Learning the Truth About Immigration Law From Matt O’Brien, Deputy Executive Director of Federation for American Immigration Reform

Episode Transcript

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Speaker 2 (00:38):
This is the Jody Jones Show on Power took ninety
six seven and Hey, I'm fourteen hundred.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Thanks for tuning in to the Jody Jones Show. I'm
Jody Jones.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
Hey, guys, Frank here, great to be here.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
So today we have Matt O'Brien. He is a retired
immigration judge. He has, he's, he does so much more
though he's. He's the deputy executive director of FAIR, which
is Federation for America Immigration Reform and he and that's
the base out of d C.

Speaker 5 (01:07):
Dude, this guy's resume would literally take the entire half
hour if we were to read it. Yeah, it's it's incredible. Guys,
off the off the charge.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
But we have him right now, so let's get right
to the interview.

Speaker 6 (01:19):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
I want to get this guy's take on immigration and
the due process that the legal aliens, legal immigrants think
they have. They don't. Matt, how are you doing today?

Speaker 7 (01:31):
I'm doing well, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
You know, it's an honor to have you on your
resume is just it speaks for a self. It's too
long for me to read on the radio.

Speaker 7 (01:44):
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be on with you.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
You know. So you know I'm part of angel families.
I think you know that. And the the part of
the immigration that the strives me insane is a lot
of these judges and stuff. And now the left is
basically saying, you know, they're touting this due process and

(02:10):
what a lot of people don't understand is there's different
levels of due process and who really deserves it and
who don't.

Speaker 5 (02:16):
Absolutely, it seems to me that the phrase due process
has become somewhat of a catchphrase kind of like a
few years ago, quid pro quote, we all learned what
that is. Or catch me outside or talk to the
hand explain. I don't think it's a one size fits all,
is it?

Speaker 7 (02:34):
No, not even close. And it has become a catchphrase essentially,
it's become a catchphrase for I can get what I
want out of the courts. But what due process really
is is pretty straightforward. It's been stretched all out of
balance by the courts, but it simply means there is
a statute or a portion of the constitution that says
what the government has to do before it can interfere

(02:57):
with a right to life, liberty, or property that you have.
And in order to be entitled to due process, you
have to have a constitutionally protected interest. And here's the thing.
Illegal aliens and immigration violators don't have a constitutionally protected
interest in remaining in the United States. So once the

(03:17):
government has shown alienage and removability, the due process obligations
have been met. And instead of having brief hearings where
that's all that is addressed, we've turned these immigration proceedings
into something like a full blown criminal trial when they
were never meant to be that, and they don't need
to be that.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Right, miss Grlbrien, So crrently if I'm wrong. The courts
of the passes have already ruled on this subject. The
Supreme Court, by the.

Speaker 7 (03:45):
Way, right, Oh yeah, going back to the eighteen hundreds,
there was an eighteen ninety two case called eqv. United
States that concerned a gentleman from Japan. It was heard
by the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, as
far as people seeking admission to the United States, due processes,
whatever Congress gives them, because we have no obligation to

(04:06):
let foreign nationals enter or remain in the United States.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
Now, I've heard many people who tout themselves to be
legal scholars say, well, it says clearly in the Constitution
that all persons and they go back to that quote
and I wonder break that down for me.

Speaker 7 (04:25):
Well, all persons means exactly what it's said. But this
goes back to the point I made earlier about what
is your constitutionally protected interests? So all persons in a
criminal trial get a right to do process, which requires
the government to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. However,

(04:46):
the burden on the government when it is trying to
eject a foreigner is very very low because one, there's
no constitutional right that's being interfered with, and number two,
the consequences are minimal. What happens if you're not citizen
and you get deported, you get back to the country
where you have full rights of citizenship. So we're not

(05:06):
taking anything away from you. We're simply sending you to
the place where you have a legal right to be.

Speaker 6 (05:13):
You know, so.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Maybe you can educate me as well as my listeners
a little more on why these federal judges keep making
these orders against deporting illegal aliens, especially the criminals. I
mean the ones that actually commit crimes in this gang members.
I mean, what's the rhyme or reason behind that.

Speaker 7 (05:35):
In European well, I think that the Civil Rights Revolution
which took place in the nineteen sixties was a great thing,
and what it did was it made all Americans equal
in the eyes of the law, and they couldn't receive
differing treatment on the basis of race, sex, things of
that nature. Here's the thing, though, nationality is a very

(06:00):
very different category. If I am a French citizen, then
there is a whole slate of legal protections that come
with that under international law and things that you know,
people normally wouldn't think of. If I get arrested them
from France, I have a right to ask the police
to call the consular official from France to come visit me,

(06:23):
over and above my right to get an attorney. So,
you know, these things have been stretched to ridiculousness. And
the fact is that foreign gang members like k Abrego
Garcia are not entitled to remain in the United States
just because they want to. And people who have committed
crimes in the United States and are inconvenienced by being deported,

(06:47):
they don't have anything legal to be protected. These are
activist judges who are trying to implement social policy from
the bench, and they are ignoring the law. And what
should be happening is we should be impeaching those judges
and seeking their removal.

Speaker 6 (07:01):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
You know, I'm an ex law enforcement officer and I've
seen it for myself. How you know when the phrase
is used, you know, no one's above the law. Well,
you know, and I'm not saying all judges, but a
lot of judges think they are, you know, above the
law because they'll sit on the bench and they'll do
whatever they want to. And it's it's pretty amazing some

(07:25):
of the rulings that they come down with.

Speaker 7 (07:28):
Oh, they think they're a law unto themselves. And here's
the thing. You know, constantly, when I was training to
be an immigration judge, you would hear, oh, as a judge,
you have to be entirely neutral, you have to be
free from bias, you have to blah blah blah. I'm sorry,
that's bs Judges should be biased toward doing what the
law requires them to do. This notion that you're supposed

(07:52):
to be a blank slate, you're supposed to ignore common
sense and experience and do some strange application to the
law that leads to these nonsensical results. It's absurd, it's ridiculous,
and it is never what judges in the United States
were intended to do. A judge's responsibility is to figure
out what the facts are and then apply the law

(08:15):
to the facts. As Congress wrote it, that's it. Your
personal opinions and your personal social policy preferences are not
supposed to figure into it at all.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Very well, said mister O'Brien. You know what really gets
me is is you know when the especially the Supreme
Court makes a ruling, they set a precedence, and I'm
really it really frustrates me. I guess is the word
I'm looking for. That we still see these judges making
these rulings against that, and it's pretty unprecedented for them

(08:46):
to do that, right.

Speaker 7 (08:49):
It's crazy. I couldn't agree with you more. This is
a strategy of the left that started in the nineteen
sixties and basically what I like to call it is cases.
So that's old law. It hasn't changed with the times,
so the issue is not really settled. But that's not
how our common law system works. We presume that wise

(09:12):
men and women sitting on the bench are going to
use the accumulated wisdom that has come to us down
through all of these legal decisions and keep applying them.
And this new thing, and the most recent example of
it was Trump the Hawaii. There was never an issue
in that case. It never needed to go to the

(09:32):
Supreme Court because it was settled that Section eleven eighty
two f of the Immigration and Nationality Act permitted the
president to close the border as he did with the
so called Muslim band, which was never a Muslim ban.
And so this strategy is that these groups convince everyone that, oh,

(09:53):
that's those are old, bad decisions made by racist, dead
white guys, and they're not good law anymore, and so
we need to go and change those so that we
have something that reflects more modern the time.

Speaker 5 (10:09):
But rather than go through the legislative process, they circumvent
that by going through the judiciary.

Speaker 7 (10:17):
Yes, and essentially what we wind up with is government
by judges. And this takes place in a couple of
different ways. One of it is One of the ways
is activism from the bench, which is totally inappropriate. The
other thing is the sue and settle scam, which I've
written about a lot, where a government that disagrees with
the immigration laws and administration will let a case go

(10:39):
to the courts and then they go, oh, we'll settle it,
and we'll settle it in favor of the illegal alien
law breakers. And then the settlements like Flores the United States,
that particular settlement stays with us for decades and decades
with negative effects, just.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Becomes defacto precedent you're saying.

Speaker 7 (10:58):
It becomes defacto president. And it practically takes an act
of God, not even an Act of Congress, to get
rid of these things once they're in place.

Speaker 6 (11:07):
Wow, that's just amazing to me.

Speaker 5 (11:09):
I brilliant strategy. Though I can't fault them from their tactics.
You have to admire that nothing else.

Speaker 7 (11:16):
Yeah, I mean, these are people that are thinking about
this very deeply, and I think the fact is that
people who care about justice and law and order and
about real, honest to God equal treatment before the law,
we have to get just as creative with our strategies.
We need to push these things up to the Supreme Court.
We need to go out and show support for legislators

(11:39):
and shareffs and law enforcement professionals who are doing the
right thing. And we've got to get better at that.

Speaker 6 (11:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:47):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (11:47):
Hey, we're going to go to a break right now,
but before we do, I was going to ask you
a question and perhaps you can answer when we come back.
Do foreign nationals have a right to come into the
United States? And can you answer that after the breaks?

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Speaker 2 (13:37):
The Jody Jones Show on Power Talk ninety six seven
and AM fourteen hundred, we.

Speaker 6 (13:42):
Have Matt O'Brien.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
He is the deputy executive Gregor Affair, which is a
Federation for America Immigration Reform and they're based out of Washington,
d C. Matt, I'm going to give it over to
Frank and he had a really good question for you.

Speaker 5 (13:56):
Does a foreign national have a right to come to America?
Do they have a right to miranda court appointed attorney?
What's the burden to prove? Do they get depositions? Do
they get discovery? But number one, what rights do they have?
What rights don't they have?

Speaker 7 (14:13):
Sure so, a foreign national who is coming to the
United States has no right to enter the country. And
this goes back to the eighteen hundreds two cases, one
called Phong Yu Ting, the other called Eque. United States
equ cited an international law book written by a Swiss
gentleman named Emeric de Vatel, who acknowledged in the seventeen

(14:40):
hundreds that independent sovereign nations don't have any obligation to
let any foreign nationals in at all. Now, as far
as immigration proceedings are concerned, those are civil proceedings. They're
not a punishment, and you're not deprived of any property rights,
So they have a different standard than criminal proceeding. So

(15:02):
when you're arrested, the agents need to have a reasonable
articulable suspicion that something wrong in terms of breaking the
immigration law has happened. You're not entitled to any miranda warnings.
There aren't any depositions, and you get a civil administrative
hearing in front of an administrative law judge who is

(15:25):
employed by the executive branch, not a member of the judiciary.
And so it is supposed to be a quick summary
process because there's two issues. Is the person an alien
a foreign national? And number two, do they have any
permission from the US government to remain in the United States?

(15:46):
Once the second question has been answered. There is a
third question that comes up, which is, if they did
have permission to come into the United States, did they
comply with the terms of that or did they render
themselves deportable by breaking the law?

Speaker 5 (16:01):
Now, what would what would make them deportable? What laws
would they break?

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Any? All?

Speaker 7 (16:05):
Some all different kinds of things. Crimes. There's a category
called crimes involving moral terpitude, which includes shoplifting, theft. There's
crimes of violence, failing to comply with the terms of
your admissions, so if you're an international student, you never
show up and report to your school. There are national

(16:28):
security issues if you have an affiliation with a terrorist group,
if you've been a member of the Communist Party, if
you have been a human rights abuser. I mean, there's
pages upon pages of things that will will either render
you inadmissible to the United States or if you have
been admitted, will render you deportable from the United States.

(16:48):
And one of the major problems that we had with
the Biden administration was Biden administration was constantly going, Oh,
we need more authority, we need more power, we need this,
we need that.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Presidence prove them wrong exactly.

Speaker 7 (17:01):
All of the authorities that are necessary to protect the
American public are already in the Immigration Nationality Act Court.
The sole problem is that selective administrations, both Democrat and Republican,
have ignored the portions of the immigration laws that they
did not like in order to curry favor with political constituencies.

(17:23):
And what they should have been worried about was what
are we doing to protect the American public. And we
came face to face with what happens when you don't
take those things seriously on September eleventh of two thousand
and one, when we were attacked by terrorists, every single
one of whom came in by breaking the United States
immigration laws.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
You know, I for one, You know this is I
had a dog in a fight. I do have a
dog in a fight. My brother was murdered by an
illegualien in twenty eighteen. He was shot eight times at
point blank range. He was deported twice in the past,
and he was arrested within twenty four hours of the

(18:06):
time he killed my brother and released because of California
and Prop fifty seven, Prop forty seven. I've went over
that on my show, you know, in previous shows. But
it's it's really heartbreaking to watch this happening and keep happening,
especially you know, in these blue states, and it's where

(18:28):
do we go from here?

Speaker 6 (18:28):
Mistree Brian, Well.

Speaker 7 (18:31):
First off, I'm terribly sorry for your loss and the
beyond the personal tragedy that everybody experiences in these cases,
the public safety tragedy is that every crime committed by
an illegal alien is one that by definition never had
to happen because it's an individual here, he or she

(18:54):
never could have committed the crime. Where do we go
we do exactly what the Trump administration is doing. I
was driving in this morning down River Road in d C.
And saw an ICE HSI operation going on by the
side of the road. I was shocked. And all my
years of working I've you know, got thirty years of

(19:16):
experience working in immigration, most of it with the federal government,
I never saw an ICE operation going on that I
wasn't part of somehow, so it was amazing to see.
And you know this is we're not at the border,
We're in the nation's capital. This was just outside of Georgetown.

(19:37):
So the Trump administration gets this, they understand this, They're
taking it seriously. They understand that it is a national
security issue, that it is a public safety issue, and
that it's a public health issue for that matter. You
know that needs to be talked about since we just
went through a pandemic, so we're on the right track.
The question is will the forces of good be able

(20:00):
to maintain their momentum and be able to encourage the
parties involved, the judges, the immigration judges, the enforcement personnel
to prioritize the rule of law and the safety of
the American public. And that remains to be seen because this, unfortunately,
is one of those political issues that people get very

(20:22):
squishy on. And I encounter people all the time who
are otherwise logical, upstanding, law abiding people, and the minute
that immigration gets mentioned, they're like, well, you know, this
person comes from a country where conditions are tough, and
you know, oh, well, this seems unfair. We have plenty
of room here. But what I always say to people is,
if you go home from work tonight and you find

(20:44):
two guys sitting in your basement watching your widescreen, are
you going to call nine one one and have them ejected?
Or are you going to offer to give them free
medical care for the rest of their lives and pay
for their kids college tuition. And you know the answer
is universally no, I'm going to nine one one and
have them ejected.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
You know, we see a lot right now, mister O'Brian
about you know, just whatever President Trump does or an administration,
they want to do the opposite. I mean, you're watching,
you know, real live time drama right now, you know,
with the governor Prisker and and you know, the mayor
of Chicago. I mean he's literally wanting to help with crime.

(21:25):
And you know, it seems like we're watching and like,
you can't you can't help thinking of are Democrats the
party of criminals in crime? Is that what they're doing now,
because that's what it kind of seems like. It seems
like they want to protect everything that a criminal does.

Speaker 6 (21:41):
And it's just amazing to me.

Speaker 7 (21:44):
Yeah, they do. I mean, they have now adopted the
philosophy that criminals are not personally responsible for their criminal act.
It's all an issue of society or social problems.

Speaker 6 (21:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (21:56):
And of course this works for them because social problems
mean you can ask people for political power, and you
can ask people for money. And you know, the scary
thing is, though, when you look at the cities where
they're pushing for these kind of things. Places like La Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago,
these places all have higher murder rates right now than

(22:18):
most of the countries from which aliens are coming and
asking for asylum. It's craziness, Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
You know, with going back to the immigration you know,
really quick, let everybody know that you know your background
in immigration.

Speaker 7 (22:37):
Sure. So I started way back with I INS back
when it was the Immigration and Naturalization Service as an
immigration examiner, which are the officials who did the background
investigations and the interviews when people were applying for immigration benefits.
I went into private practice for a while. After the
September eleventh attacks, I went to work for ICE, where

(22:58):
I was a trial attorney the prosecutor and immigration court.
After that, I moved to DC and I worked for
Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is the agency that processes
all of the applications for legal immigration benefits. And I
worked for what you would call, for lack of a
better term, the enforcement arm there called fraud, Detection and

(23:20):
National Security. I left there running the National Security division.
I went to work for Fair organization that I was
familiar with since the nineteen nineties and While I was
at FAIR, I got asked if I was interested in
becoming an immigration judge. I became an immigration judge. I
was improperly terminated by the Biden administration. When Trump won again,

(23:44):
I was reinstated and I became the Assistant Chief Immigration
Judge in charge of the US Immigration Court in Annandale.
After I had been there a short time, there were
some changes at FAIR and I got asked if I
would come here and be the deputy executive director. And
it was tough to leave the bench. But one of
the wonderful things about organizations like FAIR is you can

(24:06):
work on these issues at a policy level, and we
work with people from the hill, We work with state
and local legislators, we work with individuals from the agencies,
all to implement and carry out responsible immigration policies that
protect the interests of the American public, national security, public safety,

(24:27):
and the economic interests of the American public.

Speaker 6 (24:30):
Well, that's that's absolutely just.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
That's impressive.

Speaker 6 (24:35):
Yeahs impressive.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
I got a question for you, Matt.

Speaker 5 (24:39):
We've been told by different people, and I think a
lot of it is speculative. The number of god aways,
the number that came in under Biden, I've heard eighteen million,
twenty million, I've heard only two or three million. How
do we adjudicate these people if they're here more than
two years? Does something change when you've been here a
given number of years or time?

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Or well, you know, could you always hear this? Oh, well,
they've been here for ten years and never been in trouble.

Speaker 6 (25:06):
You know what I mean that.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
I think that's one of the biggest questions, he.

Speaker 5 (25:09):
Asked, Yeah, what are the levels of enforcement and rights?
Do they gain rights by simply breathing enough oxygen here
for a given amount of time?

Speaker 7 (25:18):
Well, you know, that's a little bit confusing. So for
reasons I have never understood, Congress made the expedited removal,
which is the provision that says that a CBP or
ICE catches you, they can put you out once they've
established here foreign national without any further hearing. They can
do that if you're encountered at or near the border,

(25:42):
and if you're encountered in the interior of the United
States and you've been here for less than two years,
they can apply that. I have no idea where the
two years came from. There are several forms of relief
that you can get an immigration courts to do essentially
reward people for getting away with breaking the immigration law.
Cancelation of removal allows you to go from being an

(26:05):
illegal alien to a green card holder if you've been
physically president in the US for ten years, and you
can show that a US citizen or lawful permanent resident
family member would experience extreme and unusual hardship, which has
always struck me as crazy. I mean, we wonder why
people keep coming here illegally, Well, we rewared them for

(26:28):
doing it right.

Speaker 6 (26:30):
It's just crazy.

Speaker 4 (26:30):
Sounds like bad policy.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
Yeah, no kidding. Hey, Matt, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Man.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
We really appreciate you coming on and explaining this like
we just we can't explain it as good as you
just did. And it was wonderful having you on. Thank
you guys with that. God bless you and God bless America.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
Thanks folks, good things, and God bless me.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
The Jody Jones Show on Power Time ninety six seven
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