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

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, so the propaganda arms of the Democrat Party mainly
notice the media. Of course, the Democrats themselves did a
lot of the propaganda from Capitol Hill. During the negotiations
for the Big Beautiful Bill. They told us that one
point four million illegal aliens we're going to be stripped
from the Medicaid coverage under the terms of the Big

(00:20):
Beautiful Bill. As if that was a bad thing. Most
Americans do not want to be paying for somebody who's
here legally and for the Medicaid coverage. The problem is
it wasn't true. It wasn't true then, it isn't true now.
But again, this is propaganda. How can we make the
Trump administration look bad? That was what the goal was.
Joining us now to break down the reality of this.
Jessica Vaughn, director of Policy Studies at the Center for

(00:43):
Immigration Study, is in town for the CIS Summit on
Combating Human Trafficking. Jessica, good morning, Good morning, So talk
to us a little about this, about this report. We
were told that all of these people, everybody deserves medical coverage,
and Medicaid is going to be taken away from a
whole bunch of people. The reality is these people never

(01:04):
had access to lose.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Can you speak to that, well, they should not have
had access to lose. In some cases, there are people
who've been obtaining it through identity threat theft or other fraud.
In some cases, they've been obtaining it because state governments

(01:26):
have either not put protocols in place to prevent them
from getting it, or the legislatures voted to give certain
illegal aliens access to medicaid, which is allowed under certain
conditions under federal law. And we've been picking up high
medicaid usage by illegal alien households for years in the

(01:48):
Census Bureau data. Our research has found that more than
two thirds of illegal alien headed households are accessing certain
forms of welfare, specially medicaid. But this is this is
not an appropriate use. I think it's high time that
the government is cracking down on access to medicaid. And

(02:11):
what makes it so hypocritical is that for a long
long time Democrats have been telling us that illegal immigrants
are a benefit to our economy and that they don't
access welfare programs, and now all of a sudden, when
those are taken away, they're upset about it.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Really, the bottom line is that President Trump's deportations campaign
to remove illegal aliens from the country is going to
be a fiscal bailout for taxpayers at both the state
and the government level, in part because of these welfare expenses.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
That's that's well explained. You know, it seems like there's
a two pronged problem here. Number one, we have way
too many illegal aliens who were indeed receiving Medicaid, and
that means taxpayers are are footing the bill for their coverage.
But then the other part again is the lies about
the actual numbers here. They're claiming that that X number
of millions of people are going to go without healthcare here,
even though they have been in this country and remain

(03:12):
in this country before any deportation task force may find
them anyway. So it's kind of like, you know, it's
a double edged short here. Those who are on Medicaid,
you know, absorbing our welfare at our large s continued
to do so until the big beautiful bill. But then
they're trying to make it appear as though there are
a whole bunch of people who are going to be
dying in our streets when these people never had access

(03:32):
to that coverage in the first place.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Well, that's right, and we need to distinguish between access
to medical care and health insurance. Medicaid is a form
of insurance under federal law. Everyone will be treated at
a hospital if they have an emergency condition, and that's
not going to change and that shouldn't change. But medicaid

(03:58):
is something different, and this is sometimes an option given
to people who are in the country illegally because they
don't have access to other health insurance or choose not
to buy it. But this really is a long overdue
reform to federal law. In nineteen ninety six, Congress passed

(04:23):
the law reforming welfare, stipulating that those in the country
illegally should not have access to welfare programs and is
This move by Congress is coupled with other moves by
the Trump administration to better define what is meant by

(04:43):
welfare and to make sure that taxpayer funded welfare programs
that are intended to help Americans too need a hand
up are not going to be squandered and serve as
an incentive for people in the country illegally to remain here.
It's going to help them make the decision to return
home on their own, which is what they should do.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
And it's pretty amazing how today's American left they were
fine with that in nineteen ninety six. It's only when
this is being proposed by a different president that they
have a very different viewpoint. Here, can you give me
thirty seconds off the summit tell us about the Human
Trafficking Summit if you could thank you.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
This is our fourth annual summit to combat human trafficking
and we had a series of speakers talking about ways
to leverage technology areas where research is needed to bridge
that gap between academic research and law enforcement on the streets,

(05:43):
as well as helping service providers assist survivors of human trafficking.
I gave a presentation on labor trafficking in legal visa programs,
which most people are unaware of, and we heard different
solutions for addressing this problem, like bringing civil suits against

(06:04):
the businesses that are allowing human trafficking to happen or
that are hiring traffic workers, and a lot of other
information on where the trafficking is happening. Houston is still
the nation's capital for human trafficking, but also many agencies
around Houston are working together to present innovative solutions to

(06:28):
this problem that can then be rolled out in other
parts of the country. So it's really very energizing to
hear some of what's going on here.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
I'm just glad someone is really truly addressing this courage
and the fact that Houston is kind of the hub
of it all is extremely important. So glad you're here.
So glad CIEs is here. Jessica Vaughn, Director of Policy
Studies at CIS, the Center for Immigration Studies. Jessica, thank you,
Thank you.