Speaker 1: La Latino USA listener, it's me Maria no Hosa. So
Speaker 1: you probably know I host another award winning program. It's
Speaker 1: called In the Fic. It's our politics podcast from Futuro
Speaker 1: Media where I, along with several guest hosts who are fabulous,
Speaker 1: we talk about politics unfiltered, from race to culture to immigration.
Speaker 1: We cover it all and we drop some singers, if
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So today on Latino USA,
Speaker 1: we are going to share one of our latest ITT episodes.
Speaker 1: It's about immigration and what we can expect from Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's second presidential term. On this episode, my ITT co
Speaker 1: host Baula Ramos joins me. She's a journalist and writer,
Speaker 1: and we're also joined by Jacob Soberoff, NBC News National correspondent.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about his new documentary film Separated,
Speaker 1: which dives into the impact of Trump's family separation policy. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, dear listener, here's our conversation, and don't
Speaker 1: forget to subscribe and like in the Thick wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, Enjoy the show. Yo, what a ITT listener.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to In the Thick. I'm Maria ango Hosa
Speaker 1: this week, joined by my co host journalist and author
Speaker 1: Baola Ramos today, who is in the liberated territory of Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: what's up?
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 1: Oh yea May? And joining us from Manhattan. Yes, thirty
Speaker 1: Rock itself is NBC National correspondent Jacob sober Off. He
Speaker 1: has a big week ahead of him because on December seventh,
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to catch the film Separated
Speaker 1: on MSNBC on prime time. The film is based on
Speaker 1: his reporting about Trump's family separation policy. So Jacob, welcome
Speaker 1: back to it T. It's good to see you, and.
Speaker 3: It is so good to see you guys. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for having me.
Speaker 1: This is politics unfiltered. Let's get into it. So Jacob,
Speaker 1: here at it T. We acknowledge the fact that we
Speaker 1: as journalists are full human beings. We like to ask you,
Speaker 1: like what's your emotional temperature? Check like how are you doing?
Speaker 3: Anxious?
Speaker 4: But that's today and always, Maria, I'm a man with
Speaker 4: many therapists.
Speaker 1: We love that.
Speaker 3: It's true. Look, I feel grateful.
Speaker 4: I feel grateful to be here in this moment, to
Speaker 4: have this job and career and to get to work
Speaker 4: with people like the two of you. But I know
Speaker 4: that this is a really tough time for a lot
Speaker 4: of people, and just remain very aware of that. And
Speaker 4: there's a lot of uncertainty, and speaking of what I
Speaker 4: talk about in therapy, uncertainty is a hard thing, and
Speaker 4: I think we all have some level of that now
Speaker 4: in our personal lives and our professional lives, watching what's
Speaker 4: happening in the world, and so you know, no bullshit,
Speaker 4: it's nice to be here with the two of you,
Speaker 4: to have a sort of a regular conversation at a
Speaker 4: time when I think we all need it.
Speaker 1: I need it, Paula, your temperature check, Komotuta boys Adain.
Speaker 5: I had the privilege of escaping to Miami this last week,
Speaker 5: and I think Miami is an interesting place right now,
Speaker 5: the newly flipped Trump Miami Land. But somehow, though it
Speaker 5: may be the sun or the beach, like, there's this
Speaker 5: ability to completely detach yourself from politics and the news,
Speaker 5: and I literally spent the last four days doing that.
Speaker 5: This morning, I felt great, and now that I'm back
Speaker 5: in New York City talking to both of you from Brooklyn,
Speaker 5: that anxiety and uncertainty definitely starts to creep in. And
Speaker 5: one thing that I did notice though in Miami that
Speaker 5: was hilarious. There are people that are actively preparing welcome
Speaker 5: parties for the January six ers that they believe will
Speaker 5: be soon pardoned, and so that was that definitely made
Speaker 5: me anxious again. Other than that, I'm.
Speaker 4: Going to say, you look very relaxed, But now that
Speaker 4: I heard that, I stress is building.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's definitely starting to feel like a different reality there.
Speaker 6: How are you doing, Madia?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's going on? Riyah?
Speaker 1: So I also disconnected, but I was far from Miami.
Speaker 1: I was in our little teeny tiny cottage with all
Speaker 1: six of us. I made a great turkey, fabulous But
Speaker 1: I'm also really happy to be here and happy to
Speaker 1: be with both you, Jacob and Bauda. It's great. So
Speaker 1: we're approaching this second Trump presidency and we're going to
Speaker 1: spend today's show looking at Trump's immigration policy, what it
Speaker 1: has meant for the lives of millions of American families
Speaker 1: in the past, what the future could hold, and what
Speaker 1: communities are doing to prepare, and how we're all kind
Speaker 1: of sitting or standing with this new reality. So, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, Jacob, back in twenty twenty, you released a
Speaker 1: book titled Separated Inside an American tragedy. It detailed the
Speaker 1: Trump administration's immigration to terns policy, which led to the
Speaker 1: separation of four thousand, two hundred and twenty seven children,
Speaker 1: probably more from their parents, and it has been denounced
Speaker 1: worldwide as a violation of basic human rights. Right this week,
Speaker 1: a documentary based on that reporting by acclaimed filmmaker Errol
Speaker 1: Morris is going to premiere on MSNBC.
Speaker 7: We were very concerned that some children's separations would be
Speaker 7: permanent because the parents would be removed from the United
Speaker 7: States through deportation. So the families had made the journey together,
Speaker 7: but now the children would remain in the United States.
Speaker 7: These are state created portions. These are families separated by
Speaker 7: action of the federal government as a tool of immigration policy.
Speaker 1: So when you wrap the documentary, you put up a
Speaker 1: shocking number right on thy fifty two children still separated
Speaker 1: from their parents as a result of Trump's policy. I
Speaker 1: believe you have a new number. But Jacob, can you
Speaker 1: just take us to the origins of this policy to
Speaker 1: the present moment, What the effects have been on the
Speaker 1: lives of these separated families, on the lives of the
Speaker 1: children who are still separated, and what a new version
Speaker 1: of this policy could look like under an incoming Trump administration.
Speaker 4: So you mentioned that number of one thousand and fifty
Speaker 4: two the shows up at the end of the movie Maria,
Speaker 4: And what's crazy is that numbers even higher than it
Speaker 4: was when we locked picture on the film.
Speaker 3: I figure today the.
Speaker 4: Number of children without confirmed reunifications for the Trump family
Speaker 4: separation policy is at three hundred and sixty kids without
Speaker 4: confirmed reunifications. And you know, it was warned at the
Speaker 4: time of the policy that they could be permanent orphans.
Speaker 4: And to just sort of rewind here, there were operators,
Speaker 4: many of whom were coming back to government now back
Speaker 4: in the Obama administration, people like Tom Homan who wanted
Speaker 4: to implement a family separation policy, and it was proposed
Speaker 4: and it was rejected by the Homeland Security officials at
Speaker 4: the time, namely Jay Johnson, who was the Secretary of
Speaker 4: Homeland Security and one of his deputies, all one Hundre Maiorchis,
Speaker 4: who today is the Secretary of Homeland Security. But you know,
Speaker 4: as early as Valentine's Day twenty seventeen, and you'll see
Speaker 4: it in this film, a bunch of these folks got
Speaker 4: in a room at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.
Speaker 3: D C.
Speaker 4: And they almost in a gleeful way, proposed again bringing
Speaker 4: back this idea of a family separation policy. And almost immediately,
Speaker 4: do you guys know this, down in the Elpaso sector
Speaker 4: of the border patrol, early on in twenty seventeen, they
Speaker 4: started separating kids even before this was an official policy.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't until the spring of twenty eighteen when
Speaker 4: the policy sort of burst out into public consciousness, and
Speaker 4: ultimately the ACLU says, fifty five hundred children were taken
Speaker 4: away from their parents deliberately for no other reason than
Speaker 4: to hurt them, to scare other people from coming to
Speaker 4: this country. And obviously, you know, we all know that
Speaker 4: policy failed spectacularly, and I should say it wasn't a
Speaker 4: failure for the fifty five hundred kids who went through this.
Speaker 4: They are going to have a lifetime of trauma. They
Speaker 4: were subjected to government sanctioned child abuse, in the words
Speaker 4: of the American Academy of Pediatrics. But it failed because
Speaker 4: punishment has never stopped people from coming to the United
Speaker 4: States of America in search of a better life for safety,
Speaker 4: and that goes for Democratic and Republican presidents. We can
Speaker 4: go through all of this. But you know as well
Speaker 4: as I do, better than I do that. You know,
Speaker 4: Bill Clinton created this prevention through de terrence model.
Speaker 8: Our administration that's moved aggressively to secure our borders more
Speaker 8: by hiring a record number of new border guards, by
Speaker 8: deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by
Speaker 8: cracking down on illegal hiring.
Speaker 3: George W.
Speaker 4: Bush supersized the border patrol when he created DHS.
Speaker 9: Dozens of agencies charged with homeland security will now be
Speaker 9: located within one cabinet department with the mandate and legal
Speaker 9: authority to protect our people.
Speaker 4: Barack Obama deported more people than any president in history, and.
Speaker 10: No matter how decent they are, no matter there are reasons,
Speaker 10: the eleven million who broke these laws should be held accountable, which.
Speaker 4: Is why, like that Donald Trump was able to separate
Speaker 4: all those thousands of children from their parents.
Speaker 3: The system was set up that way.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: And here we are today again with the specter of
Speaker 4: mass deportations looming. I reported from the floor of the Conventions.
Speaker 4: I saw those signs up close, right in front of
Speaker 4: my face. And mass deportation is family separation by another name.
Speaker 4: It's not ripping kids away from their parents at the border,
Speaker 4: but it is ripping parents away from kids in the interior.
Speaker 4: What we're about to see has actually already played at
Speaker 4: happened before fan separation, and it's about to happen again.
Speaker 1: You know, Paola, when this was happening, I remember saying
Speaker 1: family separation is actually part of American history.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear. They took Indigenous children away from their parents,
Speaker 1: they took enslaved black children away from their parents, yes,
Speaker 1: they took Japanese American children, yes, and separated. So it's
Speaker 1: been a historic thing. Bo, It's not new, definitely.
Speaker 5: And I think that's why this film is so important
Speaker 5: now because I think you are reminding people of that
Speaker 5: moral outrage that people felt in twenty seventeen and twenty
Speaker 5: eighteen and right before the twenty twenty election, right, And
Speaker 5: in a way, this film I wish it would have
Speaker 5: been sort of released before. But I think that's why
Speaker 5: this is important to have this conversation now, to go
Speaker 5: back to what you saw back then, so that people
Speaker 5: remember what's about to happen.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: And so I'm thinking, Jacob, of that clip that we
Speaker 5: see in the film of you walking through that detention
Speaker 5: center in McAllen. Obviously it was facilitated through Katie Miller,
Speaker 5: right who that was.
Speaker 4: Invited by Steven Miller's wife. It's like unbelieve they fell
Speaker 4: in love over the family separation policy, got married after it.
Speaker 6: Incredible love story.
Speaker 5: So take us back inside that detention center, like, tell
Speaker 5: us once again what you saw back then.
Speaker 3: It was two days, Paula.
Speaker 4: It was June thirteenth, twenty eighteen, and I was in
Speaker 4: Los Angeles and Katie Waldman then Katie Waldman, who became
Speaker 4: Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's now wife, said you got to
Speaker 4: get down and see family separations, you know, for yourself.
Speaker 4: And I went inside the former Walmart it was called
Speaker 4: Casa Padre in Brownsville, two hundred and fifty thousand square
Speaker 4: feet and there was one thousand boys inside, ten to
Speaker 4: seventeen years old, maybe more than a thousand. Actually most
Speaker 4: of them were there only because they had been separated
Speaker 4: from their parents. It was over capacity, you know. All
Speaker 4: I could think about was this place is called the shelter,
Speaker 4: but I'm looking at these kids and they're incarcerated here.
Speaker 4: And then a couple days later she invited me back
Speaker 4: again to go in the epicenter of separations on Father's
Speaker 4: Day to Ursula, the Central Processing Center in McCallan, Texas.
Speaker 4: And that is where I saw what we all know now,
Speaker 4: kids locked up in cages on the concrete floors, supervised
Speaker 4: by security contractors, literally in a watchtower, under those milar blankets,
Speaker 4: and I'll never forget it.
Speaker 10: Let's go live now to MSNBC's Jacob Soberoff and McCallen, Texas. Jacob,
Speaker 10: you have been one of the very few journalists allowed
Speaker 10: to see one of the facilities where these migrant children
Speaker 10: are being held.
Speaker 6: Tell us what.
Speaker 10: It is that we can't see.
Speaker 11: This is the first time ever that children have been
Speaker 11: separated on a systematic basis. Look at those photos right
Speaker 11: there from their parents, and that is because of the
Speaker 11: Trump administration. People in here are locked up in cages
Speaker 11: essentially what looked like animal kennels.
Speaker 4: I don't know any other way to describe it. That's
Speaker 4: what they wanted us to see. It was no cameras,
Speaker 4: it was pad and paper only, and they wanted us
Speaker 4: to come outside and say what we had seen to
Speaker 4: scare people from coming and also scare Congress into an
Speaker 4: acting stricter immigration laws, and I look back now and
Speaker 4: Erin Morris asked me, film, so you're a tool. Basically
Speaker 4: you went in there and did their bidding. And what
Speaker 4: I said to him was Bigley, It's true, as Donald
Speaker 4: Trump might say. But what happened after that is I
Speaker 4: think what inspires me actually about that moment in time,
Speaker 4: but also about this film and about where we're headed.
Speaker 4: People stood up all around the world in reaction to
Speaker 4: what they saw, and it wasn't a bipartisan outrage.
Speaker 3: It was a universal outrage. The Pope spoke out.
Speaker 4: If you remember, hundreds of thousands of people were in
Speaker 4: the street after we came out of those facilities, and importantly,
Speaker 4: I didn't mention. Ginger Thompson published that audio with Pro Publica,
Speaker 4: and everybody heard the cries of the children in the
Speaker 4: border patrol, mocking them inside those border patrol stations, and
Speaker 4: the world stood up and forced Donald Trump on June twentieth,
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen into basically it is most significant, if not
Speaker 4: the only major policy reversal of his first term, which
Speaker 4: was he stood down on family separation, and he didn't
Speaker 4: say I was morally appalled by what happened. He said,
Speaker 4: I didn't like the site and the feeling of the
Speaker 4: families being separated. He didn't like what was going down
Speaker 4: on television or the audio that he was hearing coming through.
Speaker 3: And I think it's a lesson.
Speaker 4: It's a lesson looking backwards, and it's a lesson thinking
Speaker 4: about this time period we're about to go through right now.
Speaker 1: Jacob. I believe the term that I use when we
Speaker 1: see the children who have now been released right and
Speaker 1: are being taken from one place to another, I believe
Speaker 1: that's government trafficking of children. And I just want to
Speaker 1: wonder if we're on the same page if you call
Speaker 1: it that too.
Speaker 4: Look, I go by what the experts have said, and
Speaker 4: what the experts have said is not only as I mentioned,
Speaker 4: the Republican appointed judge called it one of the most
Speaker 4: shameful chapters in the history of the country, but the
Speaker 4: American Academy of Pediatrics at the time said it was
Speaker 4: government sanctioned child abuse. Physicians for human rights, Nobel Peace
Speaker 4: Prize winning organizations said what the Trump administration did to
Speaker 4: those children met the United Nations definition of torture. You know,
Speaker 4: we've all talked to children who have gone through this policy.
Speaker 4: They will live with a lifetime of trauma that can
Speaker 4: never be undone, no matter how much financial restitution. By
Speaker 4: the way, most of them aren't getting any because the
Speaker 4: Biden administration's fighting them court nor psychological treatment that they
Speaker 4: will get. You hear in the film Jonathan White and
Speaker 4: Jalen Sulog, two career civil servants who did everything they
Speaker 4: could to help stop this policy, say this is what
Speaker 4: they warned their superiors was going to happen, that they
Speaker 4: were going to damage these children irreparably, and they went
Speaker 4: forward with it anyway. And that's sort of the level
Speaker 4: of I think, you know, intentionality. People will sometimes say, well,
Speaker 4: how do you, as a journalist use the word cruel.
Speaker 4: Go look at the documents, You see the emails on
Speaker 4: the screen in the film. This is what they were
Speaker 4: intending to do. They didn't want to reunite children when
Speaker 4: they were starting to be reunited with their parents. One
Speaker 4: official called it a fiasco. The other one said, this
Speaker 4: undermines the entire effort when the families were being put
Speaker 4: back together after separation, instead of deporting the parents without
Speaker 4: the children. It was the point, and it's non opinion.
Speaker 4: It's just an objective fact. When you look at the emails,
Speaker 4: You hear what they said, you listen to the officials
Speaker 4: who warned about the policy.
Speaker 12: This was the point.
Speaker 5: I can't help but think about this idea that since
Speaker 5: you were reporting in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, how much
Speaker 5: have we changed as a country? Like have we become
Speaker 5: numb now? When we're talking about this? And I guess
Speaker 5: my question to both of you, Maria as well, is
Speaker 5: do you believe or do you expect that when Holman
Speaker 5: walks in, and when Steven Miller walks in, and when
Speaker 5: we see a more aggressive iteration of what has already
Speaker 5: been documented, do we expect this country to still have
Speaker 5: the same collective moral outrage as the one that we
Speaker 5: saw years ago.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say absolutely. In fact, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to be straight up honest, because I am right.
Speaker 1: We're a journalists. So I went to get a manicure today.
Speaker 3: By the way, I love a good many Petty. I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna admit it.
Speaker 1: Also, So while I'm at the MANI petty this morning
Speaker 1: here in Harlem, and I'm looking around and these are
Speaker 1: women who I know. They're all immigrants. Of course I
Speaker 1: don't know their status because no one knows anybody's status.
Speaker 1: And I just put out, I did a little social
Speaker 1: media thing. I was like, Aha, all the lovely ladies
Speaker 1: who went to vote for Donald Trump and who love
Speaker 1: to go get their mani petties from all the immigrant women.
Speaker 1: Will they even notice if they're gone? Do they even care?
Speaker 1: Because of course you cannot tell our status by looking
Speaker 1: at us, and so it's like, will they go out
Speaker 1: and use their bodies? As Dolores Werta says, it's all
Speaker 1: about people power, right, you have to put your body
Speaker 1: where your politics are. I don't know, and I hate
Speaker 1: to say that. I wish I could say yes. I
Speaker 1: know that in some immigrant communities, people are getting prepared.
Speaker 1: There's trainings about what to do when ice appears. They
Speaker 1: are getting ready. They know your rights training skin, they
Speaker 1: know your rights trainings. So it's getting very ugly. But
Speaker 1: the answer to the question is will there be an outpouring?
Speaker 1: I don't know. But then again, our country is very unpredictable,
Speaker 1: right There has been massive demonstrations across our country too,
Speaker 1: so you know, anything could happen in some ways. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute about let me ask you about your reporting,
Speaker 1: because you spent election night with mixed status families in
Speaker 1: Arizona when you were reporting for Telemundo and MSNBC. So
Speaker 1: right now, according to ford US, there are about twenty
Speaker 1: two million people living in the United States in mixed
Speaker 1: status families. Right, We're going to go to a clip
Speaker 1: from your visit to the home of the ed nandis family.
Speaker 6: There sign Donald Trump nass Me and.
Speaker 3: My husband we have talked about maybe just moving to
Speaker 3: a different country.
Speaker 5: You would literally well someone would say, is self deport
Speaker 5: You've been thinking.
Speaker 2: Right, I feel like my parents and our whole family
Speaker 2: has contributed so much, you know, to this country. You know,
Speaker 2: having a business, having businesses here, paying tax is like
Speaker 2: giving so much and still dealing with so much racism
Speaker 2: and so much hate towards our community.
Speaker 1: So a BAOUTA what have you heard from undocumented people
Speaker 1: and activists since you're reporting? Then, what's the sense of Okay,
Speaker 1: this man is now in power and now this stuff
Speaker 1: is really going to happen. What are you hearing?
Speaker 6: I feel like I'm hearing two sides of the same story. Right.
Speaker 5: There's the one side, which is the story of resilience. Right,
Speaker 5: and in a place like Maricopa County in Arizona. I think,
Speaker 5: and we've talked about this before, I think the grassroots
Speaker 5: movement feels confident enough that they have the infrastructure that's
Speaker 5: necessary to protect their people.
Speaker 6: Now, this isn't you for them.
Speaker 5: They've obviously lived through the air of Juripio, and so
Speaker 5: when they say like we are home, they mean it.
Speaker 5: But then on the other side, I think the fear
Speaker 5: is inevitable. A lot of the families that I talked
Speaker 5: to are actively considering things like self deportation, which is
Speaker 5: precisely sort of the heart of the Republican's strategy. It's
Speaker 5: still so much and still so much uncertainty, and this
Speaker 5: idea of chaos that in and of itself will will
Speaker 5: drive people away. I mean, as we know, during our
Speaker 5: Pio and sp ten seventy there was a mass exodus,
Speaker 5: so many folks went to New Mexico and other states.
Speaker 5: But now the question that people have is where do
Speaker 5: you go, right if in fact they do implement these
Speaker 5: mass importations. And so I think it's a combination of
Speaker 5: those two things. I know, I keep obsessing around this
Speaker 5: idea of like how will people react? But this is
Speaker 5: when Jacob I think of the difference of like ourselves
Speaker 5: as journalists and in the mediums that we typically use.
Speaker 5: And then suddenly, what is the difference of now exposing
Speaker 5: this story through this medium, you know, through this type
Speaker 5: of like narrative see in this this word in English.
Speaker 5: I can't say vignetes, vignette vignettes exactly.
Speaker 1: You just said it exactly.
Speaker 6: Oh, give it, let me say it again.
Speaker 1: We're not perfect.
Speaker 5: No, But my question is as a journalist, now that
Speaker 5: you've been able to work with this incredible Hollywood filmmaker,
Speaker 5: what have you learned about the power storytelling? No, when
Speaker 5: thinking about these families that Mariias asking me about and
Speaker 5: how we can get other folks to sort of understand
Speaker 5: what's at stake, what have you learned around like filmmaking and.
Speaker 6: Sort of the power that Hollywood has that we don't have.
Speaker 4: Honestly, Actually, the movie is a perfect example of this
Speaker 4: because Errol Morris, in all the films he's ever made,
Speaker 4: you know, he does these forensic analyzes of bureaucracy, and
Speaker 4: this film is that, but he also employs narrative vignettes
Speaker 4: and the idea of using fictionalized characters to sort of
Speaker 4: fill in the blanks.
Speaker 3: And in this film.
Speaker 4: He does it to depict a mother and a son
Speaker 4: who are separated from one another after coming from Guatemala.
Speaker 3: To the United States.
Speaker 4: And the reason he does it, to your question, is
Speaker 4: that the footage doesn't exist of families being separated in
Speaker 4: real time in those detention centers that we went into.
Speaker 4: I was sent into those facilities, specifically without a camera,
Speaker 4: with a patent paper to come out and describe it,
Speaker 4: but not to show it, and was hand a propaganda
Speaker 4: foot by the US government in order to show it.
Speaker 4: So what Erl has done he employed the tactics of
Speaker 4: using fiction and tells the story to get to an
Speaker 4: emotional truth through narrative filmmaking. And like I said, I
Speaker 4: hope one day every single one of the fifty five
Speaker 4: hundred kids is going to be able to speak out
Speaker 4: on their own like the Shoa Foundation did for survivors
Speaker 4: of the Holocaust, but in their own time and in
Speaker 4: their own way. And so what Erol has done is
Speaker 4: filled in the gaps of the bureaucratic mess that was
Speaker 4: family separation with a narrative story that depicts this mother
Speaker 4: and child.
Speaker 3: In the way really that only he can.
Speaker 4: And so I guess that's part of what I'm thinking
Speaker 4: about going forward, how do you tell those stories in
Speaker 4: the absence of being inside those places? Is there a
Speaker 4: way to have families tell their own stories? Is there
Speaker 4: a way to get inside? But also, if he had
Speaker 4: picked one particular family today, what would happen to them?
Speaker 4: They'd have a huge target on their backs by the
Speaker 4: Trump administration sactly. Remember, the families that were separated by
Speaker 4: Trump and were reunified by Biden are only here with
Speaker 4: thirty six months rolling parole.
Speaker 3: None of them have permanent.
Speaker 4: Legal status, and so at any time, virtually all those families,
Speaker 4: if they haven't gotten a green card or found their
Speaker 4: way to attract the citizenship, are at risk of deportation
Speaker 4: after separation by Trump in the first term. So I
Speaker 4: don't have an easy answer. I think it's a case
Speaker 4: by case situation. I remember, during what we thought was
Speaker 4: going to be the downfall of DOC in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: I went to a campus with a documented student and
Speaker 4: we walked around in between classes live on MSNBC and
Speaker 4: talked like you did an election night. What are people
Speaker 4: who are in the crosshairs of these policies comfortable with?
Speaker 3: Number one is the.
Speaker 4: First question, the most important question, and then number two,
Speaker 4: how do you do it in a way that tells
Speaker 4: the truth to people about what's really happening in the country.
Speaker 4: Because I do believe that people endorse mass deportations, but
Speaker 4: what I don't believe is they really understand what mass
Speaker 4: deportations are right, and what the ramifications of mass deportations are,
Speaker 4: and how when they're reminded it's actually really a supersizing
Speaker 4: of family separation that we all saw and were morally
Speaker 4: outraged by in twenty eighteen. I think a lot of
Speaker 4: people who say in those polls, yeah, I'm all for
Speaker 4: mass deportation are going to think differently.
Speaker 1: That's because they just think that, you know, yeah, those
Speaker 1: gang members go mass support them, and it's like, again,
Speaker 1: we don't have at that point, we don't have an
Speaker 1: immigration problem. If we have ten million gang members running around,
Speaker 1: we have a crime problem, and we don't have a
Speaker 1: crime problem.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. And you remember Maria who used the
Speaker 4: line Felon's not families. Wasn't Trump first, it was Obama,
Speaker 4: and that led to more people being deported than any
Speaker 4: president in the history of the United States exactly.
Speaker 1: So the thing about it that both of you know,
Speaker 1: but our listeners may not. Is that when they have
Speaker 1: that list of who they're going to go get the roundup,
Speaker 1: they're doing this overnight. They're arriving in people's homes when
Speaker 1: I witness this, and actually in La they are taking
Speaker 1: people from their homes at five o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: so nobody sees it. And that's part of the point.
Speaker 1: We can't get in with cameras any longer, and so
Speaker 1: then the story can't be told.
Speaker 5: What's been interesting even just being in Miami for the
Speaker 5: last couple of days. Now suddenly the narrative is changing, right.
Speaker 5: It used to be deport them all, and now suddenly
Speaker 5: you're starting to hear people say no, no, no, no, but
Speaker 5: a solus criminale.
Speaker 3: Sol criminals only.
Speaker 5: And now is when it starts to become very real,
Speaker 5: because now it's when suddenly folks are looking around them
Speaker 5: and they're understanding how immigration is deeply personal.
Speaker 6: Really you can't really escape it.
Speaker 5: Now your nanny may be undocumented and while you're the
Speaker 5: teachers has daka and and very often I've heard folks
Speaker 5: that that I know employee undocumented folks in their houses
Speaker 5: that are starting to say the same thing.
Speaker 6: Well, they're not going to go after after her, right
Speaker 6: because she's one of the good ones.
Speaker 5: And so, like I've said in the past, it's no
Speaker 5: longer up to any voter to decide who looks American
Speaker 5: enough or.
Speaker 6: Not, or or who's who's lading or not.
Speaker 5: Like now it will be up to the Tom Holmans
Speaker 5: of the world, who have already been extremely clear and
Speaker 5: said pack up your bags. Yeah, and he didn't specify who,
Speaker 5: and you know who's part of that.
Speaker 6: It's it's a general statement.
Speaker 3: And define criminal.
Speaker 4: You know, this criminal needs exactly you walked across the border.
Speaker 3: In between ports of entry there you go. That how
Speaker 3: you're defining criminals.
Speaker 6: That's how they define criminals.
Speaker 3: So you're defining it as a violent crime.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And so that's not a small finite number of people, guys.
Speaker 1: So Jacob, let's talk a little bit about policy, right,
Speaker 1: because a lot of these far right figures are going
Speaker 1: to come back. Right, They're going to be in the
Speaker 1: administration Stephen Miller, of course, the mastermind of the entire policy,
Speaker 1: who is clearly openly embracing white supremacist policies racist ideologies.
Speaker 1: What is going to happen when they are now again
Speaker 1: back into determining policy in the US government. What are
Speaker 1: you expecting?
Speaker 4: What I learned in covering the famous separation policy and
Speaker 4: then writing the book, and then especially making the film
Speaker 4: and watching Errol Morris's interviews, you know, and whenever morese
Speaker 4: interview with somebody, you see into their soul because of
Speaker 4: the way he does it. He created a device called
Speaker 4: the terotron where they look directly into it, and they're
Speaker 4: looking at his face and he's looking at theirs as
Speaker 4: they're doing the interview. And there's an interview in the
Speaker 4: film with Scott Lloyd, who was the political appointee who
Speaker 4: is the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement for
Speaker 4: the Trump administration. He was an anti abortion activist before
Speaker 4: he was charged with taking care and custody of all
Speaker 4: of the unaccompanied, ostensibly migrant children in the custody of
Speaker 4: the United States government. And what was happening with Scott
Speaker 4: Lloyd is that he was in direct contact And I
Speaker 4: cannot state enough how unusual it is, and this is
Speaker 4: very clear in the movie, how a non senate confirmed,
Speaker 4: junior level political appointee was in direct contact with people
Speaker 4: like Steven Miller in the White House back and forth emails.
Speaker 4: You see him on the screen, Steven Miller and Scott
Speaker 4: Lloyd talking to one another about immigration policy. This is
Speaker 4: a junior level political appointee in the government in direct
Speaker 4: touch with one of the most senior advisors to the
Speaker 4: president in the United States about his policies like family separation.
Speaker 4: This was one example in the first Trump term. And
Speaker 4: now Stephen Miller, you know, will have more power to
Speaker 4: continue to reach out to the people like Scott Lloyd.
Speaker 4: And if they do what you know twenty twenty five said,
Speaker 4: and get rid of a lot of these sort of
Speaker 4: career officials that stood in the way of the political appointees,
Speaker 4: it will only be bigger and more impactful than we
Speaker 4: have ever seen.
Speaker 5: What is the intention of this film now that it's
Speaker 5: being released in weeks before inauguration, after the election, What
Speaker 5: do you want people to take from this?
Speaker 3: You know, I've seen the film a lot.
Speaker 4: We screened it I think in twenty five cities theatrically
Speaker 4: before the election, and there's a screen in Mexico City
Speaker 4: next week, in London and January we have this big
Speaker 4: premiere on MSNBC on Saturday. What I hope after watching
Speaker 4: it now after the election several times, is the way
Speaker 4: I feel today sticks with people, rather than the way
Speaker 4: I felt before the election, which was a lot more
Speaker 4: We started this conversation talking about anxiety I actually feel,
Speaker 4: and maybe it's my privilege in the position that I
Speaker 4: sit in, but a lot more hopeful when I think
Speaker 4: back to this story than I did before the election.
Speaker 4: I think about those moments when I saw the film
Speaker 4: for the first time and I was reminded of the
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of people who were in the streets
Speaker 4: and what that looked like and what it felt like,
Speaker 4: and knowing that it was the people that stopped the
Speaker 4: policy from happening ultimately, and the President admitted that. When
Speaker 4: I think about Jonathan White and Jalen Sulog and James
Speaker 4: de la Cruz, and I have listed a dozen people
Speaker 4: in my head who are career government officials that did
Speaker 4: everything they could to stop the policy from happening, I
Speaker 4: feel hopeful. I feel worried for those people, but I
Speaker 4: feel hopeful that people like that are inside, you know,
Speaker 4: fighting for what's morally right. And I think it's okay
Speaker 4: as a reporter to say that you don't have to
Speaker 4: be air quotes fair or neutral about ripping children away
Speaker 4: deliberately from their parents as a tool of US immigration policy.
Speaker 4: And I think the film today, for me, more than
Speaker 4: ever before, is a reminder that it was the people
Speaker 4: of this country and people around the world who stood
Speaker 4: up and stopped it. It was like we had X ray
Speaker 4: vision for just that time in the summer of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: and it was like, I can see exactly what the
Speaker 4: immigration system has done for decades to people, and it
Speaker 4: went away. People wanted to know less. And I hope
Speaker 4: that it reminds people that knowing Morris is a good thing,
Speaker 4: and it reminds them of the power that we all have,
Speaker 4: you know, as citizens, non citizens, for just fellow human beings.
Speaker 1: Hell yes, Jacob Sobaroff. The film Separated, premiering this weekend.
Speaker 1: It's so great to have you on in the Thick
Speaker 1: with me and Bauda. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: I love you guys, sincerely, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
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Speaker 1: In the Thick is produced by Aria Goodman, Innes Renique,
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