Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from kfi AM
Speaker 1: six forty may get a laws you made, get a
Speaker 1: real good one.
Speaker 2: Jfi AM six forty Bill Handled here it is a
Speaker 2: footy Friday, October twenty four I got a story I
Speaker 2: want to share with you, and this has to do
Speaker 2: with a federal judge just issued a tentative ruling ordering
Speaker 2: that immigrant detainees.
Speaker 1: Have access to legal counsel.
Speaker 2: And this had to do with Lindsey has a friend
Speaker 2: that she's known for many, many years, and her whole
Speaker 2: sort of circle of friends are absolutely devastated because one
Speaker 2: of her friends married to a Hispanic guy. I think
Speaker 2: he's twenty nine years old, came to the US when
Speaker 2: he was thirteen, and his mother came there because his aunt,
Speaker 2: his mother's sister, I had been murdered the Narco trophic
Speaker 2: conte one of the gangs and then dropped off in
Speaker 2: front of their house with her tongue cut off. So
Speaker 2: they came to the United States and not legally. He's
Speaker 2: been with attorneys for ten years trying to figure it out. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he was just picked up and he's at a detention center,
Speaker 2: and of course everybody is going nuts and of course,
Speaker 2: we're only going after the worst of the worst. That's
Speaker 2: the part that really is completely insane.
Speaker 1: All right, just wanted to share that with you.
Speaker 2: Now, let's move over to what a federal judge just
Speaker 2: did issued a order that immigrant immigrant detainees have access
Speaker 2: to legal counsel. And so the government is in front
Speaker 2: of the judge, and what this does is extend a
Speaker 2: temporary restraining order that US District judge I don't want
Speaker 2: to go through her name, issued in July, requiring federal
Speaker 2: immigrant agencies allow legal visitation at their detention facilities seven
Speaker 2: days a week now when someone is in jail. All right,
Speaker 2: just to let you know, if someone is in prison
Speaker 2: or jail, an attorney shows up at three am in
Speaker 2: the morning, they get access to their client. They get
Speaker 2: access twenty four to seven. And the argument here was
Speaker 2: that it wasn't happening. So the government attorney argues that
Speaker 2: evidence shows detainees let me get this, I want to
Speaker 2: get this quote correctly, our meeting with attorneys, they have
Speaker 2: access to counsel, and conditions of confinement are not an
Speaker 2: issue before the court, because that's the other argument. There
Speaker 2: is virtually no sanitation. They are living in cots. They
Speaker 2: don't have access to their council and they're living in
Speaker 2: these horrible conditions, and the government attorney says, that's not
Speaker 2: what's that issue here was that issue is access to
Speaker 2: legal counsel. And by the way, they do have access.
Speaker 2: Straight out, that's just not true. They have access. And
Speaker 2: that's what's pretty tough about what's going on here, where
Speaker 2: the judge said, the court say one thing, and it
Speaker 2: is it almost doesn't matter for this administration. There was
Speaker 2: a story on sixty minutes was this past Sunday where
Speaker 2: a guy who is ahead of the ethics whatever department
Speaker 2: he was, he had moved himself up and had been
Speaker 2: with a doj and he just quit.
Speaker 1: He couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 2: And what he said was there were court orders that
Speaker 2: were not being followed where he talked about superiors coming
Speaker 2: into rooms and you know, putting programs together and having
Speaker 2: entire departments meet. And they basically said, ignore what.
Speaker 1: The judges say. One one of them. This was the
Speaker 1: accusation that was made.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when the flight was going on to
Speaker 2: El Salvador and Abrago was on that flight and he
Speaker 2: was delivered and the judge said, you have to stop everything.
Speaker 1: Well, the order was the while he was on the flight.
Speaker 2: One of the illegal detainees, and the argument in front
Speaker 2: of the court uh, and the attorney was or actually
Speaker 2: it was the official was asked, did you know this
Speaker 2: was happening? And he said no, I had no idea.
Speaker 2: And the accusation was I was in the room when
Speaker 2: he was told ignore what the court say, and this
Speaker 2: was what was going to happen this weekend. Some crazy
Speaker 2: stuff is really happening, and it's really it's tremendously unfortunate,
Speaker 2: and you're going to see these cases go uh up
Speaker 2: to be a Supreme Court. And the argument about the representation,
Speaker 2: that's your fifth Amendment.
Speaker 1: You're you have the.
Speaker 2: Government must give you representation when you are picked up.
Speaker 1: If you can't afford it, they just have to do it.
Speaker 2: So we'll see and then if it goes up to
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court, which I think it will.
Speaker 1: Because this is a Supreme Court issue.
Speaker 2: There's so many cases that Supreme Court, the court is
Speaker 2: being asked to rule on. That's what's happening in the
Speaker 2: last nine months, and we'll see, we'll see what they do.
Speaker 2: I think the court is going to go pretty strongly
Speaker 2: in favor of the administration.
Speaker 1: That's what this court's about.
Speaker 2: Believes that the president has virtually unbridled power.
Speaker 1: Doesn't have to.
Speaker 2: Tell anybody if the laws says, if the underwriting underaligning
Speaker 2: law says that you must follow this procedure. For example,
Speaker 2: what's going on with the White House right now and
Speaker 2: that great, big, beautiful, better than most tippy topst ballroom
Speaker 2: that's going to be better, bigger than anybody who's ever seen.
Speaker 2: You know that there are laws that say you have
Speaker 2: to go through a historical society, you have to go
Speaker 2: through panels.
Speaker 1: No, no, I don't. Will the court back it up?
Speaker 1: You bet?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: So much for that, all right.
Speaker 2: The Province of Ontario bought commercials on basically major US
Speaker 2: television networks, all of them. And what they run, or
Speaker 2: what those commercials did is run part of a speech
Speaker 2: by former President Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1: And we're in the.
Speaker 2: Middle the Trump administrations, in the middle of negotiations tariff
Speaker 2: negotiations with the Canada, the provinces as well as the
Speaker 2: entire country. So cono would you run It's about a
Speaker 2: one minute clip of that speech that was done in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven by Ronald Reagan. Oh the ad I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: the ad which was taken from that speech done in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it
Speaker 3: looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American
Speaker 3: products and jobs. And sometimes for a short violet works,
Speaker 3: but only for a short time. But over the long run,
Speaker 3: such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. High
Speaker 3: tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the
Speaker 3: triggering of fierce trade wards. Then the worst hackles, market
Speaker 3: shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions.
Speaker 1: Of people lose their jobs. Throughout the world.
Speaker 3: There's a growing realization that the weight of prosperity for
Speaker 3: oign nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and
Speaker 3: free competition. America's jobs and growth are at stake.
Speaker 2: Okay, obviously this was a job at President Trump in
Speaker 2: response to that. Now keep in mind this is a
Speaker 2: TV ad that was run and the President was so
Speaker 2: offended that he said, that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm done speaking to Canada.
Speaker 2: I am going to let the existing tariffs remain. All
Speaker 2: negotiations are off, they're not very happy with us, because
Speaker 2: I don't think President Trump ever has walked back his
Speaker 2: statements about Canada should be our fifty first state and
Speaker 2: is basically a toilet. The point I'm making on this
Speaker 2: one is that the Trump folks are arguing that it
Speaker 2: is fake news. Straight out, it's fake news. And when asked,
Speaker 2: does that mean AI did it? Does that mean that
Speaker 2: it didn't exist? Does that mean that there was an
Speaker 2: impersonation of a voice? No, it wasn't fake It was edited.
Speaker 2: And they also argued it was edited, and I'm leading
Speaker 2: transcripts of the entire speech. Was a long speech, and
Speaker 2: while it was edited, I'll tell you the basic.
Speaker 1: Premise is not changed.
Speaker 2: Reagan did speak out against tariffs, and.
Speaker 1: A lot of people do.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, I think Reagan even addressed
Speaker 2: the issue the Smooth Holly Act, which was passed during
Speaker 2: the Depression to protect American businesses and it exacerbated the
Speaker 2: Great Depression. So at this point the President has not
Speaker 2: back down on, of course, as tariffs, there is an
Speaker 2: argument among many many people that the tariffs are going
Speaker 2: to hurt the United States long term, just as many
Speaker 2: people on the other side say it's going to help
Speaker 2: long term for the US. One of the things that
Speaker 2: tariffs do is that products become so expensive in terms
Speaker 2: of bringing them into the country that the move is
Speaker 2: to build factories and produce here in the United States. Now,
Speaker 2: is that ever going to be as cheap as overseas? Nope,
Speaker 2: And the reason is building a factory is hideously, hideously
Speaker 2: expensive here in the States, and they're not going to
Speaker 2: pay workers three dollars an hour like they do in
Speaker 2: China or they do in Mexico.
Speaker 1: But to Trump's point, is it going to help.
Speaker 2: It's certainly going to bring factories and businesses to the
Speaker 2: United States that it is going to do. Now, whether
Speaker 2: it's going to work economically, that's up in the air.
Speaker 1: But I think what this story.
Speaker 2: Effectively says is, don't piss off this president.
Speaker 1: Just don't piss them off.
Speaker 2: Ask James, call me, ask Leticia James. Do you think
Speaker 2: he's going to make it illegal for Canada to speak American?
Speaker 2: I you know, I think he's going to ask the
Speaker 2: Canada to be thrown out of the UN, and maybe
Speaker 2: he may even have Canada declared in and of itself illegal.
Speaker 2: We have illegal aliens and we will have illegal countries.
Speaker 2: Neil found this article actually from the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 2: and sent it along.
Speaker 1: And what's fascinating about this.
Speaker 2: It's about surrogacy, of which obviously I've been heavily, heavily
Speaker 2: involved throughout.
Speaker 1: My entire career was surrogate parenting.
Speaker 2: And I wrote my first surrogate parenting contract in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty when there were exactly two of us, two lawyers
Speaker 2: on the planet that were practicing surrogacy law.
Speaker 1: So I was there from the very very beginning.
Speaker 2: And I was having a conversation with my good friend Mollie,
Speaker 2: who is an attorney, nice Jewish girl, Molly O'Brien, who
Speaker 2: is has become one of the premier lawyers in the field.
Speaker 2: She started working for me administratively, then went to law
Speaker 2: school and now is a big shot lawyer in this
Speaker 2: And we talked about this topic and it's a Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal topic that here's the title. Surrogacy is a
Speaker 2: multi billion dollar business. Sometimes the money goes missing. People
Speaker 2: are very vulnerable, and there has not been a whole
Speaker 2: lot of regulation.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The first California case or the first California piece of
Speaker 2: legislature I was involved in helping to write, and it
Speaker 2: set up protections for the surrogate mother, and the money
Speaker 2: to pay for the surrogate has to be put in escrow,
Speaker 2: has to be effectively put there up front.
Speaker 1: And we used to do this.
Speaker 2: My partner and I would create our own escrow company
Speaker 2: because a lat let us do it. It was the
Speaker 2: wild West. The problem is it's still the wild West.
Speaker 2: Even though the law says the money has to be
Speaker 2: an escrow, it's not a escrow company. The way the
Speaker 2: regulations of escrow companies are real estate escrow companies, by
Speaker 2: the way, where money changes hands for real estate, those
Speaker 2: are very heavily regulated.
Speaker 1: And there are bonds involved. Well, not in the.
Speaker 2: Case of surrogacy, and there is a huge number of
Speaker 2: couples who have just been ripped off completely, and there
Speaker 2: is a case after case. I mean, since you have
Speaker 2: so many tens of thousands of surrogacy cases that occur
Speaker 2: every year, and there are hundreds of agencies. Now, I
Speaker 2: keep in mind, when I started my agency, the Center
Speaker 2: for Surrogate Parenting, we were basically the first ones out.
Speaker 2: Now there are hundreds and hundreds, and it's still the
Speaker 2: same regulations. Couples are so vulnerable, you know what I
Speaker 2: compare this to is when a family member dies and
Speaker 2: you go to the funeral establishment, the mortuary, the cemetery,
Speaker 2: and you're talking to the salesperson who is selling you
Speaker 2: the casket, and there you are having just lost someone,
Speaker 2: a family member.
Speaker 1: Talk about vulnerability. You really want to honor your mother,
Speaker 1: don't you? Yes? And here's how you honor your mother.
Speaker 2: You buy the eight thousand dollars casket instead of the
Speaker 2: four thousand dollars casket. You okay, okay, okay? And the
Speaker 2: vulnerable aspects of that are incredible. Can you imagine how
Speaker 2: you want a child? This is in many cases the
Speaker 2: last shot of having a child and or a child
Speaker 2: with biological connection, because of course, now with surrogacy, with
Speaker 2: IVF and egg donation and sperm donation, you have couples
Speaker 2: that want to create a baby with some genetic component
Speaker 2: of the parents. And that's a huge, huge number of people,
Speaker 2: that's in the hundreds of thousands. And what ends up
Speaker 2: happening is that the money, if it's done correctly, has
Speaker 2: to be put up in front.
Speaker 1: It has to be paid upfront.
Speaker 2: Why well, because the surrogant mother gets pregnant, as you know,
Speaker 2: and is delivering a baby and what happens if the
Speaker 2: parents die, What happens if they go bankrupt, what happens
Speaker 2: if they change their mind? Everybody is frightened about surrogate
Speaker 2: mothers changing their mind. More parents have changed their minds
Speaker 2: than surrogate mothers. Let's say a child is born that's
Speaker 2: going to be anomaloust. You have a child that is
Speaker 2: born with some severe or going to have some severe
Speaker 2: medical issues, and the surrogate mother, and if we've had
Speaker 2: these say I'm not aborting. There's just not going to
Speaker 2: be an abortion, and the couples understand that, and they
Speaker 2: accept that, except when it happens then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden and they.
Speaker 1: Walk out the door. They walk out the door.
Speaker 2: I've had one of those in the thirty five years
Speaker 2: that I did this, and so obviously I took a
Speaker 2: big interest in this. And I had this conversation a
Speaker 2: couple of days ago with a friend of mine who
Speaker 2: is a lawyer and is one of the premier lawyers
Speaker 2: in the field, and she and I were talking about
Speaker 2: this topic. I mean, you talk about a coincidence and
Speaker 2: it has to do with just a whole raft of
Speaker 2: cases being filed against surrogacy agencies because while the owners
Speaker 2: took the money. And you know it happens all the
Speaker 2: time when owners are you know, when you have business
Speaker 2: owners that hold onto money or charge or you have accounts,
Speaker 2: governmental accounts that embezzlement, et cetera. With the point of
Speaker 2: this is surroget parenting has been around. Well, I started
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty imagine going back that far. And as
Speaker 2: I said in the previous segment, when I started, it
Speaker 2: was whether.
Speaker 1: There were two of us, literally two lawyers.
Speaker 2: In the world that we're doing this, and what ended
Speaker 2: up happening to pay the surrogate to protect the surrogate mother.
Speaker 2: Even though I represent the parents, the surrogate mother had
Speaker 2: to be protected. You know what if the parents get
Speaker 2: hit by a truck. I mean, she's pregnant and good
Speaker 2: deliver a child and it's not her child. It's not
Speaker 2: as if she wants to keep the baby. She's doing
Speaker 2: this for someone else. So how do you protect the
Speaker 2: surrogate at least financially, Well, the money goes into a
Speaker 2: trust account, and in those days we didn't do an
Speaker 2: escrow account. Eventually we had some laws passed that says
Speaker 2: the money has to be protected, but still there really
Speaker 2: is no protection. This is one of the big holes
Speaker 2: in the world of surrogacy which allows these surrogacy agencies
Speaker 2: and now there are hundreds of them to hold on
Speaker 2: to the money and basically keep it, spend it on
Speaker 2: personal items for the owners. Even escrow companies, and I
Speaker 2: put that in quotes. Escro company are not regulated the
Speaker 2: way they should be. And so let me give you
Speaker 2: a scenario. This is very handlesque in terms of what
Speaker 2: I would do with potential clients. We'd sit down and
Speaker 2: have that first conversation and I would go through the
Speaker 2: law as it existed and talked about how it really
Speaker 2: was the Wild West. And then I said, and I
Speaker 2: need all of the money for all medical and the
Speaker 2: payment of surrogate and her attorney and all of her
Speaker 2: expenses and the amount of renumerations she's going to get.
Speaker 2: I need it all up front and put into my account,
Speaker 2: my trust account. And inevitably they would say how much
Speaker 2: is it? And I'd go one hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 2: I would get an answer or a question like one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars and you want us to put one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars in your trust account to begin this
Speaker 2: process I said absolutely, So you know, we don't even
Speaker 2: know you, and I would say it's way worse than that.
Speaker 2: Believe me, and I'll tell you why it's way worse
Speaker 2: than that. I happen to be have been born in Brazil,
Speaker 2: and I am a Brazilian citizen in addition to being
Speaker 2: an American citizen, and I have family in Brazil, and
Speaker 2: I speak Portuguese. And if I clean out my trust
Speaker 2: account and take the money to Brazil, there is no
Speaker 2: extradition treaty between Brazil and the United States for financial crimes.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting on the beach in Rio with your money,
Speaker 2: having the time of my life.
Speaker 1: Now write the check, and they did.
Speaker 2: That's the reverse cell, by the way, And so they
Speaker 2: thought that was so outrageous. But the point is is
Speaker 2: that obviously I've never had a problem because I've certainly
Speaker 2: never taken money out of my trust account and embezzled
Speaker 2: money from clients. Well maybe other clients, but certainly not
Speaker 2: my surrogacy clients. And it was it's you know, it
Speaker 2: was so wild West at that time and it still is. Finally,
Speaker 2: my contract went up to the Supreme Court, and here
Speaker 2: I am bragging a little bit but it took I
Speaker 2: don't know how many years before the court accepted the
Speaker 2: premise of surrogacy, and that is the intended parents are
Speaker 2: the parents of the child because we have such technology
Speaker 2: out there between sperm donation. When I taught third party
Speaker 2: reproductive law and my first seminar, the first day of class,
Speaker 2: I would say, okay, let me ask you something. Who's
Speaker 2: mom and dad? And people would raise their hands. Well
Speaker 2: with my parents, I go, okay, let me give you
Speaker 2: five scenarios of mom and dad and you tell me
Speaker 2: which one is correct.
Speaker 1: You got adoptive mom and dad. Okay, that's one.
Speaker 2: You have a dad using his sperm, but donor sperm
Speaker 2: and mom.
Speaker 1: Creates the child who is genetically connected? Whose dad?
Speaker 2: Now, certainly we know mom is mom, But is sperm
Speaker 2: donor dad? Or is the intended father dad? Well, the
Speaker 2: law covers that sperm donor is not dad.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: How about in vitro fertilization, when you're using an egg donor,
Speaker 2: who's mom.
Speaker 1: Is it the donor's egg?
Speaker 3: Is she mom?
Speaker 2: Or the woman who just states the baby? And who
Speaker 2: is the intended parents? And that's the way I always
Speaker 2: started the class because the law was it was so crazy,
Speaker 2: and even though most of it has calmed down where
Speaker 2: now the contract was upheld by the California Supreme Court
Speaker 2: saying that the intended parents pursue it to a contract
Speaker 2: are in fact the parents of the child.
Speaker 1: But that's California. Are states all over. This is not
Speaker 1: regulated federally.
Speaker 2: One time a federal bill was introduced, and that was
Speaker 2: by Henry Hyde. You've heard of the High Amendment. Well,
Speaker 2: you can't use federal money for abortions. That was Henry Hyde,
Speaker 2: and he introduced a bill to make what I did
Speaker 2: a federal felony. And thank goodness, there were some logical
Speaker 2: people on that subcommittee that said, hey, this is a
Speaker 2: state issue. You know, can't you can't you know, abortion, adoption, marriage, divorce,
Speaker 2: parenting is a state issue. The Feds don't get involved
Speaker 2: in this. And that disappeared, thank goodness. So the point
Speaker 2: is it still is unregulated in so many ways as
Speaker 2: it was when I started. And you know how many
Speaker 2: years ago, what nineteen eighty to now? Is that forty
Speaker 2: five years?
Speaker 1: Wow? Am I getting old?
Speaker 2: Neil? You're getting old too? Except you look, as you say,
Speaker 2: you look worse than I did.
Speaker 1: Is that right? You still look worse than I do. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell your face that that's right. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: we're done with that.
Speaker 2: Obviously my wheelhouse, and obviously I'm still exercised over all
Speaker 2: this and engaged in a big, big way, even though
Speaker 2: I have not been involved for five years. All right,
Speaker 2: KF I am six forty.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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