# Immigration Issues from Deportations to Revoking Citizenship

An episode of [Bloomberg Law](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/277975394), 3 Oct 2026, 35 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/7c892d84-801f-4c0b-b0e9-ae2b0012ff5f/ca7c8c04-a60c-4520-9b31-b4d80152aadb/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=91224201-26a6-429d-ac3c-ae2b0012ff6d

Immigration law expert Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight and the former head of the Office of Immigration Litigation in the Obama administration, discusses a wide range of immigration issues from the Justice Department suing the federal judges in Minnesota to the Supreme Court allowing undocumented immigrants to be send to countries they have no connection with. June Grasso hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio.
[0:10] Speaker 2: Federal judges in Minnesota have posed a barrier to the
[0:14] Speaker 2: Trump administration's immigration priorities, dismissing high-profile cases and prosecutions and
[0:21] Speaker 2: accusing government lawyers of failing to comply with court orders
[0:25] Speaker 2: in some cases. The Justice Department is now escalating its
[0:29] Speaker 2: battle with the judiciary, filing a complaint against the federal
[0:33] Speaker 2: judges in Minnesota over their remarks to the media related
[0:37] Speaker 2: to the administration's immigration enforcement surge. Attorney General Todd Blanch
[0:42] Speaker 2: said the judges flagrantly violated the judicial code of conduct
[0:47] Speaker 2: by speaking to the New York Times.
[0:49] Speaker 1: The comments are not only overtly political. itself a violation,
[0:54] Speaker 1: but also concern matters pending before these judges or still
[0:58] Speaker 1: in the appellate process a separate violation.
[1:04] Speaker 3: Aside from the fact, on top of.
[1:07] Speaker 1: The comments themselves, the comments are not even true and
[1:11] Speaker 1: blatantly false.
[1:13] Speaker 2: At issue is a September article in which seven federal
[1:16] Speaker 2: judges in Minnesota, nominated by Democratic and Republican presidents, spoke
[1:22] Speaker 2: on the record about their experience dealing with a flood
[1:25] Speaker 2: of cases during last winter's immigration crackdown that led to
[1:30] Speaker 2: thousands of arrests. The judge at the center of the story,
[1:34] Speaker 2: Patrick Schlitz, a George W. Bush appointee, had described a
[1:38] Speaker 2: grave threat to the rule of law in the government's
[1:41] Speaker 2: handling of immigration detention challenges during Operation Metro's surge in Minnesota.
[1:48] Speaker 2: In a statement, Schlitz said he was, quote, acting well
[1:51] Speaker 2: within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in
[1:55] Speaker 2: speaking to the New York Times. Joining me is immigration
[1:58] Speaker 2: attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight. He
[2:02] Speaker 2: was the head of the Office of Immigration Litigation during
[2:05] Speaker 2: the Obama administration. Leon, the Justice Department filed a judicial
[2:10] Speaker 2: misconduct complaint. They're complaining that in a New York Times interview,
[2:15] Speaker 2: the judges made critical comments about the Trump administration's immigration
[2:20] Speaker 2: enforcement surge that were overtly political and concerned cases that
[2:25] Speaker 2: were still ongoing or at the appellate level. Do you
[2:28] Speaker 2: think the Justice Department has a point?
[2:30] Speaker 4: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, the
[2:32] Speaker 4: statute says that anyone can complain of conduct that is, quote-unquote,
[2:37] Speaker 4: prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business
[2:41] Speaker 4: of the courts. And so from that standpoint, what the
[2:45] Speaker 4: Department of Justice is saying is that these judges who
[2:49] Speaker 4: either participated on the record or off the record with
[2:52] Speaker 4: the New York Times on their story about the Minnesota
[2:56] Speaker 4: Federal Operation Metro Surge and other operations related to ICE
[3:01] Speaker 4: in Minnesota, that those judges were not talking about justice
[3:06] Speaker 4: generally or the administration of the justice system or the
[3:10] Speaker 4: legal system, but that they were actually talking about specific cases.
[3:15] Speaker 4: They were talking about things that ICE was saying about
[3:18] Speaker 4: whether they were criminal foreign nationals as opposed to foreign
[3:23] Speaker 4: nationals who had just overstayed visas. And they were talking
[3:27] Speaker 4: about contempt orders and lack of compliance with orders.
[3:32] Speaker 3: And things of this nature.
[3:33] Speaker 4: And so what the Department of Justice is trying to
[3:36] Speaker 4: really achieve, even though it cannot really achieve it directly,
[3:40] Speaker 4: because the only thing that these complaints can really do
[3:44] Speaker 4: is to obtain some sort of censure or reprimand. Only
[3:48] Speaker 4: Congress can impeach a federal judge. That would be the
[3:51] Speaker 4: role of Congress to do that. But what they're trying
[3:54] Speaker 4: to basically create is a scenario that to the extent
[3:59] Speaker 4: that there are these orders that reprimand or censure these
[4:04] Speaker 4: federal judges in Minnesota, that they would then indirectly, sort
[4:08] Speaker 4: of a third degree pool cue shot here, would then
[4:12] Speaker 4: have to recuse themselves from these cases. So even though
[4:15] Speaker 4: they couldn't be ordered to be recused, the fact that
[4:18] Speaker 4: they would be under this scrutiny or this dark cloud
[4:21] Speaker 4: would lead them to have to recuse themselves. And then
[4:24] Speaker 4: these cases in Minnesota would then be given to judges
[4:29] Speaker 4: that are more favorable than the ones currently handling them.
[4:32] Speaker 2: I mean, are there still cases in Minnesota that are
[4:35] Speaker 2: at the federal district court level?
[4:38] Speaker 4: Well, there are some habeas cases in individual foreign nationals
[4:43] Speaker 4: who are trying to either get out of detention or
[4:47] Speaker 4: trying to stop their removal proceedings. But also the point
[4:51] Speaker 4: is to the extent that there are additional surges that
[4:55] Speaker 4: they would want to take place in Minneapolis.
[4:57] Speaker 3: Remember, this is a very.
[4:59] Speaker 4: Big hotbed with the Somali community and with allegations of
[5:03] Speaker 4: fraud and the members of Congress from Minnesota and all
[5:07] Speaker 4: of this. So the Trump administration really has Minnesota in
[5:12] Speaker 4: under very large degrees of scrutiny. And so to the
[5:16] Speaker 4: extent that they would like to, after this election perhaps,
[5:19] Speaker 4: go back there and really continue severe immigration operations, they
[5:25] Speaker 4: would want to do that in an environment where any
[5:28] Speaker 4: new lawsuits that would be filed couldn't go to some
[5:31] Speaker 4: of these federal judges who they were able to get
[5:34] Speaker 4: some sort of reprimand or censure about their conduct.
[5:39] Speaker 2: Well, do you think they'd be able to get that?
[5:42] Speaker 4: Well, that's going to be a question because they'd have
[5:44] Speaker 4: to move for recusal. And then the judges would then
[5:48] Speaker 4: decide whether they could be impartial or not. And to
[5:51] Speaker 4: the extent that the judges said that they could be impartial,
[5:54] Speaker 4: the only move then is to appeal that determination. And
[5:57] Speaker 4: then we'd have to see what the Eighth Circuit would
[5:59] Speaker 4: do in any of those individual recusal cases.
[6:03] Speaker 2: So is it the Eighth Circuit that will decide whether
[6:05] Speaker 2: or not this complaint has any merit?
[6:08] Speaker 4: The chief judge of the Eighth Circuit is going to
[6:11] Speaker 4: be the one in charge of looking at whether there
[6:13] Speaker 4: was misconduct here. which is a different issue from the
[6:16] Speaker 4: recusal issue. But what they're trying to do is, to
[6:19] Speaker 4: the extent that they can establish some misconduct that would
[6:22] Speaker 4: lead to a censor or a reprimand, that would then
[6:25] Speaker 4: give them the factual basis to do a recusal motion
[6:28] Speaker 4: later in a subsequent future case.
[6:31] Speaker 2: Do you think that the Eighth Circuit judge would really
[6:34] Speaker 2: find that they were guilty of misconduct?
[6:37] Speaker 4: So there have been two such cases so far already,
[6:40] Speaker 4: one against Judge Boasberg and another against Judge Reyes. And
[6:44] Speaker 4: both of those district court cases are 0 for 2.
[6:47] Speaker 4: The Chief Judge Sutton of the Sixth Circuit struck the
[6:51] Speaker 4: one against Judge Boasberg. And Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of
[6:55] Speaker 4: the D.C. Circuit struck the one against Judge Reyes.
[6:58] Speaker 3: And so at the moment, they haven't won any of
[7:01] Speaker 3: these yet.
[7:01] Speaker 4: But I think from their perspective, hope springs eternal that
[7:05] Speaker 4: they would be able to to get one, and I
[7:09] Speaker 4: just think from their perspective, perhaps the one where there
[7:14] Speaker 4: was basically significant cooperation with the New York Times describing
[7:20] Speaker 4: the people being arrested not being dangerous criminals, and perhaps
[7:24] Speaker 4: if they can get some of these anonymous judges exposed,
[7:27] Speaker 4: some of those might be more interesting than even anything
[7:31] Speaker 4: that either Judge Boasberger or Judge Reyes did.
[7:34] Speaker 2: Let's turn to the Supreme Court. More than 25,000 people
[7:38] Speaker 2: have been expelled from the U.S. under this Trump administration
[7:42] Speaker 2: program that deports migrants and asylum seekers to third countries
[7:47] Speaker 2: where they have no ties. And the Supreme Court is
[7:51] Speaker 2: now allowing the Trump administration to resume deporting to third
[7:56] Speaker 2: countries migrants And a federal judge had ordered that people
[8:00] Speaker 2: who are being deported get notice and a meaningful chance
[8:05] Speaker 2: to argue that they would be at risk of persecution
[8:08] Speaker 2: or torture.
[8:10] Speaker 4: Well, what happened is and this has happened in a
[8:12] Speaker 4: couple of other cases in the last three to four
[8:15] Speaker 4: years is the Supreme Court. appear sometimes to what they
[8:20] Speaker 4: would do is ready, shoot, aim. Instead of, you know, ready, aim, fire,
[8:24] Speaker 4: they sort of do ready, fire, aim. And so this
[8:27] Speaker 4: has happened a couple of times. One of the more
[8:30] Speaker 4: recent ones that I thought was quite interesting was when
[8:34] Speaker 4: during the Biden administration, they basically let a judge in
[8:37] Speaker 4: Texas run ice for six months during the beginning of
[8:41] Speaker 4: the Biden administration because that judge was saying that he
[8:44] Speaker 4: didn't like the prosecutorial discretion memo. And then once the
[8:48] Speaker 4: case finally got into argument, then the court said, oh,
[8:51] Speaker 4: wait a second, does this mean that there's a judge
[8:54] Speaker 4: who can say which immigrants should be deported and who shouldn't?
[8:57] Speaker 4: and they're literally running ice. And when they figured that out,
[9:00] Speaker 4: they were horrified and reversed their own decision. And I
[9:04] Speaker 4: think this is where they're going to get to here.
[9:07] Speaker 4: But for some reason, they don't seem to like the
[9:11] Speaker 4: courts taking action so quickly and stopping the federal government.
[9:15] Speaker 4: They like letting these things percolate. And so they're going
[9:19] Speaker 4: to let the federal government deport people for the next
[9:22] Speaker 4: few months to one of 30 countries. There's 30 countries
[9:26] Speaker 4: who have signed on to allow the U.S. to deport
[9:29] Speaker 4: foreign nationals to any one of these 30 countries that
[9:33] Speaker 4: have signed on, that it's not their country of citizenship.
[9:36] Speaker 4: It's a different country. And what that solves is it
[9:39] Speaker 4: solves the problem of either a foreign national has been
[9:42] Speaker 4: given protection so that they can't be deported to their
[9:46] Speaker 4: specific country of nationality, but they don't face any problem
[9:50] Speaker 4: in some other country of nationality. Or sometimes what happens
[9:55] Speaker 4: is that there are countries that don't take people back.
[9:57] Speaker 4: They refuse to admit. people back to their home country.
[10:01] Speaker 4: And so this creates an option to deport those kind
[10:05] Speaker 4: of foreign nationals that can't be sent back to their
[10:08] Speaker 4: home country because their home country simply won't accept them.
[10:11] Speaker 4: And the Supreme Court, once they do grapple with this,
[10:15] Speaker 4: the question they're going to have to grapple with, hey,
[10:18] Speaker 4: can you just do that? Can you just suddenly put
[10:21] Speaker 4: someone who has a protection order, say, from China or something,
[10:26] Speaker 4: and they say you can't send them to China, and
[10:29] Speaker 4: then suddenly now you're sending them to Botswana, which is
[10:33] Speaker 4: one of the countries who's recently decided to cooperate. And
[10:37] Speaker 4: you had less than 24 hours notice. The person didn't
[10:40] Speaker 4: have a chance to find the lawyer, didn't have a
[10:43] Speaker 4: chance to investigate what their conditions would be in Botswana,
[10:47] Speaker 4: how they would be treated, would they.
[10:49] Speaker 3: Starve to death, that kind of thing.
[10:52] Speaker 4: And I think the courts will eventually, much like in
[10:56] Speaker 4: those cases where people were being sent home under the
[11:00] Speaker 4: Alien Enemies Act without due process, will eventually say, well,
[11:04] Speaker 4: wait a second, we have to have some due process here.
[11:07] Speaker 3: But it's just going to take a while.
[11:08] Speaker 4: And so for the next few months, there's not going
[11:11] Speaker 4: to be any definition of what is due process here.
[11:14] Speaker 4: when the government gets to suddenly just announce all of
[11:18] Speaker 4: a sudden, hey, you're being sent to Burundi and there's
[11:21] Speaker 4: just nothing you can do about it.
[11:23] Speaker 2: The three liberal justices dissented, but they didn't write an opinion,
[11:29] Speaker 2: perhaps because they've already issued scathing dissents when the court's
[11:33] Speaker 2: conservative majority backed the administration twice during earlier stages of
[11:39] Speaker 2: the litigation. Leon, the court is going to hear arguments
[11:43] Speaker 2: on this in December. Do you think this temporary order
[11:48] Speaker 2: indicates the way the court will go when they rule
[11:51] Speaker 2: after oral arguments and briefing?
[11:54] Speaker 4: I think that kind of thing used to be the case,
[11:57] Speaker 4: but there have been several examples where the court has
[12:01] Speaker 4: issued these emergency stays allowing something to go into effect,
[12:06] Speaker 4: and then later, once they realize what they allowed to
[12:09] Speaker 4: go into effect, They say, holy, holy man, this is
[12:13] Speaker 4: not the thing we should have allowed to go into effect.
[12:17] Speaker 4: We need to fix this. And I think this is
[12:19] Speaker 4: going to be this type of case. I think in
[12:21] Speaker 4: the end, you're going to see Justice Roberts, perhaps Justice
[12:24] Speaker 4: Coney Barrett. And I think that would get you to
[12:27] Speaker 4: five who would say, you got to do something more
[12:32] Speaker 4: than what you're doing because people need to be able
[12:34] Speaker 4: to build a record, get an attorney in and be
[12:37] Speaker 4: able to say, hey, this is the first time I'm
[12:39] Speaker 4: learning of Burundi. I'm going to have to explain whether
[12:42] Speaker 4: this place is actually a place that I'm not going
[12:45] Speaker 4: to die if I get sent to that location.
[12:47] Speaker 2: And I read about violence on this deportation flight where
[12:52] Speaker 2: federal agents ordered this group of immigrants to board, and
[12:56] Speaker 2: they didn't know where they were going, and some of
[12:58] Speaker 2: the men refused, and the federal agents said, hit them
[13:03] Speaker 2: with pepper balls, eventually restrained them, carried them onto the plane.
[13:07] Speaker 2: They were going to the Central African Republic. It's not pretty.
[13:12] Speaker 3: Well, correct.
[13:13] Speaker 4: Those flights can actually be very, very dangerous when people
[13:17] Speaker 4: are resisting their deportation. And sometimes it's been known that
[13:21] Speaker 4: tranquilizers and that kind of thing have to be used
[13:24] Speaker 4: in order to get people on flights.
[13:26] Speaker 3: And that issue also.
[13:28] Speaker 4: Gets litigated as well, whether the government was correct To
[13:31] Speaker 4: give people those tranquilizers, etc.
[13:33] Speaker 3: And I think another issue you're going to start.
[13:36] Speaker 4: Seeing getting litigated is this issue of what's called state
[13:39] Speaker 4: created danger, which is that even if. the country is
[13:45] Speaker 4: not going to persecute you if the government's going to
[13:48] Speaker 4: send you to a dangerous location. So just as an example,
[13:52] Speaker 4: if the government said, we're going to deport you to Norway,
[13:56] Speaker 4: so that's a perfectly lovely country and great. If you
[14:00] Speaker 4: get deported to Norway, there's nothing wrong. But the way
[14:02] Speaker 4: we will effectuate your deportation to Norway is when the
[14:06] Speaker 4: flight is 50,000 feet above Oslo, we will just throw
[14:10] Speaker 4: you off the plane. That is a state-created danger. You're
[14:13] Speaker 4: likely to die when that happens. And so you can
[14:16] Speaker 4: ask for an injunction from that. And so the question is,
[14:19] Speaker 4: is if you're going to be sent to Central African
[14:21] Speaker 4: Republic or Burundi or somewhere else, that that might lead
[14:24] Speaker 4: to your death because you have no way to eat
[14:27] Speaker 4: or make a living or anything else. Then the question is,
[14:30] Speaker 4: could a state-created danger claim be one that is advanced
[14:35] Speaker 4: in such a context in order to prevent such a removal?
[14:37] Speaker 3: So I think you're going to see that.
[14:39] Speaker 4: And this is just a lot of litigation that hasn't
[14:41] Speaker 4: been allowed to get to any court to consider these questions.
[14:46] Speaker 4: But these are all questions that are going to have
[14:48] Speaker 4: to be considered.
[14:49] Speaker 2: Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, I'll continue
[14:52] Speaker 2: this conversation with Leon Fresco. The Supreme Court allows Trump
[14:57] Speaker 2: to expand a federal database to help verify voter eligibility
[15:02] Speaker 2: for the midterms. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg.
[15:07] Speaker 2: I've been talking to immigration attorney Leon Fresco of Honda Knight. Leon,
[15:11] Speaker 2: the Supreme Court reinstated Trump's expansion of the federal database.
[15:16] Speaker 2: It puts on hold judges finding that the government was
[15:19] Speaker 2: misusing Social Security information and violating privacy rights. How much
[15:24] Speaker 2: do you think this will affect the midterms, having states
[15:28] Speaker 2: and counties be able to access this data, which now
[15:32] Speaker 2: contains Social Security Administration data?
[15:36] Speaker 4: I don't know how many people will actually be stricken
[15:40] Speaker 4: from the voter rolls who shouldn't be on there but
[15:43] Speaker 4: are currently on there because of a mistake in terms
[15:47] Speaker 4: of an automatic voter registration, one of these motor voter laws, etc.,
[15:52] Speaker 4: I don't think it's going to be significant. The chances
[15:56] Speaker 4: that it would be dispositive in any particular race are
[15:59] Speaker 4: always so very low. But symbolically, this is a very high, high,
[16:06] Speaker 4: high priority for.
[16:07] Speaker 3: The Trump administration.
[16:09] Speaker 4: And normally, when it's not a state versus federal issue,
[16:14] Speaker 4: because when it's a state versus federal issue, then the
[16:16] Speaker 4: Supreme Court pretty clearly usually defers to the states on
[16:21] Speaker 4: election issues. But when it's a federal election issue, the
[16:25] Speaker 4: Supreme Court has been pretty consistent about ruling in favor
[16:28] Speaker 4: of the Trump administration on purely federal election issues. And
[16:33] Speaker 4: so this was another purely federal election issue. And here
[16:37] Speaker 4: the court said that the statutes basically requires the federal
[16:42] Speaker 4: officials to comply and provide this access to the same database.
[16:47] Speaker 2: Now, we've talked before about the Trump administration stepping up
[16:51] Speaker 2: efforts to actually revoke citizenship. Tom Holman has confirmed that
[16:56] Speaker 2: there is a criminal investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar. Omar
[17:02] Speaker 2: says that she was granted automatic citizenship because she was
[17:07] Speaker 2: 17 when her father was naturalized.
[17:09] Speaker 3: Right.
[17:10] Speaker 4: What happens is when you are too young, you're not
[17:14] Speaker 4: allowed to apply for citizenship for yourself. So you get
[17:18] Speaker 4: what's called a derivative citizenship that's gotten by virtue of
[17:23] Speaker 4: your parent naturalizing. When you are a minor, automatically confers
[17:31] Speaker 4: that citizenship on to you, although you do have to
[17:33] Speaker 4: get a certificate of citizenship at some point to confirm that,
[17:37] Speaker 4: which I'm sure she did. But there's multiple questions. So
[17:41] Speaker 4: the one that's always been the salacious one in the
[17:43] Speaker 4: news is did she marry her brother and was that
[17:46] Speaker 4: for some immigration purpose or any of that? And it
[17:49] Speaker 4: seems like in all of that, the marrying of the brother,
[17:52] Speaker 4: you have statutes of limitations that have expired many, many
[17:56] Speaker 4: years ago. And it's not clear that that was done
[17:59] Speaker 4: for an immigration purpose related to her. If anything, it
[18:03] Speaker 4: would have been done related to the brother. But in
[18:06] Speaker 4: any case, we don't even know that. That's one separate issue.
[18:09] Speaker 4: But there are other issues that they're looking at about
[18:12] Speaker 4: whether the father was truthful in his refugee application in
[18:16] Speaker 4: the first place. And the father is not alive anymore.
[18:19] Speaker 4: But if the father was not truthful, then that application
[18:22] Speaker 4: can be reopened and sort of the whole initial application
[18:27] Speaker 4: can be reengineered and say that everything was based on
[18:31] Speaker 4: a derivative fraud. Or there's this issue about whether Ilhan
[18:34] Speaker 4: Omar really is the age he claims he is. such
[18:38] Speaker 4: that she didn't need to apply for citizenship on her own.
[18:43] Speaker 4: If that happened, that wouldn't lead to her deportation, but
[18:46] Speaker 4: it would lead to her lack of citizenship, which would
[18:49] Speaker 4: mean she couldn't serve in Congress and she'd have to re-naturalize.
[18:53] Speaker 4: So all of this is very confusing. And if the
[18:57] Speaker 4: government's going to lay out a case here, it's going
[18:59] Speaker 4: to have to be a very, very clear set of
[19:03] Speaker 4: facts that is going to be defensible because She's going
[19:06] Speaker 4: to go to any court and say all of this
[19:08] Speaker 4: was politically motivated and none of this is based on
[19:11] Speaker 4: any actual significant misrepresentations. And so this is why you're
[19:16] Speaker 4: seeing this take so, so long is the government's really
[19:19] Speaker 4: going to have to figure out what it can actually
[19:21] Speaker 4: prove in a very specific and concrete way.
[19:25] Speaker 2: If this is being done for political purposes, is that
[19:27] Speaker 2: a defense to the immigration claims?
[19:30] Speaker 4: Well, she can go to a court and say that
[19:34] Speaker 4: she is a subject of a selective prosecution or some
[19:39] Speaker 4: sort of malicious prosecution that the federal government is doing
[19:44] Speaker 4: to her and cite all of the stuff where people
[19:47] Speaker 4: are talking in the middle of the investigations. and a
[19:50] Speaker 4: court can decide under its discretion to dismiss if there's
[19:54] Speaker 4: a denaturalization complaint it could decide to dismiss that denaturalization
[19:59] Speaker 4: complaint on the basis of that misconduct and from that
[20:04] Speaker 4: standpoint then that would be the end because if it
[20:06] Speaker 4: dismissed that with prejudice then that would be the end
[20:08] Speaker 4: of the denaturalization complaint.
[20:11] Speaker 2: Let's turn now to ICE intending to hire 5,000 new
[20:15] Speaker 2: agents to help deport more migrants. First of all, what
[20:19] Speaker 2: are their deportation numbers, Leon, at this point? Are they
[20:23] Speaker 2: meeting their quota?
[20:24] Speaker 4: Well, everything is in the eye of the beholder because...
[20:28] Speaker 4: From the perspective of people saying that they needed to deport,
[20:32] Speaker 4: meaning forcibly remove people, not people leaving on their own accord,
[20:37] Speaker 4: but forcibly removing people who are trying to stay here,
[20:42] Speaker 4: they are way short because they were supposed to have,
[20:45] Speaker 4: theoretically speaking, at least a million deportations per year.
[20:50] Speaker 3: And they're not there.
[20:51] Speaker 4: They're in around the 500,000 range in this most recent year.
[20:56] Speaker 3: In terms of deportations.
[20:57] Speaker 4: Now, they're saying there's been a lot, a lot of
[20:59] Speaker 4: people who have self-deported, and I've certainly seen that in
[21:03] Speaker 4: my practice, that there are people leaving, and they're very nervous,
[21:06] Speaker 4: and they're saying, I'd rather leave than wait to get deported.
[21:10] Speaker 4: But I don't know if it's the billion or two
[21:12] Speaker 4: million that they're saying are self-deporting. It's unclear how many
[21:16] Speaker 4: people are actually self-deporting, but in terms of the physical
[21:20] Speaker 4: deportations of actually taking people people out who want to
[21:24] Speaker 4: stay and you're doing it against their will those numbers
[21:28] Speaker 4: are far short of the million that they want for
[21:31] Speaker 4: a specific year so that's why they're trying to add
[21:34] Speaker 4: these 5,000 extra ICE agents to have more detentions more
[21:39] Speaker 4: ICE prosecutors more people working in the jails it's a
[21:42] Speaker 4: whole infrastructure that you need you need more ICE agents
[21:45] Speaker 4: to do the apprehensions more ICE agents to do the
[21:48] Speaker 4: investigations more ICE agents to work in the detention facilities
[21:52] Speaker 4: more ICE attorneys to work in the immigration courts. But
[21:55] Speaker 4: then you also need more immigration courts. You need more
[21:59] Speaker 4: immigration judges. You need the appellate structure. You need all
[22:04] Speaker 4: of this. And then once you have all of that,
[22:06] Speaker 4: then you can ramp that up. And so that's what
[22:09] Speaker 4: they're trying to do is they continue trying to build
[22:11] Speaker 4: this overall larger infrastructure to try to get the deportations
[22:16] Speaker 4: for this next fiscal year to try to reach that
[22:19] Speaker 4: million mark.
[22:20] Speaker 2: The danger is, and we see that ICE agents continue
[22:24] Speaker 2: to be involved in controversial incidents, and there was the
[22:27] Speaker 2: shooting of the Venezuelan DoorDash driver by a recent ICE recruit.
[22:32] Speaker 2: I mean, are they being trained properly?
[22:35] Speaker 4: Well, this is the concern, is when you're trying to
[22:39] Speaker 4: ramp up and hire thousands of agents, there is a
[22:41] Speaker 4: precedent for this, which was when the Border Patrol, you know,
[22:45] Speaker 4: at the time of 9-11, probably had 2,000, 3,000 agents there.
[22:49] Speaker 4: and now has 20,000, 25,000, something like that, agents in
[22:54] Speaker 4: the Border Patrol. And that was done in a very
[22:57] Speaker 4: quick ramp up over just one or two years. Then
[23:00] Speaker 4: it got slowly more and more, but there was a
[23:02] Speaker 4: very large ramp up. And during that time period, you
[23:05] Speaker 4: saw many corruption arrests, many arrests for misconduct. Then there
[23:10] Speaker 4: was an attempt to put polygraphs so that people had
[23:13] Speaker 4: to take polygraphs in order to become a Border Patrol agent.
[23:16] Speaker 4: Then many people failed the polygraph, so they had to
[23:18] Speaker 4: remove the polygraphs. Then they brought it back later. And
[23:21] Speaker 4: so you're seeing all of the same thing being recreated
[23:24] Speaker 4: with ICE agents, which is it's very, very hard to
[23:27] Speaker 4: find people with clean records who are conscientious, who are
[23:32] Speaker 4: hard workers, who can be trained properly. It's not impossible,
[23:36] Speaker 4: but it's much harder than just ramping it up and
[23:38] Speaker 4: hiring 5,000 people like that.
[23:43] Speaker 2: At least 27 people have died while in ICE custody
[23:46] Speaker 2: this year. The causes vary from presumed suicides to cardiac
[23:51] Speaker 2: arrest or pneumonia, and the ages of the detainees ranged
[23:55] Speaker 2: from 19 to 85. The rise in detainee deaths comes
[24:00] Speaker 2: as the agency's detention space has been stretched to capacity,
[24:05] Speaker 2: with more than 60,000 people in immigration detention at any
[24:09] Speaker 2: given time, amid President Trump's campaign of immigration arrests and deportation.
[24:16] Speaker 2: The trend is poised to continue as the administration carries
[24:20] Speaker 2: out its enforcement agenda with overcrowded facilities, limited resources, and
[24:26] Speaker 2: less oversight after gutting watchdog offices last year. The National
[24:31] Speaker 2: Immigration Project reports that the death toll for ICE detainees
[24:35] Speaker 2: in 2026 is on pace to match or exceed The
[24:40] Speaker 2: high number seen in 2025, which saw over 30 reported fatalities.
[24:46] Speaker 2: Joining me is immigration attorney Leon Fresco, a partner at
[24:50] Speaker 2: Holland & Knight. Leon, the growing number of deaths in
[24:54] Speaker 2: ICE custody, is it because the Trump administration did away
[24:58] Speaker 2: with the watchdog? offices that used to oversee the facilities?
[25:04] Speaker 4: I think the deaths in ICE custody have a number
[25:06] Speaker 4: of factors. One, we have a lot more people detained,
[25:10] Speaker 4: first of all, than we previously had. And that does
[25:14] Speaker 4: matter because the more people you detain, we're peaking at
[25:17] Speaker 4: about 73,000 people in detention. We used to have 40,000, 30,000.
[25:21] Speaker 4: So you're doubling the amount of people in detention. But
[25:27] Speaker 4: then the The other thing that you have is you
[25:29] Speaker 4: still have a higher rate of death per person than
[25:33] Speaker 4: you used to have. So it's not just that there's
[25:35] Speaker 4: more people in detention, because then the question is, well,
[25:37] Speaker 4: what about the proportion of the rate per 100,000 people?
[25:43] Speaker 4: And so that has increased. That number has gone up.
[25:46] Speaker 4: And the question is, well, why has that number gone up?
[25:49] Speaker 4: I understand why the gross number has gone up, but
[25:52] Speaker 4: why has this sort of proportional number gone up? And
[25:56] Speaker 4: The reason there is not just the number of people,
[26:01] Speaker 4: but when you're having new kinds of detention facilities that
[26:07] Speaker 4: were not the traditional structures that were designed to be
[26:12] Speaker 4: permanent structures with medical facilities and doctors that had worked
[26:17] Speaker 4: in those facilities for many years and things of this nature,
[26:21] Speaker 4: but now you're building new facilities that that are much
[26:24] Speaker 4: more temporary, like the Alligator Alcatraz or camps or soft-sided facilities.
[26:31] Speaker 4: You have to not just build those facilities. You have
[26:33] Speaker 4: to find doctors who are willing to work there and
[26:36] Speaker 4: nurses who are willing to work there. And I mean,
[26:39] Speaker 4: if you just look in America, period, how hard is
[26:41] Speaker 4: it to find a doctor to treat you for anything?
[26:45] Speaker 4: And now you're trying to find a doctor to staff
[26:47] Speaker 4: some ICE facility in the middle of some rural area
[26:51] Speaker 4: that has a population of 100 people, where are you
[26:54] Speaker 4: going to find the medical people who are qualified to
[26:58] Speaker 4: work in those facilities? And so that's really, I think,
[27:01] Speaker 4: at the heart of this is you're just not going
[27:04] Speaker 4: to get quality health care in a lot of these
[27:08] Speaker 4: pop-up ICE facilities, let's.
[27:10] Speaker 3: Call them, in the middle of rural areas.
[27:12] Speaker 4: It's just impossible to think that you're going to find
[27:15] Speaker 4: the kind of medical providers that will provide the kind
[27:19] Speaker 4: of quality care that would avoid deaths in certain circumstances here.
[27:23] Speaker 2: I take it there are lawsuits about this. I don't
[27:25] Speaker 2: know if anything will really be done.
[27:28] Speaker 4: Well, I think the problem with the lawsuits is you
[27:30] Speaker 4: can only file them on an individual basis about someone
[27:33] Speaker 4: who individually obtained substandard medical care. But that's no consolation
[27:39] Speaker 4: if you've died. So from that standpoint, I don't know
[27:42] Speaker 4: what can be done systemically. Because it's sort of hard
[27:46] Speaker 4: to say systemically, here's the problem. You're going to have
[27:49] Speaker 4: to show a problem in a specific facility and say,
[27:53] Speaker 4: in this specific facility that's a pop-up ICE immigration facility
[27:57] Speaker 4: in this rural location where there are no people, how
[28:01] Speaker 4: did we find the doctor? How did we find the nurse?
[28:03] Speaker 4: What is the treatment here? What is the ability to
[28:06] Speaker 4: urgently intervene? And I just think in a lot of
[28:09] Speaker 4: these locations, it's going to be hard to prove, but
[28:12] Speaker 4: I am highly confident that if you ask what's the
[28:16] Speaker 4: reason for the increased deaths, this.
[28:19] Speaker 3: Is the reason.
[28:20] Speaker 2: I want to turn to the use of money from
[28:23] Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security to pay for a series
[28:27] Speaker 2: of television ads featuring President Trump ahead of the midterm elections.
[28:34] Speaker 4: Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America.
[28:38] Speaker 3: America will never be a communist country.
[28:44] Speaker 2: The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration used
[28:48] Speaker 2: federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to finance
[28:53] Speaker 2: those ads. And Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Chris Murphy...
[28:58] Speaker 2: say that it appeared that DHS had dedicated $ 20 million
[29:02] Speaker 2: to those ads. Has this ever happened before, using DHS
[29:07] Speaker 2: funds for ads like this?
[29:12] Speaker 4: Well, it's not supposed to be used for that purpose.
[29:14] Speaker 4: When you have money that's supposed to be appropriated for
[29:18] Speaker 4: a specific purpose, then the way it works is that
[29:21] Speaker 4: the Congress can actually say to the administration, you're You're
[29:27] Speaker 4: misusing that money. You're using it not for a purpose
[29:30] Speaker 4: that we designated for. And at that point, you can
[29:34] Speaker 4: actually prosecute people under what's called the Anti-Deficiency Act.
[29:39] Speaker 3: The problem is.
[29:40] Speaker 4: is, how do you prosecute someone under the Anti-Deficiency Act
[29:45] Speaker 4: when the DOJ is the prosecutor? And so it's very
[29:50] Speaker 4: hard to think that the DOJ is going to prosecute
[29:53] Speaker 4: the Trump administration under the Anti-Deficiency Act. And then the
[29:57] Speaker 4: question is, would the courts appoint a prosecutor or something,
[30:01] Speaker 4: or can the Congress have some authority to do that?
[30:04] Speaker 4: All of these things would have to be worked out,
[30:07] Speaker 4: or would there be something that's done in the appropriations
[30:10] Speaker 4: process to shut down the government or any of that?
[30:13] Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, the appropriation law
[30:17] Speaker 4: bars the funds from being used for this publicity or
[30:22] Speaker 4: propaganda that was not authorized by Congress. But again, the
[30:26] Speaker 4: question is, What are the remedies? Because the remedies appear
[30:30] Speaker 4: like they're only going to end up being political. It's
[30:32] Speaker 4: not going to really be anything that a court can
[30:35] Speaker 4: actually solve because, again, who's going to start that prosecution there?
[30:40] Speaker 2: So now starting today, October 1st, hundreds of thousands of
[30:45] Speaker 2: immigrants who have legal status are at risk of losing
[30:50] Speaker 2: their Medicaid coverage and Is this something that was known
[30:54] Speaker 2: because it's the big, beautiful bill?
[30:56] Speaker 3: Well, right.
[30:56] Speaker 4: What happened was in order to pay for the tax
[30:59] Speaker 4: cuts that were part of that big Reconciliation Act in 2025,
[31:05] Speaker 4: the idea was there needed to be government savings. And
[31:08] Speaker 4: so there were all kinds of cuts, both for U.S.
[31:11] Speaker 4: citizens and for foreign nationals. But one of the cuts
[31:14] Speaker 4: for foreign nationals was a bunch of foreign nationals such
[31:19] Speaker 4: as people who came on the refugee program or people
[31:22] Speaker 4: who had received political asylum or people who were paroled
[31:26] Speaker 4: into the country or who had something called withholding of removal,
[31:30] Speaker 4: which is that they couldn't be deported back to their
[31:32] Speaker 4: home country or people in the domestic violence green card process.
[31:36] Speaker 3: But all of these.
[31:37] Speaker 4: People qualified for Medicaid if they didn't have a certain
[31:41] Speaker 4: amount of income. So just like anyone under the Obamacare
[31:45] Speaker 4: bill that had passed during the President Obama administration, they
[31:49] Speaker 4: had had a Medicaid expansion. And so a lot of
[31:52] Speaker 4: poor people were suddenly eligible for Medicaid that used to
[31:56] Speaker 4: not be eligible. And so this covered this group of people.
[32:00] Speaker 4: But what the big, beautiful bill did is it said, no,
[32:04] Speaker 4: if you're not a citizen or a green card holder,
[32:07] Speaker 4: even though you have other of these quasi-legal statuses, you're
[32:11] Speaker 4: not going to be able to get health care in
[32:13] Speaker 4: the form of Medicaid. And so, yes, it's over 281,000
[32:18] Speaker 4: people in nine states. And then it's also 177,000 in
[32:24] Speaker 4: Florida and 29,000 in North Carolina, 28,000 in Arizona, 148,000
[32:30] Speaker 4: in California. So lots of people are losing their health care.
[32:35] Speaker 4: And the question is, well, this might save money in
[32:38] Speaker 4: one way, but if all these folks now have to
[32:40] Speaker 4: go to the emergency room for every single thing that
[32:42] Speaker 4: ails them, then that's going to be more expensive and
[32:45] Speaker 4: make it worse. The idea was to get all those
[32:47] Speaker 4: folks out of the emergency room and into like an
[32:50] Speaker 4: urgent care facility or a community health center or something
[32:53] Speaker 4: like that.
[32:54] Speaker 3: And now when they lose their Medicaid, they don't have that.
[32:57] Speaker 2: Leon, let's talk about something that will affect us all,
[33:01] Speaker 2: at least all taxpayers. The Trump administration is planning to
[33:05] Speaker 2: require U.S. taxpayers to disclose their citizenship and work authorization
[33:11] Speaker 2: status to the IRS as part of a proposed change
[33:15] Speaker 2: to the annual tax form that nearly all workers file
[33:20] Speaker 2: each year. A draft of the Form 1040 released by
[33:24] Speaker 2: the IRS this month asks filers to check yes or
[33:28] Speaker 2: no to this question. At the time you file your return,
[33:32] Speaker 2: are you and your spouse, if filing jointly, a U.S. citizen, U.S. national,
[33:38] Speaker 2: or an alien lawfully authorized to work in the U.S.?
[33:42] Speaker 2: Do you see any problem with that?
[33:44] Speaker 4: Yeah, the question is not what the question is. So
[33:48] Speaker 4: you put citizen yes, non-citizen no. The question is what
[33:52] Speaker 4: are you doing with that information? Because the rule has
[33:54] Speaker 4: always been We ask you for tax information. You file
[33:58] Speaker 4: your taxes. We don't use that against you in immigration
[34:02] Speaker 4: deportation proceedings. To the extent that the Trump administration wants
[34:06] Speaker 4: to ask this question to give ICE more data to
[34:09] Speaker 4: start deporting people, this has always been something the IRS
[34:12] Speaker 4: has traditionally pushed back on. There will be lawsuits about that.
[34:17] Speaker 4: And the question is, will that actually survive?
[34:20] Speaker 2: Leon, we covered so many topics. Another tour de force.
[34:23] Speaker 2: Thanks so much. That's Leon Fresco of Holland & Knight.
[34:28] Speaker 2: And that's it for this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember,
[34:31] Speaker 2: you can always get the latest legal news on our
[34:33] Speaker 2: Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
[34:37] Speaker 2: and at www.bloomberg.com slash podcast slash law. And remember to
[34:43] Speaker 2: tune into the Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at 10 p.m.
[34:47] Speaker 2: Wall Street time. I'm June Grosso, and you're listening to Bloomberg.

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