Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from my Heart Radio. The United States criminal justice
Speaker 1: system can be a challenging and often deliriously expensive labyrinth
Speaker 1: of court filings and trial dates. My guests today are
Speaker 1: two women representing those most in need of assistance navigating
Speaker 1: that system. Attorneys were not a lun and Susan Church,
Speaker 1: We're not a lund. Trains and supervisors public defenders for
Speaker 1: New York County, defender services and organizations serving the city's
Speaker 1: most vulnerable communities. But first, I'm talking to immigration attorney
Speaker 1: and advocate Susan Church. Church successfully represented the Occupy Boston
Speaker 1: protesters and sued the Trump administration over its so called
Speaker 1: Muslim Band With her Massachusetts law firm Dimissy and Church.
Speaker 1: She now represents individuals involved in the Martha's Vineyard immigration
Speaker 1: case pro bono. This past September, Florida Governor Rhonda Santis
Speaker 1: commissioned two planes to transport migrants seeking asylum in the
Speaker 1: United States. They were flown under false pretenses from San Antonio, Texas,
Speaker 1: to the wealthy vacation island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The
Speaker 1: move was an attempt by de Santis and Texas Governor
Speaker 1: Greg Abbott to draw attention to illegal immigration at the border.
Speaker 1: The stunt made headlines as a cruel and heartless ploy,
Speaker 1: and as Santis was criticized for playing political theater with
Speaker 1: people's lives. Before we got into the specifics of the
Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard case, I wanted to know how Susan Church
Speaker 1: found her way to progressive politics. So this is a
Speaker 1: really interesting issue. I'm adopted, and I grew up in
Speaker 1: a very conservative Republican household. I grew up all around
Speaker 1: the country, so Idaho, North Carolina. We moved around a lot.
Speaker 1: But they were kind of like what we call welld Republicans.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of like the Mitt Romney Republicans. They
Speaker 1: were not, you know, blatantly like today's Republican Party. They're
Speaker 1: the old Republican Party. But I found my biological mother
Speaker 1: when I was much older, when my children, I had
Speaker 1: some problems getting pregnant, and so I found my biological
Speaker 1: mother as my children were being born. She's a left
Speaker 1: wing Democrat, Like she's Angela Davis. Your real mother was
Speaker 1: Angela Davis. It's very funny, it's very interesting. So I
Speaker 1: always talk about that because sometimes I think empathy is
Speaker 1: genetic in some ways, because I certainly did not get
Speaker 1: it from my growing up. Now in your career, you've
Speaker 1: been working in this kind of law for how long?
Speaker 1: An immigration related law? So I started immigration law in
Speaker 1: My husband is actually from Ethiopia and he was switching
Speaker 1: law firms and he said, just take this one asylum case.
Speaker 1: You'll love it. Because I was a criminal defense attorney,
Speaker 1: and that's what I really loved. How long did you
Speaker 1: do the criminal offense to defense works? So that was sorry,
Speaker 1: I met so three years. I was a public defender
Speaker 1: and that's all I ever wanted to do. New Hampshire
Speaker 1: that was fun. And when a place that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know New Hampshire that well, but I have
Speaker 1: friends who are from there and have homes there. What
Speaker 1: was the typical criminal defendant who needed public defending a
Speaker 1: lot of drug cases or what, yes, lots of drugs,
Speaker 1: less of heroin even back then. Lots of domestic violence
Speaker 1: and lots of sexual assaults. That was kind of the
Speaker 1: big crime that was going on there, especially the indecent
Speaker 1: as solemn batteries on child and things like that. So
Speaker 1: that was unpleasant. And so your husband says, take this
Speaker 1: one case. What was the case. It wasn't my husband's
Speaker 1: from Ethiopia. So it was a political asylum case from Ethiopia. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he had a great asylum claim, but he had
Speaker 1: gotten into some immigration related problems with this case. It
Speaker 1: wasn't filed correctly. You know, his lawyer has screwed everything up,
Speaker 1: and so he was in deportation proceedings. So I represented
Speaker 1: him and that and I in love with immigration law
Speaker 1: from that point in time. One thing I'm also wondering,
Speaker 1: just in terms of the background of this thing, were
Speaker 1: the people you work with in this issue and beyond
Speaker 1: how are you paid? I mean, do they go and
Speaker 1: get money they raise from wealthy benefactors, do packs that
Speaker 1: you work with or not for profit groups? I mean,
Speaker 1: where do they find the money? I mean, you're not
Speaker 1: doing this for free. You've got to be paid something, correct.
Speaker 1: I really don't believe in taking money, as much as
Speaker 1: possible for tragedies Like I did all this work on Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I didn't take any money to travel band work that
Speaker 1: I did. I didn't take any money. I feel like
Speaker 1: it really is exploitation to try to get these individuals
Speaker 1: to pay me. But I work with a lot of
Speaker 1: nonprofits and the way they operate is they get grants,
Speaker 1: they get individual fundraising. They're always on shoestring budgets. Agree
Speaker 1: a groups I've worked with that are very well known
Speaker 1: groups will all kick in money. Well, they'll they'll say,
Speaker 1: we need money for legal fees. Oh, we gotta raise
Speaker 1: a million dollars, like in a month. Send us you know,
Speaker 1: we want you know, twenty people to send us fifty
Speaker 1: grand now, and so they can get the legal these
Speaker 1: going because their budget wasn't just allowing that. They just
Speaker 1: need a team of lawyers on the ground for election
Speaker 1: protection or whatever. It is, so absolutely and they need it,
Speaker 1: like you know, I worked a lot with South Coast
Speaker 1: Legal Services on this case, and they're just a tiny
Speaker 1: little nonprofit that does legal services just I mean, very
Speaker 1: shoestring budget. And they had lawyers at the site day
Speaker 1: after day after day, all day and night at the base.
Speaker 1: Once the migrants from martad In your removed to the base.
Speaker 1: So tell us what happened in this case. What are
Speaker 1: the facts of what happened? Okay, So these forty nine
Speaker 1: individuals are almost all of Venezuelan immigrants, why. That is
Speaker 1: a really good question. We know that the Venezuelan economy
Speaker 1: has been deteriorating for quite some time, so was there
Speaker 1: an expanded concentration of Venezuelans trying to come into this country. No,
Speaker 1: I think this is what I think, and I think
Speaker 1: your question is really smart because normally in Boston we
Speaker 1: have El Salvador and Guatemalan Central Americans, and they all
Speaker 1: have family that they go to normally, so you don't
Speaker 1: see them hanging around at shelters. They don't necessarily need
Speaker 1: money to get a bus ticket because people are sending
Speaker 1: the money to make the trip. But Venezuelans are in
Speaker 1: probably one of the most dire situations right now, and
Speaker 1: so they're just leaving, often with no money, often with
Speaker 1: no resources, often with no contacts in the United States,
Speaker 1: and they are therefore much more easily preyed upon by
Speaker 1: the likes of De Santis. And I believe that's what's
Speaker 1: been happening here well, aside from being preyed upon by DeSantis,
Speaker 1: because that's a huge net that's been cast of people
Speaker 1: paid upon by Dessantis. The Venezuelans is Texas the normal
Speaker 1: destination for them as Texas Texas or Arizona, Arizona for
Speaker 1: that's normal from immigrants from any part of Latin America. Okay,
Speaker 1: so these people come to Texas, they've been there for
Speaker 1: how long? It was just days? So they've been there
Speaker 1: for days, just days, not long at all. And where
Speaker 1: were they? Where were they? So what happens when you
Speaker 1: come into the borders. You get into one of the
Speaker 1: federal processing holding centers and the border patrol officers take
Speaker 1: your photograph, take your name, try to figure out if
Speaker 1: you have any family in the United States, do a
Speaker 1: background check, and then after a couple of days they
Speaker 1: if you Usually you pass what's called a credible fear interview.
Speaker 1: But that didn't happen here, which is also a little
Speaker 1: suspicious to us. We don't know why. Instead, all of
Speaker 1: these individuals were parolled in, which is different. It's a
Speaker 1: weird legal status that we don't see much up here
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. It could be more common on the board,
Speaker 1: and I've been asking my border friend attorneys around. It's
Speaker 1: not that common, but it's not out of the ordinary either,
Speaker 1: So no one's suggesting. I take it that anybody behind
Speaker 1: this was deliberately casting criminal elements to come in just
Speaker 1: to embarrass the Biden administration. None of these people were
Speaker 1: people who proved criminals and many of them absolutely not.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I have one particular client who
Speaker 1: had been out of Venezuela for years. So I know
Speaker 1: there was a right wing media story going around that
Speaker 1: that Maduro had opened the jails and sent these people here.
Speaker 1: But based on our reviews, that's absolutely false. Because people
Speaker 1: had been out of the out of Venezuela for some
Speaker 1: people a year. So I met one guy seven years
Speaker 1: he'd been gone. So they just finally made it to
Speaker 1: the US border after years of trying. Now where was this?
Speaker 1: All forty nine of them were in the same facility. No,
Speaker 1: this is what's so interesting, and this is something the
Speaker 1: media is not picking up on, and nobody seems to
Speaker 1: be investigating. All forty nine of them, in various forms,
Speaker 1: made their way to this shelter in Texas, in San
Speaker 1: Antonio that had just been opened in July, just in July,
Speaker 1: and Perla, the woman who was lying to them to
Speaker 1: get them onto the plane, waited outside that shelter. Now
Speaker 1: why I'm suspicious of that shelter is it has a
Speaker 1: three day rule. You can only stay there for three days.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I don't know many
Speaker 1: shelters that have a three day rule. What's the point
Speaker 1: of a shelter that says you get to stay three days?
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen up here, and it just opened in July.
Speaker 1: When you have the three day well, what are they assuming?
Speaker 1: In your mind? What are they assuming? Where are you
Speaker 1: gonna go home? Exactly? How did anybody find a house
Speaker 1: in three days or an apartment in three days? It
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense, right, It doesn't serve the purpose of
Speaker 1: a quote unquote shelter except for Parla to stand outside
Speaker 1: and recruit people who were suddenly found themselves homeless again
Speaker 1: after three days. Of course, because this is slightly more
Speaker 1: complex than people might imagine. These are people who were
Speaker 1: in a state. Is it a Texas state or a
Speaker 1: federal facility that they go to. It's a federal facility.
Speaker 1: So they're going to a federal facility in the state
Speaker 1: of Texas. And where does de Santis, the governor of
Speaker 1: Florida come in. Why is the Santis deciding that Texas
Speaker 1: immigration problem is under his jurisdiction. So that's the craziness
Speaker 1: of this story. Also, they were picked up from Texas
Speaker 1: and flown to Florida after stopping in North Carolina. First reason,
Speaker 1: and to Santis's argument, is that they would have eventually
Speaker 1: ended up in Florida. So we're going to bring them
Speaker 1: to Florida to them fly them to Massachusetts. All of
Speaker 1: it is just part of his stunt to get credit
Speaker 1: for quote unquote removing individ Jules. So you're calling Abbot
Speaker 1: and saying, could you lend me some illegal immigrants because
Speaker 1: I really want to embarrass the Biden administration. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. And the crazy part is it's part of
Speaker 1: this twelve million dollars that I don't know if you
Speaker 1: saw this, but the Treasury Department is now investigating to
Speaker 1: Santis for this nonsense because the money that they use
Speaker 1: is part of the interest on the American Recovery with
Speaker 1: Act funds that they were given for COVID, So they
Speaker 1: took that money and put it towards these flights. So
Speaker 1: a plane flies them. How many planes were involved in
Speaker 1: this caper? Two planes? Two planes? Who would who owned
Speaker 1: the planes? The state of Florida? Well, no, it's a
Speaker 1: private aviation with connections to mac Gates another interesting fact.
Speaker 1: So matc Ate choosed to be the attorney for these
Speaker 1: private company that charted the flights. But what I'm curious
Speaker 1: about is, I mean, it's not that complex to follow.
Speaker 1: It just it's it's mystifying to understand why. So the
Speaker 1: governor of Lurida, who is presumed to be the likely
Speaker 1: nominee if Trump gets more black and blue than he
Speaker 1: already is right now, he gets a private aviation company
Speaker 1: to fly to Texas to pick up forty nine Thenezuelan
Speaker 1: immigrants in multiple low federal locations there bring them to
Speaker 1: North Carolina. You don't know why in North Carolina. We
Speaker 1: think it was for a pilot change. But I still
Speaker 1: don't understand why there would be a pilot change, because
Speaker 1: like it's not that far of a flight. It might
Speaker 1: be a refueling one that some of the clients guess
Speaker 1: that that's what it was about. And some of the
Speaker 1: clients said it was a pilot change. We don't really
Speaker 1: know for sure. And we're in Florida. Do they land
Speaker 1: the Panhandle up in the north, right up near where
Speaker 1: the capital is right? How long are they in Florida before?
Speaker 1: Or is everything already nice and greased and everything is
Speaker 1: ready to go. I mean, they land in Florida, and
Speaker 1: do they go right to the vineyard. I think they
Speaker 1: were there just a long long enough for De Santis
Speaker 1: to hold a five minute press conference about it, and
Speaker 1: then they left. They didn't seem like they had been
Speaker 1: there for very long. They were totally sure what was
Speaker 1: going on. To be honest with you, well, De Santis
Speaker 1: is someone who it's assumed he's going to use every
Speaker 1: single facet of the State of Florida's regulatory apparatus to
Speaker 1: benefit his supporters and to punish his opponents and to
Speaker 1: humiliate the Democratic administration. And I wonder is De Santis,
Speaker 1: at least through the prism of this case, is he
Speaker 1: viewed as someone who he was the architect of this
Speaker 1: himself or other aids of him, who authored this program,
Speaker 1: who came up with this idea. That's a great question.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like it is him. He's I
Speaker 1: feel like what you've brought up is probably one of
Speaker 1: the most important things that's going on. The Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: But that everybody's missing. Everyone's focusing on Trump. Trump is
Speaker 1: at least wounded. Maybe he's not dead yet, but he's
Speaker 1: certainly wounded, and he would have a much harder time
Speaker 1: I'm getting the presidency than De Santis would in my opinion,
Speaker 1: if De Santis were the nominee. He does enough nonsense
Speaker 1: like Trump is, but he's much smarter, much much smarter,
Speaker 1: and much more capable than Trump ever can imagine being,
Speaker 1: and he could do real damage. So my question had been,
Speaker 1: was De Santis or someone underneath him the architect of
Speaker 1: this and the planes themselves? If you take two planes.
Speaker 1: When I've flown on private planes and they didn't cost
Speaker 1: me anywhere near twelve million dollars to fly privately on
Speaker 1: a plane that can handle you know people, that's more
Speaker 1: like eight five thousand dollars round trip cross cross country.
Speaker 1: They spent twelve million dollars on these planes of COVID funds, no,
Speaker 1: so what they spent with six hundred thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: the first on the first two flights, and then after
Speaker 1: the first two flights there was a second payment for
Speaker 1: nine hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, so it was about
Speaker 1: a little more than well, it's one point five million.
Speaker 1: So with two flights going from from Texas to Florida,
Speaker 1: stopping in Carolina and the flights that went to Martha's venued.
Speaker 1: How many planes were involved there too, again too, but
Speaker 1: before the flights, each of the and I don't think
Speaker 1: this is up to one point five millions based on
Speaker 1: what you're telling me. The cost is for private flights.
Speaker 1: But before the flights, there were McDonald gift certificates that
Speaker 1: were given out as bribes to individual to sign the
Speaker 1: waiver form the quote unquote weavers that weren't even in
Speaker 1: fully in Spanish. There were hotel rooms for anywhere from
Speaker 1: one night to a week for each of the forty
Speaker 1: nine people. I don't know what that works out too.
Speaker 1: And they had two other handlers besides Pearla, So there
Speaker 1: was Pearla and then two other people. Well, I want
Speaker 1: you to stop for a second and give us a
Speaker 1: kind of a thumbnail on who is Pearla. This is
Speaker 1: another super interesting thing which has de Santis's name written
Speaker 1: all over. She is a counter intelligence individual from the
Speaker 1: army who also was a medic who had just left
Speaker 1: been discharged from the Army in August. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's been clear last name Pearla who to h U
Speaker 1: E R t A. And The New York Times did
Speaker 1: a story on her. I think it was this past
Speaker 1: weekend where they've identified her. So I gave the New
Speaker 1: York Times at least three different photographs of Perla that
Speaker 1: my clients or other clients at the base had taken,
Speaker 1: and then the New York Times did some investigation and
Speaker 1: verified that this is the person. So Perla, has anybody
Speaker 1: come forward? I mean, I don't assume that all these people,
Speaker 1: regardless of what effort they make, can operate exclusively in
Speaker 1: the shadows. Did you find that anything about her, who
Speaker 1: she is and what she involved another? I mean, a
Speaker 1: woman named per La Huerta. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: too generalizing. Here is an emissary of one of the
Speaker 1: great anti immigration efforts in this country in the last
Speaker 1: twenty five years. Who is she? I mean, what was
Speaker 1: her role in immigration? What was her role in the
Speaker 1: Santi's administration. She doesn't seem to have any role because
Speaker 1: she just got out of the army. She's counter intelligence,
Speaker 1: that's really what she's working for De Santas. She certainly
Speaker 1: counter inte that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important
Speaker 1: to note that she's kind of intelligence, right, because this
Speaker 1: is a good example of what you're talking about. Earlier.
Speaker 1: If Trump had hired this person, just imagine the buffoon
Speaker 1: they would have hired, right, It would have been some
Speaker 1: fool who probably didn't speak Spanish and tried to use
Speaker 1: interpreters or whatever. Instead, they've hired this woman who appears
Speaker 1: to be native Spanish speaking. My clients told me that
Speaker 1: she was Mexican, Colombian, or Venezuelan, depending on which client
Speaker 1: you talked to, So you don't even know based on her.
Speaker 1: That's and that's a big thing to pull off, right,
Speaker 1: not to be able to fool these immigrants into thinking
Speaker 1: which countries she's originally from. And she's paid to lie
Speaker 1: as a counterintelligence officer. So when I heard that, I
Speaker 1: really thought, this is much bigger than a buffoonery Trump stuff.
Speaker 1: This is the type of thing that they do when
Speaker 1: they're competent, and that's what scares me about him becoming president.
Speaker 1: Attorney Susan Church. If you enjoy conversations with women fighting
Speaker 1: for justice, check out my episode with Attorney Becca Heller,
Speaker 1: who fought back against Trump's Muslim ban. Heller is the
Speaker 1: founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. The thing that
Speaker 1: was amazing about Airport Weekend is that, like We organized
Speaker 1: the lawyers, but nobody organized the protesters. Totally spontaneous. Thousands
Speaker 1: of Americans went out in freezing shitty January weather to
Speaker 1: just be like, this is not cool. The executive order
Speaker 1: was rescinded before the lawsuit. The lawsuit we once said
Speaker 1: that they can't hold people. But the one that we
Speaker 1: won right away wasn't about sort of the legality of
Speaker 1: the order on its face. It was the public pressure
Speaker 1: that got the administration to rescind the executive order and
Speaker 1: the so called chaos at the airports, which I will
Speaker 1: forever be proud of. To hear more of my conversation
Speaker 1: with Becca Heller, go to Here's the Thing dot org.
Speaker 1: After the break, Susan Church weighs in on the laws
Speaker 1: against human trafficking and whether the Martha Vineyard debacle qualifies.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Attorney Susan Church is fighting for the immigrants involved in
Speaker 1: the Martha's Vineyard case and arguing for bringing charges against
Speaker 1: the Descantis administration. I wanted to know how she first
Speaker 1: got involved with the case. So the story is that
Speaker 1: the clients were dropped off of the vineyard. They were
Speaker 1: dropped off in front of what they call a house,
Speaker 1: which apparently is the Martha's Svineord Community Association, and then
Speaker 1: you know, the police were called, the media was called,
Speaker 1: the story got out. Had the media been tipped up
Speaker 1: by the descentis people in advance? We believe there was
Speaker 1: a Fox News reporter on the island that day. Yes,
Speaker 1: we believe they wanted them there for the landing, right exactly,
Speaker 1: roll stage right, all, stage all, a stunt, all at
Speaker 1: the expense of these people's lives. So when you have
Speaker 1: immigrants in the media, often they make statements that are
Speaker 1: detrimental to them. You don't want them doing that. Were
Speaker 1: you aware what was going on while that was happening.
Speaker 1: You didn't know about until it landed on the vineyard. No,
Speaker 1: not until that. I didn't even know. I didn't read
Speaker 1: the news that and I didn't know about till the
Speaker 1: morning I got the call. So when they when they're
Speaker 1: playing lands in the vineyard, who calls you? Who tips
Speaker 1: you off? Where you saw it on the news? I
Speaker 1: got called by the Lawyer's Community for Civil Rights Van
Speaker 1: Magical ESPINAG and he said get on a zoom right now,
Speaker 1: and then so everyone said, Okay, who's going to go
Speaker 1: to the vineyard, because somebody needs to go right away
Speaker 1: to protect the clients, get statements from them about what
Speaker 1: happened so that we can later use that in the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: which of course is what we did. You want to
Speaker 1: get facts down right away in situations like this, and
Speaker 1: that's what lawyers are quite good at. So my law
Speaker 1: student went on Thursday. I went on Friday, and Vane
Speaker 1: had a couple of his lawyers there, Rachel's self was there,
Speaker 1: and then we were I was at the base every
Speaker 1: single day for the next ten days. Almost p will
Speaker 1: often assume, because the word human trafficking has been injected
Speaker 1: into this event, is this human trafficking as far as
Speaker 1: the laws concerned, or you don't know. I don't think
Speaker 1: it qualifies. I've spoken to probably one of the best
Speaker 1: human trafficking experts for immigration. Others like people who are
Speaker 1: sexually exploited. These people were lied to as to what
Speaker 1: the circumces were correct, So that's the argument. They were
Speaker 1: told they were getting on a plane for what reason. Oh,
Speaker 1: every lie under the book. They were going to get
Speaker 1: a job, they were going to get permanent housing, they
Speaker 1: were going to Washington State, they were going to California.
Speaker 1: They were they were given a false, a patently false
Speaker 1: inducement to get on that plane for political gain. So
Speaker 1: you are right in the sense that if there is
Speaker 1: any human trafficking argument, the political game portion of that
Speaker 1: would be. But human trafficking is moving people for a
Speaker 1: financial gain usually, so you have to try to monetize
Speaker 1: political gain. Why Martha's Vineyard meaning in my mind, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had a home on eastern Long Island among you know,
Speaker 1: a fairly a thick stripe of well to do seasonal people,
Speaker 1: many of whom are the captains of media and titans
Speaker 1: of media. Martha's Vineyard is the same. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of media giants there. I could name a few, but
Speaker 1: not all of them are liberal Democrats. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of the most conservative ones live up there. Why Martha's Vineond,
Speaker 1: Why do you think that was it because of Obama?
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it was because of Obama. I also think
Speaker 1: they wanted to torture them by holding them captive in
Speaker 1: that way, by putting them on island. One of my
Speaker 1: clients told me that when he realized it was a hoax,
Speaker 1: after they rang the doorbell for the Martha's Vineor Community Association.
Speaker 1: They all started feeling that they were going to get
Speaker 1: in trouble for being on the island, so they tried
Speaker 1: to run around the island and get off, looking for
Speaker 1: a bridge off the island. Of course there is none,
Speaker 1: so I think that added to the drama of it.
Speaker 1: I also think it was because they wanted to stick
Speaker 1: it to Obama. Also, Martha's Vineyard is a super diverse
Speaker 1: island and and a very community oriented oriented island. I
Speaker 1: keep saying that they picked the wrong island. There was
Speaker 1: a tweet that somebody else said, if you're going to
Speaker 1: send a bunch of people who are impoverished and not powerful,
Speaker 1: don't send them to Lawyer Island next time. So I
Speaker 1: really feel like they made a mistake in doing it
Speaker 1: because they picked the wrong island. It's it's a great
Speaker 1: community of great people, and they really rallied around these individuals.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but they all
Speaker 1: are going to get green cards now because of this trick.
Speaker 1: The U card, the visa, Yes, what is a you visa?
Speaker 1: You visa is something that Congress needs to fix. It's
Speaker 1: not a great option, but ultimately is a victims of
Speaker 1: crime visa that leads to a green card. There are
Speaker 1: ten thousand given out in any year. There's a huge backlock,
Speaker 1: but at some point in time it's an application that
Speaker 1: will lead to both a work authorization and a green
Speaker 1: card for these individuals. I mean, obviously, I'm someone who
Speaker 1: has a very bitter perspective about the Supreme Court. You've
Speaker 1: got three people. You've got Gorsetch, You've got Barrett, and
Speaker 1: you've got Kavanaugh, who to the American people who bald
Speaker 1: face lied and said that abortion was codified law. Did
Speaker 1: you see this coming in your work with immigration, did
Speaker 1: you see something or something like this coming these kinds
Speaker 1: of stunts. Were you surprised? Absolutely surprised. I mean, I
Speaker 1: just I don't know why I continue to believe in
Speaker 1: the decency of humanity. I mean, I was well aware
Speaker 1: of the bus sing that was going on to the
Speaker 1: Northern States. But to be honest, as long as people
Speaker 1: were told honestly, yeah, you know, I want to go
Speaker 1: to New York and here's a bus to get I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with that. I think they're much
Speaker 1: better often in blue states that they have more access
Speaker 1: to better judges, better green card capabilities and everything. But
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. I still can't believe they would
Speaker 1: sink this low. And I must be naive, but I
Speaker 1: still don't believe that they demonize and deshumanize our clients
Speaker 1: this way. I just I've never gotten over it. Well,
Speaker 1: state income taxes in New York are obscene, and they
Speaker 1: are obscene, but we're using them to pay for things
Speaker 1: to improve people's lives. To exes in Florida, which I
Speaker 1: think there's zero taxes down, there's no state income tax,
Speaker 1: and other states have every low income taxes. The way
Speaker 1: they achieve that is they don't take care of anybody.
Speaker 1: You don't have any medical care if that's worth ship,
Speaker 1: you don't have any education that's worth shit. They cut
Speaker 1: and cut and cut services, and the way they can.
Speaker 1: And if you come to this state and you've got
Speaker 1: a retirement account, your your retiree, which is Florida's right
Speaker 1: now for your retiree, and you've got an insurance thing
Speaker 1: that works for you, and you know you're you're covered,
Speaker 1: you're taken care of, and you come down here, this
Speaker 1: is the land of where you come where you don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about your neighbors and what happens to them.
Speaker 1: Everybody's on their own, every man for himself. Florida is
Speaker 1: the state of every man for himself. Now do you
Speaker 1: fear that cases involved in this are going to get
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court. It's a really good question. So
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of lawsuits that have been engendered because
Speaker 1: of this. But one is the one that Lawyers Committee
Speaker 1: Civil Rights filed, and that is a compensatory meaning font
Speaker 1: monetary damages and for a restraining order against against A
Speaker 1: Santists for doing this again because there was I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know, there was an attempt to do
Speaker 1: it to Delaware that we believe we scared off with
Speaker 1: all the criminal investigation. There's talk of there was a
Speaker 1: Nantucket false alarm this weekend. They were going to send
Speaker 1: it in Nantucket so to stop them from doing this again.
Speaker 1: And I do fear that that lawsuit would make it
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court, and that would be really problematic
Speaker 1: because here's why. There is a two thousand and twelve
Speaker 1: case called Arizona the US where Arizona tried to enact
Speaker 1: a misdemeanor criminal charge for being undocumented in Arizona. A
Speaker 1: misdemeanor charge for working without an authorization in Arizona, things
Speaker 1: like that, And the Supreme Court said no, immigration was
Speaker 1: federal and it's pre emptied by the federal government, which
Speaker 1: would make what de Santists did clearly and unequivocally illegal.
Speaker 1: When did immigration become the devil term? But it is
Speaker 1: now what period of your life do we call or
Speaker 1: even in your studies and your work, was it Goldwater
Speaker 1: and the John Birch days? Was it Reagan? When did
Speaker 1: immigration become something that was a negative in our lives?
Speaker 1: To Santa's great grandparents came here from Italy, and now
Speaker 1: he's done all this to immigrants. He's wounded all these
Speaker 1: immigrants this way. The reason I'm an immigration lawyer is
Speaker 1: the law signed into law by Bill Clinton, and that
Speaker 1: was we call it EDBA and ira Ira, And that
Speaker 1: was the law that said that it used to be
Speaker 1: that immigrants would go back and forth across the border.
Speaker 1: They come here, they'd work for two years, they go home,
Speaker 1: right because people no one wants to leave their country.
Speaker 1: And EDPA and ira Ira, along with the militarization of
Speaker 1: the border, trapped people into the United States. So that's
Speaker 1: why our undocumented immigration population blossomed is because people if
Speaker 1: they go home now, they are subject to lifetime bars
Speaker 1: on re entering and they get expelled at the border.
Speaker 1: And if you stay, you may have a chance to
Speaker 1: regularize your status at some point in time in the future.
Speaker 1: Reagan actually did amnesty. I don't know why people don't
Speaker 1: talk about that, but I have many clients who got
Speaker 1: their green cards through Ronald Reagan's Amnesty for program. So
Speaker 1: I really think it was Clinton's law. That law then
Speaker 1: trapped people in the United States, forced them not to go,
Speaker 1: and then that caused this growing population of undocumented immigrants.
Speaker 1: What's next now in terms of your activities in the courts?
Speaker 1: Where whereas everything headed in the immediate sense, So we
Speaker 1: will probably start hearing in the lawsuit filed by a
Speaker 1: Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights. I know that all of
Speaker 1: my lawyers right now who volunteered, we had every pro
Speaker 1: bonent representation arranged for every single immigrant that arrived in
Speaker 1: Martha's vineyards. They're all drafting their U VISA applications in
Speaker 1: sending them to the government right now as we speak.
Speaker 1: So and and the last thing we really need for
Speaker 1: these individuals as work authorizations who we're working with the
Speaker 1: Biden administration and calling on them to reissue paroles for
Speaker 1: these individuals so they can all apply for work authorization.
Speaker 1: My thanks to you, Susan Church for all of your
Speaker 1: good work, and I'm always happy to meet these heroes
Speaker 1: helping the desperate people who are getting deceived by the
Speaker 1: pearl la Awertes of the world. I mean, this goes
Speaker 1: on and on the sanity of this, but thank you
Speaker 1: so much, and best of luck to you with the
Speaker 1: rest of your endeavors here. Thank you, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me immigration attorney Susan Church. My
Speaker 1: next guest attorney were not A. Lun Is the director
Speaker 1: of training for New York County Defender Services, a firm
Speaker 1: that offers public defenders to those who cannot afford their
Speaker 1: own council. Lund Is a graduate of Columbia Law, has
Speaker 1: clerked for the Southern District of New York and worked
Speaker 1: at the Legal Aid Society for over a decade before
Speaker 1: her work at nyc d S. I first spoke with
Speaker 1: Lund in June of one, at a time when COVID
Speaker 1: had drastically changed the justice system. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: why she chose and admittedly difficult line of work. I
Speaker 1: like people. I love that they're complicated and full of contradictions,
Speaker 1: that I believe that no one is all good or
Speaker 1: all bad. It just made sense to me to be
Speaker 1: an advocate for people in a system where they're reduced
Speaker 1: to just one act, one thing. So the prosecutor tells
Speaker 1: a story and their criminal complaint or an indictment. It
Speaker 1: might not even be a true story, and it just
Speaker 1: captures one moment in a person's life. And as a
Speaker 1: public defender, I get to work with investigators, I get
Speaker 1: to know my client. I get to work with social
Speaker 1: workers and find the nuances and complexity and context of
Speaker 1: that story and then tell that story to prosecutors, two
Speaker 1: juries to judges. And so that was the calling. And
Speaker 1: there's a second piece of that too, and that's the
Speaker 1: racial justice piece. The United States incarcerates more black people
Speaker 1: now than we're enslaved under slavery. That civil rights battles
Speaker 1: of our generation are being fought in criminal court. I'd
Speaker 1: like to think if I was born fifty years earlier,
Speaker 1: i'd be a freedom writer in Mississippi. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'd really have the courage for that, but I
Speaker 1: do know that I have the courage to be a
Speaker 1: public defender in the twenty one century. Now, the New
Speaker 1: York County Defender Services, it says that it in the
Speaker 1: research we did that was formed. What changed? What was
Speaker 1: the prior office of public defenders in New York and
Speaker 1: what was what? Why was there a change? Sure in
Speaker 1: New York City up until the mid nineties, there was
Speaker 1: just the only game in town with Legal Aid Society.
Speaker 1: They had offices and all five boroughs they do have
Speaker 1: offices in all five private enterprise yes, that contracted with
Speaker 1: the city to provide public defender services. And Legal Aid
Speaker 1: Society was unionized at the time, and the union went
Speaker 1: on strike, and in order to break the strike, Giuliani,
Speaker 1: who is the mayor at the time, put out a
Speaker 1: call for other public defender agencies to be formed. And
Speaker 1: so at that time Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, Queen's
Speaker 1: Law Associates which is now Queen's Defenders, and your County
Speaker 1: Defender Services were born. And this is completely government funded.
Speaker 1: There's or do you avail yourself as from some private
Speaker 1: funding as well. We would be delighted to accept private funding.
Speaker 1: If anybody's listening and wants to make a donation, you
Speaker 1: can do so on our website. But most of our
Speaker 1: funding is from the City of New York as a
Speaker 1: contract provider and all so from we got some state
Speaker 1: funding as well. And how many people in the staff
Speaker 1: over a hundred. We have sevent dy attorneys, but we
Speaker 1: also have investigators, social workers, paralegals, admin staff, civil attorney,
Speaker 1: immigration attorneys, data specialists. Now, I mean, I have many
Speaker 1: questions for you, but the first one that comes leaping
Speaker 1: to mind is the virtual court room. We've had a
Speaker 1: year and a half or so of virtual everything, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what was the described for me? Because as
Speaker 1: a layman, the first question that comes to mind is,
Speaker 1: how can courts turn around and say you got to
Speaker 1: go into our room with a computer and have you
Speaker 1: What if you don't have an internet, you don't have
Speaker 1: a computer. What if you don't want to go into
Speaker 1: your lawyer's office who has a computer because of the
Speaker 1: COVID itself? How did the exactly Oh, just picture the
Speaker 1: worst zoom call you were on with your family or
Speaker 1: friends or work associates, and now imagine that your liberty
Speaker 1: is at stake. I mean, imagine that zoom call where
Speaker 1: Grandma you only see her forehead and then the wall
Speaker 1: and ceiling because she can't figure out how to, you know,
Speaker 1: use the visual. Someone logging out and back in because
Speaker 1: their WiFi is bad. Someone sounding like a sad robot,
Speaker 1: like all those technical issues. You have a judge calling
Speaker 1: in virtually, you have a court reporter calling in virtually,
Speaker 1: and so our clients we try to guide them through
Speaker 1: using Microsoft Teams. That's the app of the courts recommend
Speaker 1: using frequently it doesn't work, so our clients will then
Speaker 1: call in via telephone. Sometimes we will be the public
Speaker 1: defender or the attorney will face time with their client
Speaker 1: and then hold their iPhone up to their laptops that
Speaker 1: the judge can see the face on FaceTime on someone's
Speaker 1: phone through the laptop, and we would try to conduct
Speaker 1: court that way. It really to humanize our clients. But
Speaker 1: I'm also assuming that the legal community, not just n
Speaker 1: y CDs, your organization, but lawyers in general. The Bar
Speaker 1: Association National or New York had some significant protests about
Speaker 1: how fair this was or I mean, what if somebody
Speaker 1: didn't couldn't afford a phone, what if they didn't have
Speaker 1: a computer, What was for two people that was safe,
Speaker 1: that was COVID safe for them to appear quote unquote
Speaker 1: in court. So for many people, their cases were just
Speaker 1: put on pause in a sense. So the course of
Speaker 1: people without those technological resources, they were punted. Usually if
Speaker 1: you don't show up to court, a warrant is issued
Speaker 1: for your arrest. It's called a bench warrant at the
Speaker 1: judge issues And for many months during COVID, they just
Speaker 1: didn't issue warrants. And so I think there there's probably
Speaker 1: many New york Is still out now who forgot about
Speaker 1: a case or thought, Okay, I haven't had to go
Speaker 1: back to court for a year, or it's COVID. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. But who still have these
Speaker 1: these open warrants? And our attorney has made every effort
Speaker 1: they could to contact clients, to write letters to homeless shelters,
Speaker 1: to we sent investigators knocking on the doors of last
Speaker 1: known addresses, and we did offer the opportunity for clients
Speaker 1: to come into our office and use the computers. Some
Speaker 1: clients would meet at a counselor's office if they were
Speaker 1: already in some sort of program, or try to use
Speaker 1: a public phone to call into court. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I think I might have gotten
Speaker 1: lost in the system. I'm assuming that there are different
Speaker 1: types of cas where you're entitled to a jury trial
Speaker 1: if you want one. In New York, you're not entitled
Speaker 1: to a jury trial if the maximum sentence you could
Speaker 1: get is ninety days or less. That's for expediency sake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a minor crime like attempted pettit larceny, attempted drug possession,
Speaker 1: steal a woman's pocketbook in the park, not even it's
Speaker 1: stealing a woman's pocketbook in the park. If it's on
Speaker 1: her shoulder, that would be a grand larceny. That would
Speaker 1: be a felony. If you steal a woman's pocketbook in
Speaker 1: the park and it's maybe just sitting on a park
Speaker 1: bench while she's checking her phone, that could be pettit
Speaker 1: larceny depending on what's in the pocketbook. If it's worth
Speaker 1: lessan a thousand dollars. If you tried to take it
Speaker 1: and she said, oh no, you and grabs the pocketbook back,
Speaker 1: that would be the attempted petit larceny. So for that,
Speaker 1: you don't have a right to a jury trial unless
Speaker 1: you're not a US citizen and then the Court of
Speaker 1: Appeals held, Look, the immigration consequences, the consequences of being
Speaker 1: deported are graver than ninety days in jail, and so
Speaker 1: if you're facing serious immigration consequences, you have the right
Speaker 1: to a jury trial. Is it safe to assume that
Speaker 1: people showing up with the public defender that stigmatizes them
Speaker 1: in front of a jury and a yes. Unfortunately, because
Speaker 1: we have I think some of the best attorneys in
Speaker 1: the country working in our office, and public and defenders
Speaker 1: are I think on the whole, some of the best
Speaker 1: attorneys in general that you will find. But unfortunately, there
Speaker 1: is still this this stigma. So juries we don't usually
Speaker 1: notify a jury there's uh, that's a public defender representing them.
Speaker 1: I don't have not allowed to tell them. I could.
Speaker 1: It could be. It can be a strategic call, right,
Speaker 1: Like if I'm representing someone who's charged with being involved
Speaker 1: in some sort of drug dealing scheme and the jury
Speaker 1: is going to see that they're represented by a public defender,
Speaker 1: they might say, well, yeah, this guy, and I'm arguing
Speaker 1: that you know, my client wasn't involved, or he was
Speaker 1: just a drug user who is being taken advantage of
Speaker 1: by the real drug dealers, then I might exactly that
Speaker 1: all lawyered up here exactly. So it's a strategic decision
Speaker 1: if you want to look like your client could afford
Speaker 1: h fancy private lawyer, or if you want to let
Speaker 1: the jury know this is an indigent person with a
Speaker 1: public defender. I have found in the few cases where
Speaker 1: I've ended up in court in my life. There's been
Speaker 1: a couple of times I ended up in court for
Speaker 1: different things, but you realize that they really don't want
Speaker 1: people to go to trial. Yes and no. I mean
Speaker 1: there is a lot of pressure to take please and
Speaker 1: that pressure doesn't just come from the court. It often
Speaker 1: comes from the extenuating circumstances in our client's lives. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they're involved in a custom dispute with
Speaker 1: their partner, and if they go to trial and lose,
Speaker 1: it would look a lot worse than if they just
Speaker 1: played guilty to harassment and did a batter's intervention program
Speaker 1: or something like that. Or often people are suspended from
Speaker 1: work while there's an open case. There's security licenses might
Speaker 1: be suspended. TLC licenses are suspended if you have an
Speaker 1: open case, So there's a lot of incentive for people
Speaker 1: to take any kind of get it over with that
Speaker 1: they can return to work. And of course immigration consequences
Speaker 1: to play a big role in people's decision making. When
Speaker 1: you come into a courtroom, you see some pretty intense
Speaker 1: circumstances that people live under, and I would imagine there's
Speaker 1: a constant flow of people where homelessness, joblessness, and drug
Speaker 1: addiction is a big part of um. Do people in
Speaker 1: your office, even though they're not called upon to h
Speaker 1: to comment about this publicly, do they develop opinions about
Speaker 1: what they think is our social programs that might be
Speaker 1: adjusted to lower crime social services? Well, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to comment. No, Actually I am allowed to comment. And
Speaker 1: it's funny that you should say that, because I think
Speaker 1: the notion of a public defender has expanded in the
Speaker 1: last ten or twenty years. Where it used to be
Speaker 1: we just put our heads down into individual cases. Now
Speaker 1: we're looking more systemically and thinking about systemic project I
Speaker 1: thought right, And so as far as what we would
Speaker 1: like to see as far as social services, a big
Speaker 1: one is just mental health services, mental health including substance use,
Speaker 1: because so often the response is, oh, there's someone who's
Speaker 1: talking to themselves on the subway platform, let's call the police.
Speaker 1: And we've all seen the worst case scenarios of what
Speaker 1: happens when then the police end up killing someone for
Speaker 1: that person pushes somebody exactly exactly, and and things just
Speaker 1: get elevated quickly. And so there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: options for people who have mental illness to get treatment,
Speaker 1: to have the support, to have housing. So mental illness
Speaker 1: comes to mind, drug treatment, making sure that's available, and
Speaker 1: just getting police out of schools. New York recently raised
Speaker 1: the age we used to have one of the lowest
Speaker 1: ages when someone could be charged with a crime. And
Speaker 1: so as an adult, yeah, so I would represent like
Speaker 1: sixteen year olds who got into fights in high school.
Speaker 1: I mean just fist fights. I'm not talking about anything
Speaker 1: that I didn't see in my all white high school
Speaker 1: where the principles of the school used to take care
Speaker 1: of exactly exactly, or parents or communities. And then the
Speaker 1: police would come and then they've got and with two
Speaker 1: people are assaulting one person, more than one persons of
Speaker 1: all to becomes a felony. It's a violent felony. All
Speaker 1: this stuff. So just getting police out of schools, having
Speaker 1: letting schools focus on education, I think there would be
Speaker 1: my two big things. But I find it interesting is
Speaker 1: this idea that we've increased criminal penalties in order to
Speaker 1: monetize a system and for people to make money, you know,
Speaker 1: mandatory sentences. I mean I am a huge opponent of
Speaker 1: mandatory sentences. You elect judges, they're appointed by people were
Speaker 1: supposed to accept these appointments and these election results for
Speaker 1: people who have tremendous power, and then we say you
Speaker 1: can't use your judgment. Here's your mandatory sentencing guideline. What
Speaker 1: is your opinion of mandatory I think they're horrible. They
Speaker 1: handcuffed judges, and like you said, each case is unique,
Speaker 1: in each individual is unique. And to say that this
Speaker 1: idea that somehow someone is going to learn a lesson
Speaker 1: after seven years that they won't learn after five years,
Speaker 1: and certainly wouldn't learn after three years, like, it's absurd
Speaker 1: to me and it just doesn't make any sense. I
Speaker 1: think we've gotten more draconian in terms of the idea
Speaker 1: of rehabilitation and what we do with these people once
Speaker 1: they put away has become like a distant second. It's
Speaker 1: not even on them the charts rer abilitation. Do you agree? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think you know, funds are being cut for that.
Speaker 1: There used to be pell grants so that people in
Speaker 1: prison could go to college and take college courses well
Speaker 1: in prison, and that was found to reduce recidivism, but
Speaker 1: that was cut. One of my pet peeves is what
Speaker 1: we call the capaganda police shows right the law and
Speaker 1: order and c s I and all those spinoffs that
Speaker 1: just show crime as being done by a very bad
Speaker 1: scheming person who can't be rehabilitated and doesn't again doesn't
Speaker 1: tell the complexity of a of a story. And also
Speaker 1: the majority of people we represent, the majority of cases
Speaker 1: are misdemeanors. There's non violent felonies. There's even cases that
Speaker 1: sound like violent crimes. The man who was taking the
Speaker 1: hats off of people, you know, on the Coney Island
Speaker 1: subways fifty years ago, that could have been maybe charged
Speaker 1: even as a robbery in the second degree if he
Speaker 1: was doing that with friends. Again, sounds like a violent
Speaker 1: cry in these marauding youth. But when you take a
Speaker 1: step back and hear the stories and get the context,
Speaker 1: it's never that sort of CSI villain. It's never so contrary.
Speaker 1: So you've been at this for a while, you've been
Speaker 1: at this sphere over fifteen years. What's the new crop
Speaker 1: of lawyers? Like, how are they different from you? Are they? Yes?
Speaker 1: What's wonder full about them is again, I, you know,
Speaker 1: keep coming back to these racial justice issues. But I
Speaker 1: read the New Gym Crow after I was a public defender.
Speaker 1: Then we started interviewing people who read The New Gym
Speaker 1: Crow in law school. Then we started interviewing people who
Speaker 1: read the New Gym Crow in college and were inspired
Speaker 1: by it. Now we're interviewing people who read the New
Speaker 1: Gym Crow in high school, were inspired by that, knew
Speaker 1: they wanted to be a public defender. So they took
Speaker 1: whatever classes in college and interviews and or internships in
Speaker 1: college that could get them on a path to doing
Speaker 1: criminal law. Went to law school knowing they wanted to
Speaker 1: be a public defender. Like these are people who are
Speaker 1: supremely dedicated to the job and have thought about it
Speaker 1: for many years. So already they are coming with this
Speaker 1: this understanding of the systemic problems of the criminal legal system.
Speaker 1: They're not just motivated by you know, upholding the Constitution
Speaker 1: and the right to counsel and the six Amendment, but
Speaker 1: by a very deep drive for justice, not just for
Speaker 1: our clients, but in the entire system. And so it's
Speaker 1: become incredibly competitive to be a public defender. Like we
Speaker 1: thousands of resumes. We are turned down people who go
Speaker 1: to top law schools because they don't have what we're
Speaker 1: looking for. That drive to try creases the ability to
Speaker 1: relate to clients. It is one of the most competitive
Speaker 1: jobs you can get after law school. It's amazing to me.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I wish I wanted to get that message
Speaker 1: out there because like Columbia, I went to Columbia, so
Speaker 1: their their office will often reach out to me and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got a great crop of five people who want
Speaker 1: to be public defenders this year. You know, they'll interview
Speaker 1: with my office. Um, they stay connected with you, they
Speaker 1: stay connected, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: guarantee a job in my office. And as I told
Speaker 1: my stunt applicants, oh yeah, and and you know, the
Speaker 1: the year that we interviewed several people from Columbia, I
Speaker 1: think there was just one that we hired and the
Speaker 1: others they've landed in other places around the country. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very difficult. As I say to my my boss,
Speaker 1: whenever we do the hiring process, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: like drowning puppies. You know, we can't keep all the
Speaker 1: puppies in the litter. So but they're incredibly smart, bright, talented,
Speaker 1: dedicated people. When you speak about your career and the
Speaker 1: work you do, and you're obviously so heartfelt and you're
Speaker 1: so dedicated this work, and I'm so impressed that there's
Speaker 1: people like you in this world of public defending who
Speaker 1: really care on this level. I have this silly image
Speaker 1: of you sitting there having lunch with a friend of
Speaker 1: yours who went to Columbia and she's had a big
Speaker 1: litigating firm, and she's got, you know, the thirty thou
Speaker 1: dollar wristwatch and the hand Like there's a whole world
Speaker 1: you could have had that you have forsaken in order
Speaker 1: to do this kind of work. Do you ever have
Speaker 1: any regrets? No, not, not for a second. You talked
Speaker 1: about New York and challenges of working in New York City,
Speaker 1: and one is that you are next to so much wealth, right,
Speaker 1: You're a proximate to so much wealth. A lot of
Speaker 1: our new attorneys have roommates. If they started a big
Speaker 1: law firm, you know, they could practically buy a house
Speaker 1: with their summer bonus. But the work is meaningful, it's rewarding,
Speaker 1: it's fun, and at the end of the day, one
Speaker 1: of the beautiful things of being a public defender is
Speaker 1: you have a lot of autonomy and sting of your
Speaker 1: own schedule as far as you know, you have to
Speaker 1: be incorded at a certain time, and you have to
Speaker 1: make sure you make time to meet with clients. But
Speaker 1: then that your time is your own. You don't answer
Speaker 1: to a partner in a law firm who calls you
Speaker 1: on Friday night and says, okay, cancel your money. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so my husband loves to cook, and you know,
Speaker 1: I've said I would love to be able to buy
Speaker 1: you a huge house with a huge kitchen, but your lawyer,
Speaker 1: but then we'd never be able to eat in it, right,
Speaker 1: And then I'd never get to eat your cooking. So
Speaker 1: I'd rather eat your cooking in our humble kitchen. Attorney,
Speaker 1: We're not a lun If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
Speaker 1: a friend and be sure to follow here's the thing
Speaker 1: on the I Heart radio app, Spotify or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. When we come back, We're not a
Speaker 1: Lune gives her take on rising crime rates in New
Speaker 1: York and how those statistics are misleading. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the thing. I originally spoke
Speaker 1: with Renato Lun of New York County Defender Services in
Speaker 1: June of two thousand twenty one, when COVID held a
Speaker 1: strong grip on the court system. I decided to have
Speaker 1: Lun back to get an update on her work since
Speaker 1: the city's reopening. Another development since we last spoke was
Speaker 1: the swearing in of Mayor Eric Adams on January one,
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty two. Adams has inherited an increasingly problematic
Speaker 1: Riker's Island Correctional facility. It's a constant storm of violence, disorder,
Speaker 1: and staff absenteeism, with inmates going without food or medical care,
Speaker 1: and where seventeen people have died this year. While candidate
Speaker 1: Adams campaigned to close the facility, Mayor Adams wants to
Speaker 1: transition to Plan B and find an alternative to shuttering
Speaker 1: the jail. I wanted to know Lung's take on New
Speaker 1: York City's new mayor and the moves he's made since
Speaker 1: entering office. Disappointing. It's disappointing to hear someone say that
Speaker 1: he wants to bring back solitary. It was disappointing that
Speaker 1: he did not keep on Vince Giraldi, who was really
Speaker 1: trying his best as Commissioner of Corrections. You know, Rikers
Speaker 1: is still in crisis, and it's not getting towards that.
Speaker 1: It is a virtually intractable problem. You know, I I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about this how Rikers is just there are
Speaker 1: no adjectives right, inhumane, tortuous, city owned for those who
Speaker 1: don't know New York. Yeah, and since around the time
Speaker 1: of COVID, since we last spoke, a lot of Corrections
Speaker 1: officers call out sick. They have unlimited sick time. There's
Speaker 1: sort of no consequences for calling out sick, which is
Speaker 1: awful for our clients because if there's not enough staff
Speaker 1: and Rikers, they aren't protected. But they also don't filled
Speaker 1: by the inmates right, right, So we have clients answering
Speaker 1: the phones, escorting each other to places, often locked in
Speaker 1: because they can't be escorted to a council visit, can't
Speaker 1: be escorted to medical can't be escorted to get their
Speaker 1: medic medications or for a checkup or two for visits
Speaker 1: to see family. So they're locked in because there just
Speaker 1: aren't enough officers to escort them. So it's awful from
Speaker 1: our client's perspective, Also from a lawyer's perspective, because it's
Speaker 1: difficult for us to communicate with our clients. Our clients
Speaker 1: are often not even produced a court. But also from
Speaker 1: the CEO's perspective, if you know, going to work on
Speaker 1: a Friday morning means that there's a good chance the
Speaker 1: person is supposed to relieve you isn't going to show
Speaker 1: up because they're going to call out sick. And you
Speaker 1: know there's a good chance you're gonna be asked to
Speaker 1: work a double or maybe a triple. Well, then maybe
Speaker 1: you call out sick because you don't have the child
Speaker 1: care for Friday aftern't But why does I mean again,
Speaker 1: I don't assume you know the answer questions. No, But
Speaker 1: when you when you look at rikers and you hear
Speaker 1: the stories, I think most people, including myself, who I
Speaker 1: can have this jauntest view of that system as anybody,
Speaker 1: But I look and I think that the stories I hear,
Speaker 1: I think to myself, that can't be true. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: can't be true that you have a facility right off
Speaker 1: the coast of It's not like this place is up
Speaker 1: in upstate New York in the middle of the farm
Speaker 1: country out of view. Who is responsible for the fact
Speaker 1: that Rikers is this like Hall of Mirrors, It's something
Speaker 1: out of a Ryan Murphy streaming series, Like how did
Speaker 1: it be? Who's responsible for the maintenance of Rikers and
Speaker 1: its staff? Yeah? And why has it been allowed to
Speaker 1: deteriorate to this degree? And I think you say that
Speaker 1: it's not in the middle of nowhere upstate, but like
Speaker 1: I went upstate apple picking last weekend. There's more people.
Speaker 1: It's easier to get up state and go apple picking
Speaker 1: or whatever for for most people than to cross that bridge,
Speaker 1: go through all the levels of security and see the
Speaker 1: conditions on that island. Do they have very strict rules
Speaker 1: about the media coming to examine that place? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the media rules are. I know
Speaker 1: that elected officials have done some visits, but even you know,
Speaker 1: when they're trying to pretty it up for elected officials,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you read the reports like people were attempting
Speaker 1: suicide in front of the city council members who were
Speaker 1: touring Rikers last fall. All I know is that we
Speaker 1: need to see a proposal which shuts down Rikers and
Speaker 1: those people are moved somewhere. And to the extent you
Speaker 1: can accommodate the access to council and the access to family,
Speaker 1: thing you do. But in words, I don't think access
Speaker 1: to council and access to family demands that they stay
Speaker 1: somewhere where they're going to die now, and so I
Speaker 1: think the plan and the guards are useless. I'm not
Speaker 1: a hundred percent up to date on the plan during
Speaker 1: the de Blasi administration, but there was a plan to
Speaker 1: close Rikers and revamp some of the borough based facilities.
Speaker 1: Like there already is the Manhattan Correctional Center MCC, there's
Speaker 1: one in Brooklyn, Brooklyn House of Detention, there's one in Queens.
Speaker 1: Like to make sure that there are facilities that are
Speaker 1: state of the art near all the all the courthouses,
Speaker 1: one in each borough, so that families can visit, attorneys
Speaker 1: can visit. So COVID has at least what you read
Speaker 1: in the paper has receded significantly. I still look at
Speaker 1: my app and see that there's forty four thousand deaths
Speaker 1: so far this year. We've crossed over to I think
Speaker 1: it's one point zero six one million, six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people dead nationally, but COVID it is less of an
Speaker 1: issue than it is and people are back to normal
Speaker 1: life comparatively speaking pretty well. Do you find that in
Speaker 1: your work that that's that's impacting your work as well
Speaker 1: as the recession of the receding of COVID beneficial Yes,
Speaker 1: trials are back up and happening. Our office just completed
Speaker 1: one yesterday, gotten a full acquittal. And what kind of
Speaker 1: case can you say, um, assault, misdemeanor assault. Even this spring,
Speaker 1: people were wearing shields or witnesses were wearing shields when
Speaker 1: they testified. Jurors were socially distance. But now jurors are
Speaker 1: sitting back in the jury box, witnesses aren't wearing masks.
Speaker 1: So that's good. That feels back to normal. There's still
Speaker 1: the backlog, and like I said, there's still the crisis
Speaker 1: at Wrikers, which and you know, sixteen deaths this year
Speaker 1: that ways. And then in addition to that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think public defender offices around the country sort of
Speaker 1: reckoned with the great resignation I have here. It says,
Speaker 1: it says that The Times reported that hundreds of staff
Speaker 1: worst have left NYCPD organizations over low pay. In the
Speaker 1: last year. The Legal Aids is A lost ten percent
Speaker 1: of its staff, or about two people over the past
Speaker 1: twelve months. Brooklyn Defenders Services has lost forty attorneys or
Speaker 1: percent of its staff, and the New York County Defenders
Speaker 1: Services has lost thirty attorneys or of its staff. And
Speaker 1: what I'm wondering is the ones that are staying and
Speaker 1: they're all pretty much underpaid. The ones who stay, why
Speaker 1: do they stay? Why don't they quit? It is still
Speaker 1: the best job in the world. Like it's intellectually engaging,
Speaker 1: like law and criminal law. You get to make arguments
Speaker 1: as intellectually stimulating, you get to be and then you
Speaker 1: get to be creative. You get to be creative in
Speaker 1: your reason and logic and making creative arguments. You get
Speaker 1: to be creative. And how you present information, whether it's
Speaker 1: mitigating information to a prosecutor. You know, we write pre
Speaker 1: pleading memos. Sometimes we even record videos or show pictures
Speaker 1: to the prosecutors or to the judges to try to
Speaker 1: get better plea deals. And of course you know trial
Speaker 1: is you know, like a theater show, right you're telling
Speaker 1: a story, you're presenting information for suasively, you're thinking about
Speaker 1: how you're coming across to a jury and all that,
Speaker 1: and you get to help people to like what more
Speaker 1: could you ask for? Every once in a while, I'll
Speaker 1: peruse you know, I wanted ads thinking am I ready
Speaker 1: for a career change? And I just can't find anything
Speaker 1: that's that's as good and as meaningful and it's fun.
Speaker 1: Now crime rates are up according to the NYPD, shootings
Speaker 1: are down, but overall crime is up from just a
Speaker 1: year ago, and the media has titled us to bail
Speaker 1: reform and lenient sentencing and policies. What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: about that. I mean, we're still the safest big city
Speaker 1: in the country statewide. I think crime levels are down
Speaker 1: to pre pandemic levels. And one of the biggest drivers
Speaker 1: of crime is police arrests. So if police make a
Speaker 1: lot of arrest it looks like crime is up. And
Speaker 1: so if they're stopping and arresting people for smoking K
Speaker 1: two or giving out lots of summons is for that
Speaker 1: or summons is for driving the suspended license, they can
Speaker 1: say that arrests are up. It doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: that crime is up. So it's been really disappointing to
Speaker 1: see the media get behind and not question the police
Speaker 1: and the police unions, and unfortunately the mayor getting behind
Speaker 1: it to whenever they say that reform and criminal legal
Speaker 1: in our criminal legal system, in our criminal justice policy
Speaker 1: is causing crime rates, because if you look nationwide, you
Speaker 1: know there was a spike and crime post COVID in
Speaker 1: cities with conservative district attorneys and in cities with reform
Speaker 1: district attorneys, and that was just sort of universal. And
Speaker 1: they're making bail a punching bag in a way that
Speaker 1: I don't think it's accurate or fair. So, in the
Speaker 1: city instituted its bail reform and you had about a
Speaker 1: year of data before the pandemic hit, what did you
Speaker 1: see in terms of how bail reform worked differently. Actually,
Speaker 1: the bail laws were passed in tween, they didn't go
Speaker 1: into effect until January one, the pandemic hits. I think
Speaker 1: everything started the course started closing down March, so we
Speaker 1: only had two and a half months of bail reform,
Speaker 1: and what we saw was that people were reunited with
Speaker 1: their families, that people could fight their cases, that we
Speaker 1: didn't have so many people taking jail sentences, people getting
Speaker 1: the help they needed, or people being able to get
Speaker 1: acquittals or lesser. Please let me actually give an example
Speaker 1: to to clarify that. So when I was practicing as
Speaker 1: aligned public defender, I do training now. So when I
Speaker 1: had my own full caseload ten years ago, you would
Speaker 1: have people who are arrested for jumping a turnstile and
Speaker 1: this demeanor, possession of drugs, whatever, bill would be set
Speaker 1: because maybe they were a repeat offender, they were homeless,
Speaker 1: they didn't have a job, they didn't show up to
Speaker 1: their last courtate bill would be said at five hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: They couldn't pay five hundred dollars. The case would be
Speaker 1: a journ for five days. Five days later, a judge
Speaker 1: would say, look, i'll give him time served. I'll give
Speaker 1: him a ten day sentence, and then the client, you know,
Speaker 1: regardless of the merits of fighting the case, would say, look,
Speaker 1: I'd like to get out today. So we'd have a
Speaker 1: lot of people taking these ten day sentences, fifteen day
Speaker 1: sentences just to get out. With bail reform, those people
Speaker 1: are now released and we can get them into a
Speaker 1: rug treatment program. We can help our social workers in
Speaker 1: our office can help get them jobs. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of city money and city agencies that are also working
Speaker 1: to provide alternatives incarceration. So instead on that next court date,
Speaker 1: we're saying, okay, we'll reduce the charge of something non
Speaker 1: criminal and the client is now doing, you know, a
Speaker 1: drug treatment program. So with bail reform, we're seeing fewer
Speaker 1: criminal convictions, fewer people in jail, and as we talked about,
Speaker 1: in jail is a pretty rotten place right now, tortuous place,
Speaker 1: and more people reunited with their families. Now obviously in
Speaker 1: a city that has a significant perception of people and
Speaker 1: many of them voters who are swayed by you know,
Speaker 1: questionable sources of media, and they see the demonization of
Speaker 1: the bail reform thing. What do you think is the
Speaker 1: public relations key that has to be turned for people
Speaker 1: to understand why bail reform is in their interests, the
Speaker 1: interest of the general public. The lawyer brain and me
Speaker 1: wants to say, well, maybe we can just provide some
Speaker 1: more data. Maybe we can just show people that, you know,
Speaker 1: we're saving money by not putting people, were not incarcerating people.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can show people that the vast, vast majority
Speaker 1: of people are not re arrested, like over of the
Speaker 1: people who are released under bail reform and not re
Speaker 1: arrested a huge factor, right, But I know that data,
Speaker 1: it's not how we make decision, right. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know we have calorie charts on our menus now in
Speaker 1: New York City, But my stomach says exactly right. So
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it's up to us public defenders
Speaker 1: to do the work of telling our clients stories and
Speaker 1: talking about the individual people and the individual lives that
Speaker 1: are that are changed because of bail reform and trying
Speaker 1: to get people to to latch onto that. Just as
Speaker 1: we see Maryland Wanda laws being thrown out the window,
Speaker 1: just being completely vacated, which is which is fine, That
Speaker 1: doesn't bother me on any level. But other what other
Speaker 1: laws would you like to see reformed that you think
Speaker 1: would make a real impact on the work you do.
Speaker 1: What are laws that you think or just need to
Speaker 1: be we visited and changed. I think there's been an
Speaker 1: emphasis on decriminalization of a lot of petty crimes like drugs,
Speaker 1: So I would say drug possession for personal use, just
Speaker 1: all of that should be decriminalized, um completely. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think there has been like against marijuana completely almost
Speaker 1: completely in New York now almost when you're training people
Speaker 1: for the work you're doing, what's the one thing you
Speaker 1: want to make sure they understand about the job. What
Speaker 1: do you hope they really really understand that it's not
Speaker 1: about you, it's about your client. That it's really I
Speaker 1: say that, and we we started off by talking about
Speaker 1: what makes people stay. And one thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: address is that, you know, what makes people stay is
Speaker 1: also creating, hopefully an atmosphere where people feel supported and
Speaker 1: people feel like they can take care of themselves. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion about wellness around our country, and
Speaker 1: definitely public defender offices to you know, our office, we
Speaker 1: don't send emails after five. We encourage people to take
Speaker 1: their vacation time, like actively say, don't check email on vacation.
Speaker 1: We will be you know. So I say all that,
Speaker 1: but then I also say, it's about your client, right,
Speaker 1: It's not about your ego, It's about what's right for
Speaker 1: your client. And I balancing that with that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you lose yourself entirely, but whatever happens, it's your client's
Speaker 1: decision and understanding where our clients are coming from having
Speaker 1: empathy with them and knowing that when you work hard
Speaker 1: it is there's a real human life at stake, and
Speaker 1: so it really deserves your best effort. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing this, Oh thank you. My thanks to
Speaker 1: Attorneys Are Not a lun and Susan Church for their
Speaker 1: tireless efforts helping the less fortunate every day. This episode
Speaker 1: was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're
Speaker 1: produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm at like Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to
Speaker 1: you by my Heart Radio five Think All of the Game.
Speaker 1: Const