Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Brussel from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: There have been an unending number of legal threats to
Speaker 1: the Dakota Access pipeline since, and the pipeline faces continued
Speaker 1: threats to its existence even after surviving another shutdown battle
Speaker 1: in federal court. A federal district court refused to halt
Speaker 1: the oil pipeline last week, an important win for Dakota Access,
Speaker 1: but an appeal or agency action could change its fate.
Speaker 1: Joining me as Brandon Barnes, Bloomberg Intelligence Senior analyst for
Speaker 1: energy litigation, Brandon tell us why the judge decided not
Speaker 1: to shut down the pipeline. Well, there's a long underlying
Speaker 1: history here with the same court and the same judge
Speaker 1: dating well back into but this decision was predicated on
Speaker 1: the fact that judge didn't believe he had the authority
Speaker 1: to go so far as to stop the pipeline based
Speaker 1: on the injuries that were being complained of by the
Speaker 1: challenges here, which were some of the tribes. Why did
Speaker 1: you think he had the authority? So a number of
Speaker 1: the issues that the tribes had brought up as it
Speaker 1: relates to the environmental review that had been done. Um
Speaker 1: that triggered this review to go back to the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Corps were possible injuries um and wouldn't rise, according
Speaker 1: to the court, to this level requiring a shutdown. So
Speaker 1: you need an irreparable harm. You need you know, likelihood
Speaker 1: that goes along with that in terms of the harm
Speaker 1: that's out there, and not just a possible harm. The
Speaker 1: the injuries that or the potential injuries that were being
Speaker 1: claimed by the tribes were related to what if scenarios
Speaker 1: that are you know, have chances attached them there you know,
Speaker 1: one in a hundred thousand, one in a million based
Speaker 1: on industry statistics. So this was a you know, the
Speaker 1: likelihood of any of these issues being actually occur ring
Speaker 1: and the harm accompanying it actually occurring was so low
Speaker 1: that the judge couldn't then attach that to the legal
Speaker 1: standard for putting an injunction in place. The standing Rock
Speaker 1: Sioux Tribe has been fighting this for years. Is it
Speaker 1: likely that they'll appeal this decision? You know, that's a
Speaker 1: I don't know that they've come out publicly as to that.
Speaker 1: That question, however, certainly would would preserve their rights if
Speaker 1: they were going to appeal. Um. They've they've essentially won
Speaker 1: everything they've they've tried except for shutting the project down.
Speaker 1: So they have in hand the idea that there is
Speaker 1: no federal easement here and the because the environmental review
Speaker 1: that underpinned the easement for this lake crossing was judged
Speaker 1: in firm and they got that confirmed by the Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals in April, but neither but the lower court
Speaker 1: was not willing to go further to at b I.
Speaker 1: It's unlikely that the Court of Appeals would would overturn
Speaker 1: the lower court here because they've kind of gone with
Speaker 1: what lower courts said to date for the most part.
Speaker 1: But certainly you know, that may be part of the
Speaker 1: litigation strategy for the TRIST but it's in our view
Speaker 1: it's unlikely that's going to be successful. Since federal judges
Speaker 1: have issued three different decisions concluding that the Dakota Access
Speaker 1: Pipeline was permitted in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Speaker 1: So to most people, the question would be, well, if
Speaker 1: it's in violation of NIPA, why is it still allowed
Speaker 1: to go on? That question has been sort of bandied
Speaker 1: about as a remedy issue back and forth between a
Speaker 1: couple of courts and It's an interesting question because it's
Speaker 1: not you're right. Typically, you know, NIPA violation is pretty
Speaker 1: easy to kind of address, and that's where the court,
Speaker 1: the lower court originally tripped up because what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here isn't necessarily a permit. It's actually it's you know,
Speaker 1: the land right. It's a property right because it's an easement.
Speaker 1: The federal government owns Lake Owahi because they created it
Speaker 1: back in the fifties via you know, a dam, and
Speaker 1: so the permission to go underneath that lake and use
Speaker 1: that path be an easement or land right grant goes
Speaker 1: through a different regulatory structure under Army Corps. And so
Speaker 1: what in fact has happened is, even though there's nep
Speaker 1: A violations, there's a process that Army Corps has to
Speaker 1: decide what happens to an encroachment, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: basically an illegal easement. You're on our land with something
Speaker 1: some structure without permission, and so what Army Corps decided
Speaker 1: to do is nothing. And what that does is if
Speaker 1: they make no decision on what to do with an encroachment,
Speaker 1: and there can be no sort of legal ramifications after
Speaker 1: the fact, and that's something the judge lamented in his
Speaker 1: opinion most recently, how does the Army Corps just decide
Speaker 1: not to do anything? Don't they have a responsibility? Well so,
Speaker 1: they certainly do have a duty to do something, but
Speaker 1: their take on this is revolved around, Look, you ordered
Speaker 1: us to go back and redo this environmental assessment and
Speaker 1: turn it into a much more robust environmental impact statement,
Speaker 1: and that's going to take time. In fact, it's going
Speaker 1: to take us until March at this point. So why
Speaker 1: don't you let us do that and then decide what
Speaker 1: to do? And you know, that's sort of a it's
Speaker 1: a good argument because it leaves the court and the
Speaker 1: challengers saying, well, you know, we can't force you to
Speaker 1: make that decision on the current status of when we
Speaker 1: forced you to make another report so and more robusts.
Speaker 1: So the interesting thing here, I think with all of
Speaker 1: this is that there has been no real change in
Speaker 1: heart with the change in administration in terms of how
Speaker 1: Army Corps responded, saying that they will still continue to
Speaker 1: support their stance, which is sort of a status quote
Speaker 1: do nothing stance, but they have said that if something
Speaker 1: comes up in this more robust process, they're certainly willing
Speaker 1: to revisit. So the judge sort of scolded the Biden
Speaker 1: administration for refusing to take a clear stance on the pipeline.
Speaker 1: I had thought, maybe I have my pipeline is confused.
Speaker 1: I had thought that in his first days in office,
Speaker 1: Biden had issued an executive order about the Dakota Access pipeline.
Speaker 1: He issued an executive order restending the Keystone Excel permit,
Speaker 1: which was well within his powers to do so, because
Speaker 1: he's basically doing the mirror image of what President Trump
Speaker 1: had done for Keystone, which is exercising executive power to
Speaker 1: issue a permit to cross the border for an energy project,
Speaker 1: and by circumventing sort of the U. S. State Department
Speaker 1: process which President Trump did to issue that March I
Speaker 1: think twenty nineteen permit presidential permit um that set that
Speaker 1: permit up for being able to be rescinded by President
Speaker 1: Biden with very little, UH procedure or oversight around it. Um.
Speaker 1: That is not the case of the Code Access because
Speaker 1: right now we're not in a place where yet, you know,
Speaker 1: Army Corps can do something because they they've got this
Speaker 1: pending environmental review on their plate um. So they could
Speaker 1: have taken more of a stance in front of the
Speaker 1: court here, but they did not, and maybe that's sort
Speaker 1: of in deference to the work that the Army Corps
Speaker 1: done over the years. Anyway, cording to analysis last week
Speaker 1: by clear View Energy Partners, it said Dakota Access opponents
Speaker 1: could also get creative in the courtroom and raise an
Speaker 1: Administrative Procedure Act claim that challenges the Army Corps in
Speaker 1: action in response to the encroachment on federal land. Is
Speaker 1: that a possibility in your mind? I think it is.
Speaker 1: I think so the form they could more formally raise
Speaker 1: that as an issue, um, it is. It has been
Speaker 1: discussed at the lower court as but only part of
Speaker 1: the remedy phace. So it's really you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of we're talking about legal shades of gray here. But
Speaker 1: to really get at and get a ruling of final
Speaker 1: ruling from court on the issue of Army Corps not
Speaker 1: moving fast enough or moving at all, um, they would
Speaker 1: have to file that sort of a separate claimant that
Speaker 1: I'm within the remedy portion of the lower court in
Speaker 1: this bigger case. Uh, you know, I think you could
Speaker 1: do that, but the Army Corps is going to be
Speaker 1: given a lot of leeway here and the fact that
Speaker 1: they've got a pending environmental review that they're doing, and
Speaker 1: that's going to give them a much better set of
Speaker 1: information and data to work with because it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be more robust. UM. But environmental groups have been you know,
Speaker 1: this this case and many others involving pipelines, have been
Speaker 1: very creative and they have not shirked on spending the
Speaker 1: resources on these different cases. I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: that happened. I would not give it great odds of
Speaker 1: success at this point. Kind of thinking it through theoretically though,
Speaker 1: so was this lawsuit the greatest threat to the pipeline? Yes,
Speaker 1: in this the short answer at the at at all points,
Speaker 1: this was really the threat because it reaches all the
Speaker 1: way back to preconstruction and permitting. UM. Now that this
Speaker 1: is sort of out of the way, although obviously appeals
Speaker 1: are available, the newest threat is what happens with a
Speaker 1: President Biden administration Army Corps when they get the chance
Speaker 1: to do take over this environmental impact teament. How does
Speaker 1: that play out? They've mentioned this is going to be
Speaker 1: probably at least until March until we see anything from
Speaker 1: them in terms of a final decision, But they've got
Speaker 1: a lot of works to before them, which includes consultation
Speaker 1: with various parties, including the Native American tribes, and they've
Speaker 1: got a lot of public comments to take. So that
Speaker 1: process is going to play out, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of uncertainty there around what the end products will look like.
Speaker 1: And so now the biggest threat is probably outside of
Speaker 1: the court is now back in the agency hands. So
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, the Army Corps of Engineers.
Speaker 1: I sort of think of the Army Corps of Engineers
Speaker 1: as being not partisan, but does their position change depending
Speaker 1: on the administration or the way they approach things change?
Speaker 1: You know? Do you know I would have thought of
Speaker 1: a lot of different agencies non Parson before the past
Speaker 1: few years. I feel like we've had a bit of
Speaker 1: a seismic shift on that if you think of what's
Speaker 1: happening with FIRK these days as well. But you know,
Speaker 1: Army Corps has been involved in this bankline since before
Speaker 1: it was built, and just based on who was in
Speaker 1: office pushing the button or directing Army Corps policy, we
Speaker 1: had a change at the snap of a finger between
Speaker 1: the Obama administration the Trump administration in terms of what
Speaker 1: was being ordered done on the ground for these environmental reviews,
Speaker 1: and you know, for Army Corps, they're really just these
Speaker 1: are procedural changes, not necessarily substanti decision making changes. But
Speaker 1: you know, those can those can mean a lot of
Speaker 1: different things for these projects once those play out in
Speaker 1: the courts after the fact. So I think I would
Speaker 1: never say the Army Corps is partisan, but I think
Speaker 1: that they have the ability to look at something like
Speaker 1: an environmental review and the information that comes in from
Speaker 1: a different angle if they need, if they're directed to,
Speaker 1: which I think that wouldn't be surprised if that's how
Speaker 1: this administration would would want them to go. So bottom line,
Speaker 1: we can say that the Dakota Access pipeline is in
Speaker 1: the clear for now until the spring of I think
Speaker 1: that right. I think bottom line, they're in the clear
Speaker 1: until at least then, and then you know, and then
Speaker 1: it's back into the uncertainty around around shipping anything via
Speaker 1: pipeline these days, very difficult to to be able to
Speaker 1: kind of get any certainty out of the midstream world.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being on the Bloomberg Glass Show, Brandon.
Speaker 1: That's Brandon Barnes Bloomberg Intelligence Senior analyst for energy litigation.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court sided with the government on Monday and
Speaker 1: found that an immigrant to was wrongfully deported in can
Speaker 1: be charged with re entering the country illegally. Joining me
Speaker 1: is Leon Fresco, a partner at Hollandon Knight. The facts
Speaker 1: here are a bit confusing. Tell us about the applicant
Speaker 1: here the plaintiff. Sure, so, the plaintiff was a man
Speaker 1: named Refudio Palomars Bantiago, and he was a person who
Speaker 1: had a green card when he lived in the United States.
Speaker 1: But what happened was he was convicted of a felony
Speaker 1: dry thing under the influence charge, which back then was
Speaker 1: thought of as a crime of violence. So it was
Speaker 1: considered an aggravated felony. And because of that, he was
Speaker 1: deported to Mexico. And he was deported to Mexico. But
Speaker 1: then what happened was in two thousand four, there was
Speaker 1: a U. S. Supreme Court case called Leatal versus Ashcroft,
Speaker 1: which said that a driving under the influence conviction isn't
Speaker 1: a crime of violence because you're not intending violence. Yes,
Speaker 1: violent acts may happen with your car while you're driving
Speaker 1: under the influence, but the person really only intends to
Speaker 1: drink and drive, They don't intense actually hurt somebody, So
Speaker 1: you can't call that a aggravated felony crime of violence.
Speaker 1: And so what happened was this person's conviction, Mr Palomar
Speaker 1: Santiago was actually no longer under the basis for a
Speaker 1: removal order. Meanings, had Mr Palomar Santiago not been removed,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have been able to remove Palomar Santiago because
Speaker 1: the conviction wasn't a proper basis for his removal. So
Speaker 1: we fast forward and in ten, Mr Palomar Santiago actually
Speaker 1: crosses illegally into the United States and he's prosecuted for this,
Speaker 1: and they say, you can't cross the United States illegally
Speaker 1: if you've already been deported. That's a crime. And so
Speaker 1: what happened was he tried to make a very creative defense,
Speaker 1: which was wait a second, I wasn't deported because the
Speaker 1: deportation order against me was invalid. If you had tried
Speaker 1: to enter this deportation order, now there's no way you
Speaker 1: could have entered it. And so because of that, there
Speaker 1: is no way I should be allowed to be prosecuted
Speaker 1: for entering illegally with a removal order because I don't
Speaker 1: have a removal order. So tell us what the Ninth
Speaker 1: Circuit ruled. So what happened was there's a split in
Speaker 1: the circuit, and every other circuit held that you can't
Speaker 1: challenge a prosecution on the basis of illegally re entering
Speaker 1: with a removal order. If you are saying that, it's
Speaker 1: because the removal order in the past was now subsequently
Speaker 1: invalidated by a Supreme Court decision. So that's what the
Speaker 1: other circuits held. But the Ninth Circuit held that, yes,
Speaker 1: you can, you can challenge that order because what had
Speaker 1: happened was the conviction being vacated makes it so that
Speaker 1: there actually is no removal order to challenge, meaning you're
Speaker 1: not actually challenging a removal order. There just is no
Speaker 1: removal order. It doesn't exist. Hence, what happens is you
Speaker 1: can't be prosecuted for entering with the removal order because
Speaker 1: the removal order has already been eliminated by operation of law.
Speaker 1: That was the theory that the Ninth Circuit had put
Speaker 1: in the play, and so the Supreme Court needed to
Speaker 1: resolve the circuit split. I know there's a circuit split,
Speaker 1: but it seems like this scenario wouldn't apply in that
Speaker 1: many cases. It depends because it currently doesn't apply in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, and now because of this Supreme
Speaker 1: Court holding, it won't apply in many cases. But interestingly,
Speaker 1: if the Supreme Court that held that you can re
Speaker 1: enter the United States illegally in order to sort of
Speaker 1: reclaim your green card status because your removal order goes away,
Speaker 1: you might have seen several thousand individuals try this, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who have been deported who
Speaker 1: subsequently because of this lecal drinking and driving case, and
Speaker 1: then there are subsequent cases involving drawn and burglary and
Speaker 1: possession of tools and this kind of thing. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people, I would say, at least in the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands, who have been deported from the United
Speaker 1: States in the past with orders that are now no
Speaker 1: longer valid removal orders and so, and what they would
Speaker 1: have gotten was a message that would have said, just
Speaker 1: enter the United States. Find some way to enter. So
Speaker 1: that's how they would have done it, to try to
Speaker 1: reclaim their green card status instead of trying to follow
Speaker 1: a more formal process. Which is what's known as the
Speaker 1: motion to reopen process, which gives discretion to the Board
Speaker 1: of Immigration appealc either granted or not granted. And so
Speaker 1: that's the issue is that is not a certain thing.
Speaker 1: It requires discretion. Whereas if this decision had been decided
Speaker 1: in favor of the foreign national, then it would have
Speaker 1: been a guarantee thing that if you enter the United States,
Speaker 1: you're triggering back your green card, because the basis for
Speaker 1: saying that you can't be convicted under the statute is
Speaker 1: that you don't have a removal order meeting, you automatically
Speaker 1: got your green card back. So tell us what the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court decided. So what's the Supreme Court decided was
Speaker 1: that the statute the way it's written, which requires three
Speaker 1: different elements in order for someone to challenge a removal
Speaker 1: order as part of one of these persecutions, is a
Speaker 1: very clear statute, and that statute requires all three things
Speaker 1: to be done by the person who's challenging it. Number One,
Speaker 1: that they had to exhaust any administrative remedies that they
Speaker 1: had before challenging it, meaning that when the removal order
Speaker 1: was first given, they had to appeal the removal order
Speaker 1: to the Board of it Aggration Appeals. Second, that the
Speaker 1: removal proceedings improperly depride them of the opportunity for judicial review,
Speaker 1: meaning not only did they have to appeal to the
Speaker 1: Board of Immigration Appeals, they actually have to take a
Speaker 1: petition for review in the Court of Appeals and lose
Speaker 1: that too. And then three, that entry of the order
Speaker 1: was fundamentally unfair, and so they had already won under
Speaker 1: that third prong that it was unfair because obviously the
Speaker 1: court decided that the basis for the removal order no
Speaker 1: longer existed. But these individuals had lost under the first
Speaker 1: and the second prong as well everyone else, because everyone
Speaker 1: who's gone through the criminal process will have had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to administratively exhaust the remedies and go to the
Speaker 1: Court of Appeals. And so from that standpoint, what the
Speaker 1: court is basically saying is this isn't the way we
Speaker 1: wanted to challenge and the removal order that became invalid.
Speaker 1: What we wanted to do is to file these oceans
Speaker 1: to reopen in the Board of Immigration Appeals. We don't
Speaker 1: want to just meeking in the country and then saying
Speaker 1: your green card has been returned because you snuck into
Speaker 1: the country. So now is it surprising that this was
Speaker 1: unanimous and that the majority opinion was written by Justice Sonia.
Speaker 1: So to Mayor, the reason I think this ended up
Speaker 1: being a unanimous opinion is for two reasons. One, I
Speaker 1: do think there's a desire amongst the members of the court,
Speaker 1: given a polarized things, are to try to compromise in
Speaker 1: cases where compromise is available. And here all the Court
Speaker 1: really did is say the statute says what the statute says.
Speaker 1: If you want to come back later and to on
Speaker 1: a theory that it's unconstitutional in a particular case because
Speaker 1: it's so unfair that this person should have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to get their green card back, do it. But what
Speaker 1: you can't do is do what the Ninth Circuit said
Speaker 1: and say that the statute doesn't really mean what it needs. Yes,
Speaker 1: it does. And so if you think that the result
Speaker 1: is an unconstitutional, you aconian result, you can come back
Speaker 1: and sue and say that and say the result here
Speaker 1: was unconstitutional because it's so aconian it violates the process.
Speaker 1: You can do that. But what you can't do is
Speaker 1: reinterpret the meaning of a very clear statue. And so
Speaker 1: that's Why I think you saw the nine to zero
Speaker 1: is the ruling ends up being very very narrow. It
Speaker 1: doesn't go into the constitutional realm. It leads that for
Speaker 1: another day and tea. It provides a sign of good
Speaker 1: faith from the more liberal wing of the court, we
Speaker 1: will join you when we can. We're asking you on
Speaker 1: a future case to join us when you can. And
Speaker 1: I think you've seen that in a couple of these
Speaker 1: other immigration cases, where you've had Justice Course that reach out,
Speaker 1: where you've had Justice Robert reach out, where you've had
Speaker 1: Justice Cony Barrett reach out, and so I do think
Speaker 1: you're seeing some of this fourth trading going on in
Speaker 1: the immigration real This case span the Trump and Biden administrations,
Speaker 1: and the Biden administration has changed positions in several cases,
Speaker 1: but not in this case. Why do you think it
Speaker 1: chose not to change positions in this case? I think
Speaker 1: for the same reason that Justice sort of myorrothy opinion here,
Speaker 1: which is that the statute is clear. So when you
Speaker 1: have a statute that's clear, the Department of Justice, even
Speaker 1: if they don't like what the statute says, has an
Speaker 1: obligation to defend the clear statute. There is a separate
Speaker 1: question as to whether the statute is unconstitutional. But the
Speaker 1: way that should be resolved, in my view, especially by
Speaker 1: this Department of Justice, is to just instruct the Board
Speaker 1: of Immigration Appeal whenever you have a motion to reopen
Speaker 1: on the basis of a conviction that no longer is valid,
Speaker 1: you should reopen the case and give the person their
Speaker 1: green card back. And that's the way they can solve that,
Speaker 1: and they should issue that guidance. I would encourage them
Speaker 1: to do that, and that way you eliminate this horrible,
Speaker 1: perverse incentive for the way people to get their green
Speaker 1: card back would be to sneak across the country. What
Speaker 1: are the long term implications here as far as federal prosecutors,
Speaker 1: are they more likely to pursue criminal reentry charges? Yes?
Speaker 1: I think Now what you will see is that as
Speaker 1: the immigration enforcement portfolio moves away from the interior, because
Speaker 1: the Biden administration doesn't want to be deporting people who
Speaker 1: have roots into the United States, and as that portfolio
Speaker 1: moves to the border, what you will see is more
Speaker 1: of these prosecutions in cases where the government has spent
Speaker 1: resources in trying to already remove someone from the United States.
Speaker 1: And what I think will be key is this balanced
Speaker 1: perspective where you say, the reason we're doing this is
Speaker 1: because you have this other avenue available to you, and
Speaker 1: so you should have used this other avenue. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: be speaking across the border. That creates all kinds of
Speaker 1: problems with people trying to speak across the border that
Speaker 1: we'd rather prevent. Has there been a difference in enforcement
Speaker 1: under the immigration enforcement under the Biden administration. Absolutely, there
Speaker 1: has been a huge difference in enforcement, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there's actually some new stories today about this difference in enforcement,
Speaker 1: about how the numbers are at historic lows with regard
Speaker 1: to interior enforcement, meaning people who are living in the
Speaker 1: United States being placed into removal proceedings and being removed
Speaker 1: outside of the United States. You're seeing dramatic decreases, and
Speaker 1: that almost historic decreases that you haven't seen for twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty years. On that frame, there used to be
Speaker 1: this rule of thumb that Ice would or Sugar could
Speaker 1: deport four hundred thousand people per year, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about maybe forty thousand this year. So it's a dramatic
Speaker 1: decrease in the number of people being removed from the
Speaker 1: United States. And we haven't heard much lately, maybe because
Speaker 1: there's so much other news that we haven't heard about
Speaker 1: the situation at the border. Is it still untenable at
Speaker 1: the border? Well, the complication with the border right now
Speaker 1: is that the processing of individuals is actually moving much
Speaker 1: faster than they used to, and so it becomes a
Speaker 1: more complicated debate because then the debate becomes solely about
Speaker 1: are the numbers of individuals growing up at the border
Speaker 1: unacceptable visa the Some desire to keep that number down
Speaker 1: to zero, but it's not a problem anymore in terms
Speaker 1: of the processing speed of getting people out of facilities
Speaker 1: that have terrible conditions, that's moving quite quickly through the process.
Speaker 1: And so there's nowhere you can film as a video
Speaker 1: group to show a border catastrophe right now. And that
Speaker 1: is actually creating quite a political conundrum because you have
Speaker 1: individual was on one end of the political spectrum saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't matter. There's still going to be over
Speaker 1: a million people coming near illegally entering the United States
Speaker 1: New Years, and so they'll make, from an American perspective,
Speaker 1: a claim that that's unacceptable, and you'll have other individuals saying,
Speaker 1: what is the problem they're going to go through the
Speaker 1: system and hopefully they will show up the court and
Speaker 1: if they win, they'll say and if they lose, they'll
Speaker 1: be deported. And so that will be the argument on
Speaker 1: the other side, and it will just be up to
Speaker 1: the American people to decide if that's the way they
Speaker 1: wanted the southern border to be processed or that, because
Speaker 1: that's basically what we're setting up to have happened for
Speaker 1: the remainder of the year, a million compared to what
Speaker 1: in other years. So historically talking about the nineties and
Speaker 1: the first decade of the thousands, that was what we
Speaker 1: were seeing. We were seeing about a million people being
Speaker 1: apprehended trying to cross the border. Those numbers decreased dramatically,
Speaker 1: both of them of the Obama administration and the Trump
Speaker 1: administration as different wall mechanisms inventing mechanisms to place, and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand border patrol people were installed into the southern border,
Speaker 1: and so those numbers had decreased, and then COVID had
Speaker 1: made it dramatically decreased. And so it just depends what
Speaker 1: you're using as your baseline. If you're using the last
Speaker 1: year of the Trump administration, well then certainly that's going
Speaker 1: to be a huge difference because of the last year
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration. We were talking about one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand or so people being allowed to enter through the
Speaker 1: southern border and make their claim, So we were not
Speaker 1: talking about a lot of people. But if you just
Speaker 1: reverse it to the first year of the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: we were talking about maybe four or five hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: So it just depends what you're talking about. Now, it
Speaker 1: is greater than a year during the Trump administration, that's
Speaker 1: certainly true, but it's not greater than it used to
Speaker 1: be under the Bush administration. And so the question is
Speaker 1: just what is your historical perspective for this? And finally,
Speaker 1: are there any other immigration decisions coming from the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court this term? Not this term, but I think in
Speaker 1: the future you're going to be looking up, I think
Speaker 1: for the BCA litigation, which is gonna be the big
Speaker 1: litigation that's coming. Uh, that's going to be coming. And
Speaker 1: then as some of these you know that we will
Speaker 1: come from Judge Ayman in the Southern Districts of Texas
Speaker 1: that he invalidates DACCA, and then that works its way
Speaker 1: up to the Court of Appeals of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: So you'll be seeing that litigation, and then you'll also
Speaker 1: be seeing some other litigation moving forward on these issues
Speaker 1: of state challenging what the Biden administration is doing in
Speaker 1: terms of its prosebutorial discrisis on immigration enforcement, and so
Speaker 1: those we'll be talking about those in the in the
Speaker 1: upcoming months. Thanks for being in the Bloomberg Law Show. Leon.
Speaker 1: That's Leon fresh Go of Hollanden Knight and that's Difference
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