical that Donald Trump has not deported to getting anchors at Rangrim, you have five minutes. Well, I guess I would start by saying, I don't actually take the, yes, side of that.

“I think, well, first of all, there are a lot of people that come here as immigrants who”

don't want citizenship, student visas, their own work visas, they're here for a summer, they're here for a couple of years, they're had a bag. Separately, if you, you know, you're a finely criminals, you committed a serious crime. When you apply, if you then apply, like I'm fine with that being rejected, so I don't take an absolute position on that, but what I would say is that we do have a fundamental

disagreement on the nature of what makes this country great. And, you know, you started by talking about debate and the importance of it, which I could not agree with you anymore on that very point. But then ended it by saying that if you come from another place, certain debating positions are not acceptable, whether it's, let's say somebody argues against the idea of Western

civilization, or a woman who I wrote about yesterday was against the war in Iran, she's from Iran, she was actually in prison by Iran. Now she's in prison by the United States for protesting, or for being against this war, also they claimed that she was the niece of an Iranian general turns out that's, that's not true.

She wasn't. So, what I would agree, and I, you know, this is a conservative audience, and I enjoy speaking

“to conservatives in the sense that, like, you guys have read a lot of the classics, right?”

Like, you guys are, you're into that, and one thing I would, like, a grant as kind of a left wing or a little, I don't even know if I think myself is that anymore. One thing I would grant is that the thing that Europe and then the United States, you know, did give to the world that is, that is, it true gift is the Enlightenment. Without the Enlightenment, we don't have democracy, we don't have the ideas of liberty

and freedom, we don't have individual human rights, we don't have freedom of speech, and this is something that we should all be proud of and that we should cherish. One thing I regret is that the way that this, the kind of development of the Enlightenment is taught, leaves people a little bit confused as if it sort of just came out of a vacuum. When, if you go back and look what was going on at the time is that Europeans were coming

over here to America, and they were meeting Americans who were already here, and those Americans had fundamentally different ideas about freedom and monarchy than the Europeans who had come over, and they were utterly shocking to those Europeans, and I don't think people understand how intense a debate and a conversation this was in Europe, the top-selling

you thought the world was this, the printing press is practically only a couple hundred

“years old at this point, so you don't know a whole lot about the world, and all of a sudden”

you're told there's a whole other world that exists with people, and their own multi-thousand year history, imagine what that must have been like to the Europeans to discover how it intellectually stimulating that would be, and so these travel logs were far in a way that the best-selling books, among the intellectual class, among everybody who was literate in Europe, in England, I don't know if we want to count English, Europe, any more, whatever,

and these travel logs were written in the form of dialogues with people who were in America, some of them were made up, like some of the most famous enlightenment authors, Shethobion, Voltaire, like their most famous works are dialogues with people from the Americas, and

it's kind of a platonic, so credit, kind of back and forth, but one of them that became

the most popular, came on early 1700s and I have a little piece of it for you here, and it was an absolute cultural and intellectual sensation, it produced, it sold more copies than anything else, it was turned into plays, like if you were a thinking person in Europe or England in the early 1700s, you were deeply familiar with this book, and it's so written by this guy, Lewis Arnond, he was the Baron de la Honten, so you can look

at, look at what's called new voyages to North America, or for short hand, it's called Dialogues, and it's his real conversations with this neuron chief, named Kandia-Rong. And you're about a minute, by the way, okay, so I'll read this one, so this is one of the kind of famous exchanges, so La Honten, who's arguing for the European side, he's telling him what the monarchy and the rule of law in France does, and he says without it,

but we would be the most miserable people on the face of the earth, so Kandia-Rong says back to him, "No, you are miserable enough already, and indeed I can't see how you can be much more."

“What sort of men must the Europeans be, what species of creatures?”

The Europeans who must be forced to do good and have no other prompter for the avoiding of evil than the fear of punishment. For these 50 years, your governors have still alleged that we are subject to the laws of their great king. We can tent ourselves into nying all manner of dependence except that upon the great spirit.

We are born free and are joint brothers who are all equally masters, whereas you are all slaves to one man, pray tell me what authority or right is to pretend its superiority of your great king grounded on, so these are, so this is the early 1700s, these are the ideas that affected the European consciousness and help to produce the Enlightenment, and it would kill me if it ends with the abject barbarity and cruelty that our immigration system has become

right now.

“We can get into how brutal and ridiculous it is for the economy and for people who are”

trying to build homes, et cetera, but what it's doing to people does not fit with the ideas of the Enlightenment that have made this country great. That's a fantastic place to turn this over to you for a three-minute response, Ryan just said, the abject barbarity and cruelty of the American system as it is right now, you have three minutes.

Well, first I would say these are existing U.S. laws that are simply being enforced by

someone who was duly elected president of the United States and took a oath to uphold the laws. Now, the last president of the United States decided to violate his oath and not uphold the laws. In fact, he instructed his government to ignore those laws.

Now, you can like the laws, you can not like the laws, and if you don't like the laws, you can ask Congress to change them. And maybe they should, maybe they should tighten them, maybe they should liberalize them. That would be a debate for us and you all to have. But the laws of the laws and we're either going to be a nation of laws or we're not.

We're enforcing the laws. If you come here illegally, you commit crimes, you're existing outside of an immigration system that creates many pathways for people to come here, too many, in fact, in my opinion. But you have millions of people who have come here outside of this entire system. They have no right to be here.

They are not entitled to be here. We are under no obligation to keep them here.

are net positives or net negatives on certain sectors of the economy, perfectly legitimate

debate to have and should be had, actually, about the way our economy works. But what's not really debatable is what the laws are.

“And so I think you have to ask yourself, is it a good idea to just do ignore certain laws”

that are on the books and have been for many, many years? When Donald Trump became the president, we've not passed any new laws. There's no new immigration laws, really. We're enforcing laws that have existed for a long time. This should not actually feel controversial, even though it's been made to sound controversial.

So I don't really agree with the point that it's barbarism to enforce existing laws. I actually think the opposite is true. I think it's barbarism to ignore laws because ignoring our immigration laws. For instance, led to one of the biggest human trafficking crises, probably in world history. Millions of people came here and along the way, people die are abused, sold into sexual

trafficking situations. It's horrific.

“What open borders does to populations, particularly populations of the vulnerable?”

This is often ignored by people who think it's terrible that we might enforce the laws or close the border. And for the life of me, I can't understand why they're interested in ignoring some of the savagery that is going on inside of an open border system. The stories are Legion, furthermore.

I also think it's barbarism to let people into the country unvetted who were themselves violent. Every after story, after story, a violent illegal aliens coming to the United States and further committing violence. Four of the five murders committed in Fairfax County, Virginia this year have been committed

by illegal aliens.

The argument against this is always while those are anecdotes.

Try telling that to the family of Lake and Riley, or some other person who's been murdered in the streets of America, somebody who was entitled to be here, murdered by some one who was not.

“So to me, I think there are actually some points of agreement here about the need for a legal”

immigration system. We obviously agree that not everybody needs or should be entitled to citizenship, but there's going to be some points of disagreement here about whether it's good for America to just really nearly let millions of people into this country and have no idea who they are, why they're here, what they're doing when they get here, and then try to work a bureaucratic

system to keep them here for as long as possible, which is exactly how the United States executive branch and judicial branch are currently geared. Perfect. Ryan, to put a fine point on that, Scott's argument is your position on this is actually the cruel and barbaric option for the immigration system.

Well, so I think that saying that they are just following and enforcing the laws is a cop-out because the Biden folks would say the exact same thing. The law hasn't been updated for many decades, and it leaves a enormous room for interpretation. They interpreted it to allow for enormous numbers of asylum claims and other things to come through.

People could disagree with the interpretation or the policy, and I think Democrats basically

have given up on defending that policy at this point, but it doesn't mean there was a legal necessarily because who even is like, who's the sheriff that you're going to call, who's the cops you're going to call, I think a lot of what Stephen Miller is doing is illegal and is not following the law. I think, but even if it is, I think that's a cop-out, I think we should talk about what

works and what doesn't, and what how we want this, how we what kind of world we want to live in, and I think anybody who is supportive of the way that Stephen Miller is executing this immigration policy, they're either like, I don't have words for it, or they don't actually know like the details of what he is actually doing. One thing he has done is he is interpreted the rules to say that anybody who came in

a particular way under the Biden administration or before is required to be in mandatory detention, that means no chance of bond while you wait, so I was just talking to a friend of mine as an immigration attorney earlier today, she was telling me about a girl who came in when she was 16 years old or would have been under the Biden administration as an on a company minor, got this particular visa, so following that, the law that Biden set

up, graduated, you know, very near the top of her class and high schools now going to college

for a visa, but there's only a certain number of Guatemalan visas every year, so she's

still 18 months away from getting the legal permanent resident, whatever, you know, this is all very complicated stuff, but there's things that the attorneys tell you to do, this is what you do, you go and you get fingerprinted, she goes in to get fingerprinted, they arrest her right there, because they're not going after the violent criminals, they're not going after the kinds of people that they can, they can Riley, because it's harder to find them, it's much easier

to find the people who are showing up to their hearings, to the showing up to get fingerprinted

“and Steven Miller has insisted that they need numbers, I think 3,000 a day is the number”

he has put on, he doesn't care if they're, if they're violent, only care how they came in, if there's a plausible case to put them in handcuffs and put them in a private detention facility where we will pay upwards of $70,000 or more to cage them, we will then pay to have their American citizen children put in foster care, we then suffer all of the other knock-on effects of the fact that they're, they've now been yanked out of a society, just to keep a 20-year-old

in a cage, she was then shipped down to Louisiana so that her lawyer would have, you know, can't defend her anymore, because the lawyer's not barred there, meanwhile we are, there's a lot, how much more time do I have. Okay, meanwhile, for a lot of countries are refusing to cooperate with us, just in the same way that a lot of cities are refusing to cooperate with this immigration

policy, so what we've started to do to say what we're going to send you to a third country,

so we have cut a deal with the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, that they will take our migrants, we will pay them some ungodly amount of American taxpayer dollars to take these migrants into the DRC and exchange, we get mineral rights. Like that's talking about human trafficking, that is human trafficking as American policy, like selling bodies back to Africa, but not selling because you're giving them money, but then

selling for the mineral rights. Like that's absolutely insane. And when it comes to ICE,

“a bunch of these guys, they got this $50,000, what I think, you know, everybody's struggling in this”

country, so they get this $50,000 bonus. A lot of them didn't realize they signed like a three, four-year commitment to this, and they get tiered benefits and tiered income. If they don't make their three or four-year commitment, they have to pay this back to actually pay double, since they have to pay taxes on it, and if they don't hit particular quotas, they don't get different tiered benefits. That's just bounty hunter stuff. Like that's gross, and just so my point

is we have fought too hard to produce what Scott calls the greatest country in the world to allow this kind of arborism. Well, now it's moderator, prerogative, and so I'll start just by asking you a question Ryan, you mentioned everybody is struggling in this country, so after the historic Biden era surge, the people who are showing up to their hearings, etc. This kind of gets us back to the fundamental question of, do they deserve to become Americans?

What about the effect on low wage Americans? What about being buying into the system of citizenship, speaking the language that allows you to read the founding documents, and to engage in civic republicanism. Lowercase are, do all of the people who came in the last period, and future people who might come, if the laws are lax again, do they deserve to be Americans? So I think levels of immigration, the question of levels of immigration is not actually

is not a question of principle. I think it's an empirical pragmatic question. It depends on how the economy is doing. It depends on what needs the country has at the time. It depends on the birth rate of people who are there. To me, I'm just shocked to see this conversation unfolding at the same time that birth rates are collapsing. Nobody has figured out how to turn around birth rates. Who do you think is going to take care of you in producing

“economy as you're growing if you want to just completely cut off migration, and actually do”

what Steven Miller wants, what 100 million people here or whatever, he wants to drive the numbers

down, but also stagnant lower level wages. The idea that Steven Miller is actually trying to drive up wages, I think, is you can't take it seriously. But yes, I think that we need more union protections, we need a workplace inspections, we need to bring people out of the shadows, we need to make sure that businesses are not exploiting undocumented labor. Like that is the thing that does it.

back and forth. You know, freely. You'd probably remember, you'd drive to Mexico, drive to Canada,

was it just your driver's license? Brian, grim in the 80s, must have been fun. I mean, I was driving to Canada. I drove to Canada early 2000s, just driver's license. So, as far as I go from Louisville is Indiana, you can't do any more, you need a passport now. But guest workers from Mexico would come up for the season, and then they would go back. We lock things down, and so they stayed and then pulled their families up. So we're also

not sensible about what we want. We should think more clearly about what it is that we want. If we wanted that population and their families to move up, even though they didn't want to, like they preferred what they had during the season of work, then we can do that. If I understand your argument correctly, you do say that we should

“smartly regulate immigration levels based on national priorities, yes?”

Do you believe that that is how the Biden administration treated it? Do you believe they were smartly regulating immigration levels? I think it's pretty clear that they were kind of stunned themselves at what was going on. So what would you do differently? Because they had a lot of policies that were carrots, that were incentives for people to come. And so inevitably, when you start to be more lenient, people want to follow whatever the process is. Like 99% of the people,

unless somebody's like a murderer who's like on the run and they're trying to swim across, like 99% of people want to follow the process. It is not people's preferred process to like pay a coyote, pay the cartels, to like get told by their friend with their supposed to say at the border, and then have an immigration attorney. That's not their preferred. If you set up a rational system, that is, instead of spending $70,000 a year to give geo group money, like they're

going to make 80% of the profit margin or whatever on that, to lock up this 20 year old,

you can hire another immigration judge. Like it's incredible how long it takes to get things to

say. Everybody get in line. The line is like forever. If instead of giving all the money to geo group in these private prison companies, we invested it in a rational system that could handle asylum claims and handle other processes with some urgency and some seriousness, then we want the good people who go through that to stay here. We want to give people a rational process.

“So I think the use of the phrase rational process is a smart way to look at it and what we're”

living through now with the Trump administration enforcement policies, whether you quibble with the prioritization of it or not, is the reaction to an irrational process. I mean, yourself just admitted that the Biden administration was stunned and overwhelmed by what happened and made no effort. If I may, to instill any sort of rational process whatsoever. So now you're arguing for the installation of a rational process after we've already lived through four years of irrational

millions upon millions of people coming here, some of whom I think you would admit shouldn't be here. And maybe some who should. But we have no idea who is who because of the irrationality of the system, which is essentially just the ignoring of US immigration law. So the question that we as conservatives have now is, okay, we live through four years of an irrational lack of enforcement.

“We interpreted that as policy. Our policy is irrational, no enforcement of immigration laws.”

How are we supposed to react to that when we have people all over this country who feel like they're competing with this population for jobs, who feel like they're competing with the population for housing, who feel like they're being victimized, criminalized or in some cases murdered by some people on this population? Is it good enough to say to those Americans? Well, it was an irrational system, but we're now going to be the rational operators and you're just going to have to live

with the results of what there seems to be some agreement was absolutely irrational treatment of national immigration policy. We're not talking about a few hundred people here in there. Millions upon millions of people came to the United States. Many of them should not be here.

Some of them perhaps could be here. The problem is we have no idea who's who. We have no idea

which of them would benefit the United States of America. And we also, to Emily's point, have to be extremely careful about the signals that we send to the countries that produce the

any border crossings. We didn't pass any new laws. We didn't get a new president in the border's

closed. It's the signal. It's the communication to that population. Don't come here right now. That was not the signal that was being sent for the last four years. Sending signals, by the way, I would argue is not a great way to your point to make a rational, national policy. You know, it depends on the politics of the person in the White House. We're going to send out vibes to the rest of the world. That's not great. But the vibe that we're sending out to the

rest of the world right now is at least respects existing U.S. law. The vibe that we were sending out said the law doesn't matter. Just get here. And we will find a way to keep you here regarding

the bureaucracy that you brought up, by the way. How are you talking about lawyers and courts and judges

and pride? That's the point. The point is to make it so hard to get people out that they actually

“never leave. I think about this character, Kilmer Brago Garcia, who broke into the country”

15 or 16 years ago. Not a great guy abused his wife. Apparently involved in some sort of at least tangentially trafficking operations, strong evidence. He's part of some transnational terrorism game. And somehow he's been able to live in the United States and have headlines written about him referring to him as Marilyn Man. He's gotten a free ride off the United States of America after breaking our laws and repeatedly disrespecting the laws that exist for people

who actually are in this country. So I actually am tracking with you on the idea of rational immigration regulation. We need more of ex. Let's get more of ex. We need less of why. Let's screen out why. I think that is actually a point of agreement between many liberals and conservatives. But a point of disagreement is we're just going to have to overlook the last four years, guys. Sorry, we're just going to have to let that millions upon millions of people stay here because

“it would be barbaric to go back in time and say, wait a minute. Are we committing national suicide?”

And we don't even know it. Well, Scott, that's my disagreeing. Can I push on that question of rational? Because addressing an irrational system doesn't necessarily mean the response is going to be rational in and of itself. So is, for example, what we saw in Minnesota, this winter, was that a rational response. The spring, if you want real results, better gut health, glowing skin, stronger hair and steady energy start with classroom. When your gut is balanced,

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“is for example what we saw in Minnesota this winter. Was that a rational response?”

I think it is rational to try to enforce the law inside the United States of America. What I think is irrational is that you have governors and mayors in blue areas in this country who apparently believe they get to decide what federal laws are in force in their states based on who the president is. I mean, my view is we have a nullification crisis in this country. We have people who want to nullify federal laws. We have people who want to nullify the authority and the

supremacy of the United States government. We have people who want to nullify the authority of the chief executive of this country. We have judges who want to nullify the authority of the president of the United States. And we even now have juries that want to nullify the rights of crime victims to seek just us against illegal radicals who come here and victimize them. I think actually what's irrational is that we're allowing certain public officials to nullify our federal system. I heard Tim Walsh, the governor of

all that much since the 1850s. I find this language to be utterly insane. You have Democrat governors.

I'm going to put the shoes on the other feet. If you have Republican governors out referring to things as civil war battles, we'd be in 24/7 coverage over at CNN right now. Instead, it's like, well, it's just Tim Walsh. I cannot even begin to imagine how someone who holds a position of responsibility and ran for vice president of the United States, I guess, in his call home, is that you're calling for a new American civil war? Right. I'll let you respond and then we're

going to open up to Q&A from all of you. So, what, what, one thing that's being nullified, though,

“actually is habeas corpus. And that's why I'm going back to the barbarity of what is being”

done here. It's not the idea of enforcing the law is not barbaric. What I'm saying is that the way

are they are doing it on a daily basis is utterly barbaric. They're not, I think, 46 people have died in ice custody since Trump took office. Most of the young people, it's not like he's getting a lot of elderly people. That's, you know, we should not be having a person die in ice custody once every two weeks or so. They're not getting decent medical treatment. Like the conditions under which they're living are purposely barbaric so that people will give up their appeal

process and, and we'll just deport. Should the Americans live? If, like, for instance, the 16-year-old who came in, graduated, just in college, she's worked and she's following the rules. Yes, there should

be a path for her to become a citizenship, for her to become a citizen. A lot of the people in these

detention facilities have one habeas cases against the federal government, which is a very high bar to cross. What the HSS is doing now is they will take the person out of the facility. They will take the handcuffs off because they understand there's rule of law. The judges made this ruling. They managed to get it out of the immigration court into a real court and the judge said,

“no, this is appalling what you're doing. You have to release this person. They release them.”

They arrest them 10 seconds later because they say, we revoked their status, they're here in the country legally and they marched them right back into the facility. That is insane to do to people. We cannot be a people that do that. Yet we are at this very moment, people who do that. Well, let's open it up to the audience on that note. Questions, please. Then we'll go to closing statements. If you would like to ask a question, please come back to the

back and line up on the ramp. And while they're waiting at one point, I'd make them tomorrow very good. So, yeah, if they had just tried to normally deport him, they would have won. Instead, they deported him to this house. Should he have stayed? Do you think he should be in America? I think he's the kind that if they can find enough criminal background that put him through process. And then, you know, decide there. I don't know enough. He has an existing deportation order.

Now, I might agree with you that maybe they made a mistake because they sent him back to the wrong place based on the ruling from the judge. But that doesn't negate the fact that he had do

“process. He went to court and he has an existing deportation order. I think the common sense.”

They would have wanted to say, we would say, wait a minute. In the legal alien who came here, got a deportation order. And somehow he's living in the Maryland suburbs. They would have won that one if they didn't send him to a torture chamber in South Florida. Let's go. We've got a good line here. So, let's start right now. Thank you, both. I'm the topic of immigration. My question is about the case of Mamud Koleo, who served as a spokesperson for the provost Palestinian

encampment at Columbia University in 2024. Koleo has been accused of leading activities that disturbed campus life, created a hostile environment that made many Jewish students be one safe, and involve the distribution of pro-Hamas propaganda fires. Do you believe that conduct of this nature merits his deportation from the United States as the Trump administration is seeking? It feels like it's for Ryan. No, but all of that is untrue. None of that is true.

The reason that Mamud Koleo was in the position that he was in. People call him the leader of these protests. He was not. He was the mediator. He was the negotiator because the most radical people who participated in the protests, who said, look, do some of the things you're talking about because he was Palestinian, had worked, you know, it spent his entire life on this in this cause.

who he stood up for, who he worked with, who have spoken up passionately in his defense, who were at these encampments. And so he from left to right, across the spectrum within the encampment, he had, he had respect because he was, because he had just imagined a kind of person that can win the respect of that broad spectrum of people. So he would be the one that would be sent in

to negotiate with Colombia. These are the things that the students are saying here's what Colombia

is saying back. And he also had a decent ability to win the respect of Colombia. He's a little bit

“older. So he was none of those things. He didn't distribute Hamas flyers. The only thing that they”

hit him with when they arrested him was this like tweet from an organization that said something about the downfall of Western civilization, which he was not even involved with their social media or any leadership capacity. And I don't even think was involved with that particular organization. So think about that. Like, the worst thing they could find was an Instagram like real or whatever they'd call them of saying like we support the downfall of Western civilization that wasn't even connected

to him. So if he, if he's his bad guy as you're talking about, I think you would be able to find

a lot more stuff. Now to the broader point, I think when we welcome students into this country, we should teach them the virtues of free expression that we may not agree with what you're saying, but we will fight to the death for your right to say it. And I don't care where you come from. We're not afraid of your speech. Next question. Well, do I? Oh, you can go ahead. Yeah. Well done coming here prepared with the facts. You've got it right. Totally disagree with the

Ryan about this. The question I ask is this, let's just pretend everything he said is true. Pretend being the operative word. Do we need this person in our country? What is the benefit

of having some dude in his mid-30s hanging out at Columbia University and indefinitely?

Even tangentially being affiliated with anti-Western radicalism, anti-Americanism, etc, etc.

“When I think about our immigration system, I think is it good for this person to be here?”

I don't think this person loves America. I don't think he believes in what we believe in, fundamentally, as an American democracy. And I don't think his ideologies are necessarily compatible with the concept of America. And I think he's made that pretty darn obvious. And so when I think about the visa system and all the people that we import from around the world to be on our universities and in other places, question A, do we need this person here? Is this person very

benefit to our society? And I think if you ask that question about him, a lot of other people at Columbia, what is the benefit to America's universities to have a tent city set up at what used to be a great learning institution. There's no benefit. Zero. None. So I think he should be deported. And I don't think he's the only one in the Trump State Department has moved on a lot of these people that we gave visas to. My view is universities ought to be hotbeds of American exceptionalism,

not anti-Western radicalism. And the sooner we learn that less, the better awful be. All right. Next question. Scott, I was struck by your opening statement where you mentioned that students that don't agree with American value should be deported. And I wanted to ask your opinion on a controversy that has since been overshadowed. Some time ago, hundreds of students were deported or had their

visas revoked for their propelistic and unactivism. And I wanted to ask you where all of these students violating American values. Well, without looking at each individual case, I wouldn't be able to tell you specifically about each individual one. My view is is that if you've been invited to the United States to be here to learn at one of our universities, if you've been granted the

“great privilege of coming here to learn from American universities that, yes, I think we ought to have”

some expectation that at a minimum, you don't come here to try to foment the downfall of the United States. Does that mean the sport and speak against the ills and speak about the ills, suppose it ills of Western civilization? We don't have Israel's got. Should they be able to say, we don't support Israel. Should students on visas be able to protest Israel at Columbia, RGW? Well, I would say what was happening at these universities was not simply protesting Israel.

things, very different things. And the universities have admitted as much that they allowed this to occur. Universities admitted that under threat of like, admitted under the threat of like getting all of their federal money taken away from them and having, you know, congratulations, the federal government did take over basically a bunch of universities, but Rumeza O's Turk, for instance, she was one of four authors of an op-ed that was calling for the support,

the calling for the student senate to support a resolution that was critical of Israel.

The student senate passed to that resolution. It was BDS, yeah. The student senate passed it. Like, I don't know, student senate's, like, these are not actually hotbeds of radicalism. Those are the kids who, like, want to go to GW. No, that's. These are kids who, like, have their eye on their next thing. Even they were like, yeah, we support this. And Rumeza O's Turk was one of four

“authors on this. And so, I think it is insane what has happened in our country where you can”

as an immigrant here, as a student. BDS critical is you want really of the United States. You just can't be critical of Israel. And also, and this is, this is not personal,

but there is so much, kind of money pouring in to push us in that direction, even sale

a media where you do your show, right? Brad Parscale, who is the Chief Strategy Officer there, is a registered foreign agent for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Like, this is an American, I think it's American, right? Salem, yeah, some American media company, who's Chief Strategy Officer, is a foreign agent registered for the state of Israel. Let's, and 30% of this company is owned by Lara Trump and Don Trump Jr. Like, what? So before we're talking about, like,

who, you know, what is America who, yeah, who see the American, it's like, are can we as Americans discuss this? Let's get Scott Srisman. Yeah, so you, you seem to have some

“issue with Israel having a presence in the United States or even on, even on American. I think we should”

be sanctioning. Even real. I guess, even on American universities. I think they should be sanctioned. Yes. I think it should be, I think, I think it should be criminal for an American media company to take money from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, because I think they should be under sanctions for what they did in Gaza. Do you believe that American universities should be taking money from say cutter? If we want to do a broad, sanctioning around human rights, you seem to have

single out one country because they put it by the way as an ally of the United States. They committed a genocide, uh, contra, some, a lot of human rights problems there. You are, but a human rights problem is, all of this country, universities, all of this country do take Katoria money. I'm asking you. Did you? I kind of be talking about internationalism exists beyond Israel. I'd be okay with

“banning that too. Uh, the good news for you is that Trump is destroying all of their capacity to”

make any money, um, by launching a war on behalf of Israel that is destroying the Gulf economies. I don't know if you saw this Saudi Arabia just, uh, told, um, some charity in New York City,

that the $200 million a year they're giving them isn't coming anymore because their stuff is all

broken. Like the money that's coming out of the Gulf was coming from fossil fuels, and we launched a war at the behest of Israel. Uh, and it is leading to the collapse of their economies, UAE now wants to, you know, the credit default swap. It's not like they want some, uh, some currency swap from, from the US. It's comical. Uh, so we're not going to have to worry about Gulf money. I'd recommend that we, like resolve this in closing statements and then take

one more question. Sounds good. We're already way behind. Thank you guys for coming. Um, a big fan of breaking points and Ryan's work at drop site. And so my interest at this event comes from my own personal background being a immigrant. So I'm a dual citizen of both the US and Algeria and my dad and the 90s came here because of the civil war and also that he's an educated young man and he had an interest in coming to America. So he won the lottery. He applied that the

whole embassy interview and came to New York City in the 90s. So, you know, he worked multiple jobs and went in back to Algeria. I've married my mother had me. This is by the time he was a citizen. And so, you know, achieved what has seen as the American dream sending me to college, um, moving to Texas, being able to buy a house. And, but since Trump has taken office,

into very concerning direction. So my question is, what is the future of this country when even immigrants who have come here on their own desire don't share an optimism and see hope for this

country? Oh, interesting. Scott, um, though that one your way. Sure. Well, first of all, it sounds like

based on your description of what happened. Your father follow all the rules, embraced what it means to be an American and has had quite a success with it. And so, I congratulate your family and I congratulate you on embracing and assimilating

“into what it means to be an American. I think that's, that is a terrific story.”

Regarding optimism, you know, look, my view is, as I stated in my opening statement, I believe we live in the greatest country in the history of the world. And I don't really alter that opinion based on political angelations. When in election, you feel good about it, losing election, you feel bad about it. To me, the top line is, we still live in the greatest country ever devised. And so right now, you, I think it's fair to argue, you have some political

problem with Donald Trump, perfectly fine, perfectly right to believe that. And I, of course,

would have had political problems with Joe Biden or per Barack Obama. But that would have never

shaken my belief that we live in the greatest country, or in my optimism, that we have the correct

“values in system to maintain being the greatest country. And I think that's where conservatives and”

liberals are divergent in today's political culture. Gallup poll measured this just the other day, few months ago, a couple months ago. Do you have patriotism for America? Do you have pride in America? You know, the conservative number stays pretty well up in the 80s and 90s. The liberal number has fallen dramatically. It takes up a little wind Democrats win, but it basically has tracked down to the bottom of the grid because they've become to believe that America is rotten at its core.

I don't believe that. I believe America is fundamentally a force for good in the world, because it's the greatest system ever devised. And because we have withstood so much that proves that over time. So I think right now, I'm not surprised to hear you to say that you have some disappointment with Trump that's your politics. What I would counsel you is whether you like Donald Trump or Donald, or whether you're optimistic about the country

because he's the president or not. There will always be another election, and I don't know who's

going to win, but you're going to vote in it. And because you're allowed to vote in it,

“you live in the greatest country ever devised by man. You should be optimistic about that”

always. And it sounds like your family recognized that and took advantage of it as they should have. And I congratulate you for it. Thank you for your question. Did you have an excellent? All right. Well, since Scott began, Ryan is going to have the first word in closing statements, and then we will conclude with Scott's closing statement as well. So Ryan, you have three minutes. Yeah, I mean, I would go back to what I started with, that the thing

that genuinely does make this country special, is that is are the ideas of the Enlightenment in human rights democracy, freedom, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, like those ideas like seek to write into the Declaration of Independence and then into the Constitution. And debate and disagreement is central to that. And to come to a place where on the one hand, thousands, tens of thousands, it's growing exponentially of people are picked up off the street,

not for committing any crime. But for following a policy that whether you disagree with or agree with it, was the policy that was in place at the time. You can say, policy of the Clinton's was bad. The policy of Obama was bad. Bush was bad. Biden said, even Trump, like a lot of people came in under the first Trump administration, who are now, you know, followed the rules at the time, who are now showing up at their appointments and being dragged off to for-profit detention centers,

where they are like, I don't know, just Google some of the videos that have leaked out of these places, like they're on American. And then on the flip side of that is this idea that we're going to use the threat of that to muzzle your speech. That to me is also deeply, deeply un-American. I just, I just recoil from it. That is new. I think World War I, there were some,

criticism of the war, Eugene Debs, and a lot of that was like targeted at immigrants because

“there were a lot of socialists who'd come over in that earlier wave. That's the only remote parallel”

to it. And that is a source of shame for us in the United States when we look back at what Wilson

was doing. When we look back at the Japanese internment camps, like we, I was always taught

that that was a deep source of shame for us. And now to take people because of their political views and say that the Secretary has determined that you are National Security threat and you round them up and put them in prison. I'll just finish real quickly with these two Iranian women. They living in Los Angeles, legal permanent residents had totally legitimate asylum claims, the mom had spent time in a Iranian prison. The daughter, when she was 12, participated in Turkey

in this like dance competition and it aired on on satellite TV in Iran and when it aired there, all hell came down on her and her mom or mom was beaten over it. She was expelled from school.

“She got another school. They learned about this spelled again. They came to the United States”

and I talked to the daughter to the other, and she said the thing that my mom was most

excited about when she came here to the United States was being able to finally speak her mind.

And she was like, my mom's pretty opinionated. You could tell that the 25-year-old girl, no, like very little politics. Like didn't, since she knew how much an opinion on anything. She was lost in Los Angeles and North Hollywood and she had her Instagram account out. It's like, this is not a political person, but she's like, my mom has a lot of opinions and she is like, finally, I can speak out. She did not like this war. She does not, does not like the,

the want to be shot. They turned on her. They, um, they out her to Laura Loomer as related to custom solely money. No fact checking by the state department whatsoever was not true. Is not true. They are still in prison. She has this autoimmune disorder that has her blood,

her hemoglobin levels down to like six at this point, which if anybody knows it's extremely dangerous.

That's, we don't need a running internment now. Like this is, this is not who we are or I hope it's not who we are. What would be my argument? Scott, you have actually four minutes tack on an extra quarter. Sure. Well, uh, I just want to thank you for moderating this Ryan. Thanks for the, uh, for the fair debate. Thank you all for listening. I think when we have debates, it's fair to reflect on where we have points of agreement, where we have points of disagreement. Actually,

think we found some agreement tonight. The original question was, does every immigrant deserves citizenship? I think we both agree. That's not true. So, um, or that's a no. So that, that is a point of agreement. It sounded like we had some points of agreement about the need to bring some rational thought to a national immigration system that benefits the country. I think that's good. And I think, I think on those points, that is the foundation for the possibility of

reaching some kind of a solution. So as you all think about what our government is supposed to

“be doing or what our policy makers are supposed to be doing, I think that's how they should be”

looking at these debates. Obviously, I have strongly held views about it. So does he, not all these views are necessarily in conflict, although some of them are. And the, and the mission that you all have is students and eventual policy makers is to think to yourself is, is my mission here to only focus on the points of disagreement, or should I be looking for the nuggets of agreement that might drive us towards some national progress. So I would just close by saying, that's a

good lesson from, I think, a public debate like this. Before you close, can I get a little great? Can I get a little agreement on something? Like, how about the mandatory detention for people who are following the rules? What rules? The rules that the rules like you, the rules when they came here illegally? No, they didn't come here illegally. She came here as a 16-year-old accompanying writer. She got this. Look, it's called a Jew, but it's called a J.I.V.S. visa. She's got the visas.

Like, I'm, I'm, I'm open to discussion about individual cases, but only to the point into those cases. It's, it's mandatory detention. But only to the point where it doesn't bog down the global question, which is, if you let millions upon millions upon millions of people in, and the American people demand that you do something about it, they are not going to be satisfied with saying, well, we got a case here, we got a case there, and we just can't do anything

about it. That's not going to be acceptable to the population that elected this administration. What about the Congo thing? I'm willing. I'm willing selling people to Congo for mineral rights. We can, I think you're misdescribing this, but whatever. If it's right, we can say that's bad.

up for that. So I, look, I think you could debate and probably should debate deportation priorities.

“You've raised that as a topic today. I think that's a legitimate point. Actually, if you look at”

the case of Minnesota, Emily, which you raised, they changed deportation priorities midstream. I mean, they removed certain leadership from the ground. They sent Tom Homan. He refocused the DHS activities in Minnesota on criminal and violent populations, things calm down. I think that is an instructive item. So I think that was an interesting point to raise. I still, to your point, Emily think leniency or any kind of signal that, hey, certain kinds of illegal immigration. We're going to look

the other way is not good national policy. I do take your point about enforcement priorities,

deployment of resources, because it goes to the core question. What's best for the nation?

And that's where I'll close. The only question we have to answer is, is it good for America? Is this person being here, good for our country? Do we want this person here? Do they benefit our society? Do they love our country? Or are they here for other reasons? And to me, that is where a lot of the questions are in the current administration that they're trying to answer on behalf of the American people who elected them to do just that people were horrified at the lack of immigration enforcement

for four years. And now we have immigration enforcement. And look, we're going to have an election in November, and this may be a topic. And then we'll have an election in 2028. And this may be a topic in the American people may have shifting attitudes about it. And the last thing I'll say is,

“that's perfectly fine, because that's how we settle our differences in debates in this country.”

We debate, and then we vote. And then we do it all again two years later, and then we do it all again two years after that. And that is the beauty of America. We get to decide our priorities every two years. And the ones that we decided in 2024 were this. That was crazy what they did. Somebody needs to fix it, which I would argue is what they're doing right now. Let's get a round of applause for our debateers.

Now, I don't know about you all, but I actually actually take this from Ryan coming in right at the last minute there. I could keep doing this for three hours. So I think we could have kept going. It would have been fun. Let's talk about what's really in your makeup. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. Most of us spend so much time worrying about actually what we eat or what we drink, how we take care of our families, but then we cake our faces in these products that are

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and code after party for 25% off your first order. Thank you to everyone for being here tonight in this classroom where I took like history or whatever. It's it's been a pleasure. Thank you to Ryan. Thank you to Scott. Thank you to Young American Foundation and the guys over at GWF. Thank you to everybody for listening or attending or watching this edition of Afterparty and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your evening. Thanks everyone.