There is cheese.
Now there is a package of meat. It is best to test one of the greatest tests.
“The people who have been in cheese are cheese. Now on the greatest tests.”
The number of 18 years, the government and the government have been in the union for 30 years. But as long as the government has a strong opinion on the action and on the cheese minus action. This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent. Mark Wayne Mullin, the New Homeland Security Secretary,
leveled a really strange threat at Blue States this week. He suggested that DHS might block international flights going into so-called sanctuary cities, which have protections for immigrants that Donald Trump hates. This is a really dark turn in a longer saga involving a battle over an ice facility in New Jersey,
which we're going to get into. But first, just note how incredibly absurd this threat is.
It would probably do serious damage to the economy and deal another big blow to GOP chances in the midterms. The whole situation captures some of the ugliest aspects of this presidency. So we're trying to make sense of it all with Naina Gupta, the policy director for the American Immigration Council, which follows DHS closely. Naina, thanks for coming on. Thanks, Greg, for having me.
So in Newark, New Jersey at a federal immigration center called Delaney Hall, activists have been protesting outside due to complaints from inmates of terrible conditions inside. New Jersey Governor Mithy Sheryl just put out a statement saying that state health inspectors were just denied full access to the facility. She's calling for it to be shut down. There have been scuffles with lawmakers getting pepper sprayed.
“Naina, can you just quickly recap what's happening there?”
Sure, so there are around 300 people in immigration detention at Delaney Hall, this facility in New Jersey, and they have been staging hunger and labor strikes to protest in humane conditions in the facility for days now. And that sparked protests outside of the facility by family members of those who are locked up inside and were being fed rotten food, receiving subpar, medical care, and those protests have grown over the past several days.
And that has attracted the attention and participation of high-ranking elected officials, like both New Jersey senators, the governor of New Jersey, who are trying to get into this facility to respond to this growing crisis. And that has triggered a fairly violent reaction from ICE and federal agents that are on the ground there near Delaney Hall. Well, it's in this context that the H.S. Secretary Mark Wynne Mullin made his preposterous threat.
In essence, what he said is, if things like this Delaney Hall fight keep happening, he's going to have to transfer a custom and border protection officers out of airports
to go to protect these federal facilities. Let's listen to Mullin for a second.
When we have situations what's happening in New Jersey right now, and we have to prioritize where we put federal employees because local law enforcement won't help protect their streets, not federal streets, city streets, and keep them from barricading and causing harm to our employees. Then we have to decide where we're going to prioritize our federal employees. So we're not going to halt the flights, but worst thing is we just won't let the process
them because we don't have officers there. We're going to have to pull out our customer border patrol officers that process these flights and put them in these facilities to help protect our employees coming out of work. And if they're not their process international flights, then those individuals when the airlines, the land, they can't, well, they won't be permitted into the United States. The Fox News headline all this read is follows quote,
"Mullin threatens to pull CBP from sanctuary city airports." Close quote. What do you make of that, Nina? Look, I mean, this is the Trump administration now with Mullin at the home of DHS. Once again, threatening vindictive actions because they don't like growing public pushback on their policies.
“And it's really important to note that if the administration actually pulled off this outrageous”
threat of diverting fights out of entire major metropolitan areas, this wouldn't be about just hurting those cities or immigrants, it would be hurting very many Americans. This would be hugely
disruptive, to critical industries, to travelers who travel through these airports at a moment
when the economy is already facing strain. And we know that voters are feeling very poorly
About this administration's economic policies.
We've seen the administration make sweeping threats and then walk those back when they face
backlash or because they can't actually effectuate those threats. But the fact that he's even on national news networks, talking about this, underscores their disregard for Americans generally and their willingness again to be vindictive about policies that are totally within the rights of states and local governments. And it's interesting that he's saying a lot of the stuff on Fox News because Fox really likes the idea a lot and it's really playing it up. I want to play
what a Fox News anchor said about this idea. Listen to this. Pulling CVP out of airports in sanctuary jurisdictions obviously would have an enormous ripple effect across the country. That's because
it would effectively be the end of international travel into big airports like LAX San Francisco,
Boston, Logan, JFK, Newark, Chicago, Philly, Seattle, many others, no customs agents means you can't process international travelers or cargo even Americans coming back from overseas. But DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullins says the idea is actively being considered. Now as you said it's a little unclear whether Mullin has any real intention of acting on this, but it would really be an extraordinarily dramatic step. As you said, the economic effect would be really, really vast and there would be chaos
“throughout the travel industry and through many other industries. Can you talk a little bit about that?”
I mean, even Fox News seems to be kind of acknowledging here that this is incredibly draconian scheme yet at the same time Fox can't help but get kind of excited about it because it's like, you know, oh, you're going after sanctuary cities. Great. We love it. Great. So let's be clear about exactly how disruptive and draconian this is. Airlines cannot simply divert flights. There are landing slot limits, which means other airports couldn't take the
volume and so people wouldn't necessarily be flying into the specific city they enter the U.S. and maybe transiting elsewhere. And so in reality, we can imagine mass flight cancellations, huge disruption at airports, long lines, people being stuck in stranded in cities where they have nowhere to go. And again, this is just another example of a policy that they are packaging with Fox News's help as cracking down on immigration, which in reality would hurt all Americans
and does absolutely nothing to credibly enforce our immigration laws. And look, Fox News liking the shock and awe of this, this is part of the marketing angle of this administration's mass deportation agenda. They love the political feeder. They love diverting Americans' attention from the fact that they have done nothing to meaningfully enforce immigration laws in a credible or humane way. And instead are just constantly creating these kinds of distractions that feed the media market,
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Now there's cheese. A new news agency has the most powerful market.
Now there's a new package of food. The best thing is to test a new business. The people who have the cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese. Now on the latest tests. The number of the 18 years, the number of customers and customers in the world, only a few weeks later, the number of the production of the package and the cheese minus action. Now there's cheese. A new news agency has the most powerful market.
“Now there's a new package of food. The best thing is to test a new business.”
The best thing is to test a new business. Now there's a new business, the number of customers in the world, the number of customers in the world, and the number of customers in the world, the number of the products in the world, and the number of the products in the world. It wouldn't even matter if they didn't intend it only as a theater,
Because it's really pretty terrible that Mark Wayne Mullin knows, even if he'...
that performing this show for the audience of one is going to be thrilling to him, right?
Mullin just like everyone else who works for the Ailing Desk Pot knows that this sort of quote unquote fight will excite him greatly, right? Mullin thinks, "Okay, if I threaten blue states in sanctuary areas, the boss will love it." This is really one of the most vile features of Trump governance. This constant threat of unleashing government power on democratic areas, serious or not,
just to thrill MAGA America with the prospect of Trump's government inflicting suffering on blue America. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, look, this is Mullin using so-called sanctuary cities and policies as a pretext
“for targeting and dividing communities in America. That's what this is, and to your point,”
it's also about sucking up to the boss flexing for the boss to show, "Hey, I'm down with the cruelty that you're using when it comes to your immigration agenda." And I'll just say, look, this administration now repeatedly has taken steps to threaten jurisdictions that won't work with them,
or to force them to work with the federal government. When the reality is that state and local
governments are entitled under the United States Constitution to make decisions that are best for their own interests and their own communities when it comes to law enforcement and public safety. And there are a growing number of law enforcement voices that will echo that. The 10th Amendment is clear. The federal government cannot coerce or threaten states and localities into working with ICE. And the federal courts have repeatedly agreed with that. And that just
underscores the pretext that Mullin is using here to be able to just flex and show some kind of cruelty and power both for his boss and their political base. Right, it is all about saying to the boss, look, I'm prepared to use government power to inflict suffering and chaos on blue America. And we shouldn't let the sheer idiocy of it escape us, either. If you were to stop flights into places like Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles,
you know who would get hurt? Republican midterm candidates would. You have a lot of crucial
house races in Pennsylvania, New York, California. So basically, Mullin is threatening to further tank
“Trump's economy and further wreck GOP midterm chances. Other than that, it's a great plan, right?”
I mean, it does seem like they have no regard or care for what kind of backlash there would be when thousands of Americans are waiting hours and hours and airports around the country. I mean, this is again, it's just Trump's performative stunts that actually undermine safety, stability, insecurity and have literally nothing to do with actually enforcing immigration laws. And apparently, they don't care about the political consequences of that. And it's hard then to not come to the
conclusion that this is really just cruelty and harm for cruelty sake. It really is that your group American immigration council had a report that one of its features was to go into the need for more cooperation between the states and the federal government, not less. Can you talk a little
“bit about that? I mean, the Trump approach is to essentially make the federal government fundamentally”
and antagonist of blue states when it comes to immigration enforcement. We've seen it on many other fronts. There's these threats we're seeing here. There's the constant threats and bullying towards sanctuary jurisdictions, which you mentioned earlier. Then of course, there's the sending in of armed troops and paramilitary forces into places where the locals and local government don't want them. You're you're advocating for something very different in your report, right? Right. So
the framework that we release restoring credibility and humanity to immigration enforcement gives elected officials a vision forward. We know increasingly Americans don't want mass deportation given the kinds of harms we've talked about today, but we haven't really heard elected's talk about what this could look like instead. And what we offer when it comes to how the federal government works with states is we say it can't be this that this collaboration happens through threats.
It also can't be that the federal government asks the states to enforce an agenda that actually hurts their communities that makes people less likely to report crying or less likely to trust
Their local police officers.
on enforcement, they should also give funding to support states that have large immigrant populations
so that they're working towards safety beyond just cracking down on people who might close some kind of public safety threat. And a model like that that's not enforcement only, but that's
“also supportive is the only way to rebuild trust that has been absolutely decimated in cities”
and states like Illinois or California or Massachusetts or even North Carolina, where going forward states are really nervous to work with the federal government. And to rebuild that trust we're saying the federal government has to step in and start offering support for immigrant communities. And when you do that, you actually create safer, stronger communities. And we offer a vision
for what that can look like. Yes, and we're seeing democratic governors step up right now.
People like Abigail Spanberger and Virginia and Mikey Cheryl here in New Jersey that we just discussed, they're starting to really kind of articulate a vision of state and federal cooperation from the state side, which is really great to see, I think. It's going to be a big feature of the democratic agenda going forward as my guess. Just to close this out, the the threat from Mullin, whatever happens with that, what do you see happening at this ice facility? It looks like
a situation is is deteriorated pretty badly. As I mentioned at the top of this, Mikey Cheryl, the New Jersey governor, just put out a statement saying that health inspectors, state health inspectors were denied full access to the facility. She's calling it, she's calling for it to be shut down. What's going to happen here? Is it going to be shut down? Is the state going to
“get access? Are we going to learn more? What do you anticipate? I mean, I think it's hard to know”
where the road ends on this. What we've seen is that when protesters and leaders dig in and push back and make demands for releases and better care, a lot of the time the Trump administration doubles down and punishes with policies like the one Mullin is threatening now. I think the question is can some of these political leaders like the New Jersey senators, like the New Jersey governor, cut some deal with the Trump administration, where they say you can't just keep people inside
in these conditions. You can't let this situation outside deteriorate. What can we do to get in better food so people aren't starving? What can we do to make sure they're receiving appropriate medical care? Are there at least some vulnerable folks that we can release and get out? And we hope
“that this public pressure and the growing public outcry will lead to the kinds of headlines”
that the Trump administration has been avoiding since what happened in Minnesota. And if that happens, that might be just enough leverage to get them to compromise to some degree so that people especially inside and families outside are not harmed as extensively as we are seeing right now. You know, that just brings up something in my mind what you said there about about the need for this kind of cooperation. The Trump administration and Donald Trump and the more fascist devices
around him like Stephen Miller, they think this kind of conflict is good. You mentioned that in Minnesota, the Trump administration actually ended up pulling back, which is true. The public backlash was ferocious, both in Minneapolis, but also nationally, they really, really, nose-dive in the polls throughout that whole thing. The horrible killing of Americans in Minneapolis was the sort of real precipitator for that. But there were voices inside the Trump administration
that understood that this kind of searing civil conflict is bad for Trump and Republicans politically. But then on the flip side, you've got people like Stephen Miller and Mark Wayne Mullin who think it's good for them politically to have these kinds of conflicts. I don't really know what to make of that other than it's just sort of a struggle between the two camps at all times and it's not really clear to me like who is dominant. It sort of depends on the day, but right now it looks like
the Stephen Miller/Mark Wayne Mullin nitwitz School of Politics is really like winning out. What we are seeing is this constant back and forth, but that at the end of the day seems to be Stephen Miller, the architects and mind behind all of these extreme and cruel policies winning the day. At moments, even seeing the president walk back some of the most extreme immigration policies
they've had and a few days later, the administration never the less doubles down. I think they felt
The public backlash to the events in Minnesota, which underscores for America...
matters even when you have an administration with authoritarian tendencies, but it doesn't change
“that they're still in power and that Stephen Miller can still drive the ship of policy here and that”
means at any moment we can quickly nose dive as you say back into a very cool and extreme set of
policies and the only other point I'll add, Greg, is even when what they're doing doesn't make headlines
“because it's not so obviously cruel and violent as what we've seen in Minnesota and now at Delaney Hall.”
They're simultaneously effectuating policies that are more quiet, but are nevertheless destructive
to our entire legal immigration system to U.S. citizen spouses and families of immigrants. They have a toolkit of tactics and policies that they're using and when they lean in on the more visibly
“cool ones, we do tend to see greater public pushback and I think that that will likely continue and”
we'll have to see how that ends up playing out over the next several months before midterms and then especially after where they may feel no guardrails at all. 100% I think that the more a light that's shined on the stuff, the better for precisely that reason when this stuff is in the news, they nose dive further in the polls. Naina Gupta, thanks so much for coming on, it was really great to talk to you. Thanks so much Greg for having me.
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