Jessica Vaughan - Director Of Policy Studies, Center for Immigration Studies Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Plenty of changes coming in immigration. Mass deportation is among them.
But I think you hear a term like mass deportation,
you imagine round them, you know, big roundup of individuals.
I don't see it happening that way. Let's see what
Jessica Baughn thinks, Director of Policy Studies at the Center
for Immigration Studies. How do you see Trump fulfilling his
mass deportation promise, Jessica, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Well, it's going to be a multifaceted approach because there's
not one silver bullet. But it's pretty simple. He's going
to end catch and release at the border. And what
that means is that when people cross illegally, they're going
to be detained and sent home, and so it's not
worth paying a smuggler or coyote to bring you across,
and that means that business is going to dry up

(00:45):
for the cartels and smugglers. So we first shut off
the faucet. Then the next thing that's going to happen
is ice officers are going to be allowed to arrest
for immigration violations all the people that they find out
who have been arrested for state and local crimes and
are sitting in jails. Around this country. And you know,

(01:07):
if there are roundups, it's going to be from the
big jail systems like Harris County or you know, Cook County, California,
all the places where there is a huge population of
criminal aliens, and they're going to be number one on
the list. Okay, there also are more than to go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I was going to say that I want to pause
there for a second because you know, you brought up
Harris County, and Harris County is probably a great example
of a blue city that is very lenient with criminals.
They don't hold very many criminals. I mean, we let
people out who have are murder suspects or are going
to be charged with murder. We let them out on

(01:48):
low bond. I can't imagine them not doing the same
thing with illegal aliens. I mean, how are we going
to get some of these judges to cooperate as far
as not just holding these illegal but drain them over
to Ice.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, it is state law in Texas that sheriffs and
the jails they run must cooperate by honoring ICE detainers,
which are that's a notice and a warrant of arrest
that ICE issues when it detects that a non citizen

(02:24):
who's removable has been arrested and is sitting in a jail.
So in Texas they have to cooperate to a certain
degree and ICE will actually go and get all of
those people, unlike under Biden policies where they were told
to let most of them go. Now ICE is going
to have the ability to uh come and collect them

(02:45):
and send them home. And again they're going to be
detained for a little while. But the plan is, as
I understand it, to create processing centers where they'll have
a greater capacity to do that. And they they need
to use assets like military bases or other facilities that

(03:06):
they can stand up on a temporary basis to get
this going, but they intend to do it. I mean,
this is criminal aliens are low hanging fruit for ICE,
and I think pretty much everyone agrees that that should
be the highest priority for deportation. There are about a
million of them in the country, and so that's going
to take us a little while. But that's you know,

(03:28):
that's what we're going to see first, as well as
a greater commitment to enforcing the law at the workplace
and dealing with people who overstay their visas and people
who've already been ordered removed by an immigration judge but
are defying that order and remaining in the country. Clean up,

(03:50):
they'll do it.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Jess Gobondes with the Center for Immigration Studies want to
bund it up quickly. Ask you here before we run
out of time about a military component here. You kind
of mentioned that maybe the military would be employed by this.
How many first of all, do you see a large
military involvement in this mass deportation? And how many people
do you think, Jessica will just self deport? In other words,

(04:11):
we're here illegally, we know it's just a matter of time.
Let's just go home before they come and get us.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Well, I'm so glad you raised that point. That's going
to be a major force to deplete the population of
people residing here illegally. You know, when you deport one
person who's committed a crime, if they have a family here,
they're probably going to go home on their own with
that person. But I don't think it's going to be

(04:39):
a huge commitment from our military. I think they will
play somewhat of a support role to the extent that
they have the capacity to give people to DHS to
work on this, and they'll be playing a support role,
and I'm sure they'll be helping at the border as
well as we've done in the past. But yes, I mean,

(05:01):
the plan is not to round up every illegal alien
on the street and in their dwellings one by one.
The idea is to make it more likely that people
are going to be arrested and removed, and therefore a
lot of people will get the message and decide that
they rather go home on their own right. And that's
how it has worked in the past, and that's what

(05:23):
we expect to happen next.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
All right, Jessica, thanks for joining us. Appreciated Director of
Policy Studies, Center for Immigration and Studies, that is Jessica Ball.
And it's five fifty seven