Art Arthur - Center for Immigration Studies Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seven, twenty two, our time here in Houston's War News.
President Trump would like you, if you are here illegally,
to help yourself self serve yourself to the deportation line,
and he would like to have a financial incentive to
do it. His new plan to get illegal aliens to
self deport involves giving them a free plane ticket and

(00:22):
a stipend. I'm not sure how much of a stipend
we're talking about here, so to quote the President, we're
going to give them a stipend. We're going to give
them some money in a plane ticket, and then we're
going to work with them. If they're good, if we
want them back in, We're going to work with them
to get them back in as quickly as we can.
So the idea here is to get everybody out of
the country who's here illegally and then start investigating every

(00:45):
individual who wants to come back to see if they're
worthy of coming back. It's an interesting proposition. Art Arthur
joins US Center for Immigration Studies. Do you think something
like this could work?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Art? Yeah, no, I think it could, Jimmy, And honestly,
we do something like this already for aliens who are
in detention you know, assuming that they don't have any crimes,
assuming they haven't done any egregious things in the United States.
Rather than ordering them remove, we give them the opportunity
to take what's called voluntary departure under safeguards. You don't

(01:18):
get in order of removal, and we actually buy your
plane ticket to leave, but you agree not to appeal
the decision. And it's very quick. It's very cost effective
process because every day at detention is about one hundred
and fifty dollars per alien. And you know, if we
can move that person out of custody in a couple
of days instead of holding them for you know, a

(01:39):
month and a half, we're going to save a lot
of money. It costs us one plane ticket. It would
definitely work. And this is just an example of the
carrot and stick approach that the Trump administration is using.
Christy Nome, DHS secretary has been telling people, look, leave now,
don't you know, maybe you can come back legally, but
if you stay, you're not going to be able to
come back legally. We're going to find you five hundred

(02:02):
dollars a day. For every day that you're here, we're
going to detain you and we're going to physically remove
you from the United States.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
In other words, if you don't leave voluntarily, then if
we have to force you out, you are not eligible
to come back. But if you self deport then you
are eligible to come back. At least at least you're
giving people a path to come back to the United
States legally.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, And you know, the important thing for you to
keep in mind, Jimmy, is that it's about seven thousand
dollars per alaen per detention that includes actually arresting them,
detaining them, prosecuting them, and then removing them from the
United States. If we can, you know, pay instead five
hundred dollars for people to leave, that's going to be

(02:42):
a whole lot more cost effective. We can essentially reduce
the unauthorized population in the United States by fourteen for
the cost of every removal from the United States. So
very cost effective. And a lot of these folks want
to go. They came here to work for a period
of time, then go home home and live a pretty
good life on the money they've made in the United States,

(03:03):
and a lot of them want to do that.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Before I let you go, Art, Arthur, what do you
think of the Supreme Court decision this last week holding
these deportations of Venezuelan nationals, the one I.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Am decision that was issued by the Supreme Court. It's
exceptional and if you read Judge Alito's dissent, which he
put out yesterday, actually put it out on Saturday afternoon,
it is, you know, truly, you know, one of those
things in which the Supreme Court acted exceptionally, expeditiously, blew
through all of the all of the red lights that

(03:37):
the Supreme Court had put up in the past for
this sort of case to just kind of put the
kaibosh on what's going on. There's a lot of back
and forth from both parties. The Supreme Court supposed to
be the adult in the room, but respectfully, in that instance,
they weren't.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
All right, Thank you, sir, appreciate your time as always.
Art Arthur Center for Immigration Studies at seven twenty six