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May 30, 2025

SCOTUS Exposes Half A Million Refugees To Trump's Deportation Squads

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration permission to temporarily halt a humanitarian program that had allowed nearly 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to legally enter and stay in the U.S. for two years.
  • 11 minutes
I think this is just, you know, part of the process of making America a less great country. This is a place that people literally around the world love are dying to come to, at least previously. And we're now in the process of unwinding our status as the most [00:00:19] exalted country on planet Earth. And for what? I have no idea. My heart just breaks for the people caught in the middle of this process. The Supreme Court revealed earlier today that Donald Trump and his administration [00:00:34] will be allowed to end a program that gave temporary protection to more than 500, 000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, likely, accelerating the speed at which they're going to be sent out of the country. And if you've been following immigration news and the court rulings about it, [00:00:51] I know there's been a lot he's stopped, then it's revoked. Then the Supreme Court jumps in to be very clear. This is different than what they announced on May 19th, when they allowed the administration to revoke temporary protected status from a group of almost 350,000 Venezuelans. [00:01:07] That's a separate thing, but you can combine those two groups, and it's almost a million people that had special protections that now will be able to be shipped out, to be shipped out to whatever their fate may be. So different rulings. And how we got here was that back in April, [00:01:22] a federal judge temporarily blocked them, revoking those Biden era protections the parole programs had granted the immigrants temporary legal protections after they fled violence from their home countries. I'm sure the situations in those home countries is fine now. [00:01:37] They're not going to face persecution, violence or anything like that. But that's what they decided. There were dissents, though. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the High Court quote plainly botched its assessment and undervalued the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives [00:01:54] and livelihoods of nearly a half million non-citizens amid pending legal claims. She argued that the government failed to satisfy its burden of demonstrating harm, saying ending the program will have quote, devastating consequences. While it is apparent that the government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict [00:02:11] maximum predicition damage. Court ordered stays exist to minimize, not maximize harm to litigating parties, basically, as the legal process theoretically would continue. They're going to do what they do, which is pack as many people as possible into [00:02:26] military planes and send them wherever, maybe the country they originally from, maybe Sudan, maybe Guantanamo Bay. And if it turns out that the legal process actually does rule in their favor. What are you going to do? Supreme court doesn't have any guns. They can tell him to bring back as many people as they want. [00:02:43] He's clearly not going to do it, but I'm glad that she pointed out the actual harm that will be done to these individuals when they get wherever they're going. I would also acknowledge the harm that will be done to America by having a half million people torn from communities, [00:02:59] away from family and friends, their workplaces, where they contribute in a million different ways. And then you put up all of that against an abstract, ill defined or conspiratorially defined harm that is put onto every migrant. [00:03:16] You're destroying America. How? Who the hell knows? Most of the people being deported haven't committed any crimes, but their mere presence here is not just a threat. It's an emergency. Actually, habeas corpus set it aside. Did you know we've been invaded? And so the entire thing is very frustrating. [00:03:32] And seeing the Supreme Court go along with it is frustrating as well. Was. I want to go to you first. What do you think of this? I mean, it's it's really difficult when you sit and think about, you know, the circumstances that brought these folks over here. [00:03:50] And, you know, just trying to make it in America is difficult enough. And I think the most frustrating part is that the previous administration did, you know, [00:04:08] basically open up some of the rules and restrictions that would allow these people to pursue cases through our legal process to stay here legally. And what this effectively, does is achieve [00:04:25] a rug pull from underneath those folks. And you know what people on the right would say is that, well, well, Joe Biden overreached. We got a mandate from our election that the people didn't necessarily want all of those expansions in the, you know, asylum seeking process. [00:04:45] And it's too bad we got to let him go. I think this is just, you know, part of the process of making America a less great country. This is a place that people literally around the world love [00:05:01] are dying to come to, at least previously. And we're now in the process of unwinding our status as the most exalted country on planet Earth. And for what? I have no idea. [00:05:16] My heart just breaks for the people caught in the middle of this process. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of it has already been unwound and an important part of what was open with her and talked about was, was sort of denying it's an implicit denial of what happens to these people back home, [00:05:33] while also denying because they're not talking about it, what it does to business here and what it does to business owners here. And again, you're talking about taking business owners and small businesses and saying you can't have these people working for you, [00:05:50] but you also have have tariffs and you also have all of these difficulties and you also have the high prices. It's handcuffing the nation financially, which you wouldn't think he would want to do, except that it helps. You know, one tenth of 1% of the country. [00:06:05] But the other side of this is that these are legitimate. Most of these cases are legitimate. I did a series from Guatemala and Honduras for another network, a TV network where I was interviewing a gangster, somebody who was a gangster in, [00:06:22] in Honduras, who told me the way it worked and how he would go into these towns and villages, not just himself, but as part of a group. And as soon as somebody came home from earning whatever pittance of a wage they earned that day, they would extort it from them. [00:06:38] And if they didn't, they would threaten them. They would rape women. They would do they would steal things. Right? These are places that are horrendous if you're not part of that. Now, this guy, was reformed, but he told me exactly what it was like. These are legitimate cases, and that is who we let into this country. [00:06:56] And to deport them and send them back to those horrors which were, in essence, doing the horrors haven't gone away just because they're here, because there are other people still there. That is ignoring what the principle of our immigration system is. And these people are entitled to hearings and maybe making the courts more effective [00:07:14] and making immigration, having more immigration judges out there would be a better way of dealing with this than sending people back to these dangerous, dangerous places. You talk about Nicaragua and Venezuela. I don't know about Cuba being dangerous, but I know about Haiti being quite dangerous. I mean, maybe the most dangerous of all of them for so many of these people and women [00:07:33] and breaking up families. It's it's a horrendous thing. Now, this is not a ruling necessarily, even though we call it a rule. I guess it's a ruling, but it's not a, you know, a case that has been decided. It's just saying the courts have to do a little more in pursuing whether or not [00:07:49] this comes to us eventually, but it's an indication of the way it's going to go in the aftermath of that. Yeah. I think that, you know, we don't always agree on the panel, but I think that we're all uniformly like experiencing the bias of considering these people as people. [00:08:07] But have you considered what if you just hated their guts, them and everyone who looks like them? Or even if you didn't personally, what if you were trying to appeal to other voters that you think do right? What if it was that? What if you didn't care at all about the Constitution, the rule of law, any of it, [00:08:22] and you just saw them as parasites, or wanted to spread the myth that they are parasites. What about that? How would you act in that case? The entire thing is just utterly grotesque. Like to to Oz's point, the Make America Great Again thing has been it's [00:08:37] terrible for so many different reasons. What it intentionally harkens back to all of that, but it's also just so wildly inaccurate about what they're actually trying to achieve. Whatever else you think America is or is becoming great has got nothing to do with it. [00:08:54] We're not aspiring to greatness. We're aspiring to be small and cruel like grubby, selfish, like aspire. Like wanting to inspire. As I was saying, other people to dream some day of being a part of us. [00:09:09] I don't even know why. Know why people would at this point. - And that's the. - Goal as much, John, is. You're right about that with with great and looking at that word again is just a big part of that too. Again, when was again like, you know, I would ask this for tight for people [00:09:25] waiting on line at rallies to go into Trump rallies all across the country, and nobody could articulate when, when, then was and then when you did and you said that, well, you the year you cite, black people had to sit upstairs in a movie theater in the back of a bus. Right. Was it great for everyone? [00:09:41] Well, you know, and then we we famously had or I don't know how famous, but we, we showed this one black guy who I was talking to in Michigan who said, yeah, but it was still better then what, you know, and these are the people that are lining up and going to these tailgates, to, to see Donald Trump. [00:10:00] And so again, nobody can define what again is. But we know that and this I'm sure we agree on that. That again was not is elusive. We don't know when that was. Yeah I know I feel like this is gonna get wonky, but I feel like Maha should be make America hierarchical again. [00:10:17] Just give us the hierarchy that made us comfortable. - I won't automatically. - Win. No, I don't think it's that much of a bumper sticker. - Not a winning Maha. - But that is what it is actually. Anyway and and I know was was was like satirizing what they would say. [00:10:33] Not him not saying it but make mandate mean something again. The idea that Donald Trump has a mandate. He didn't even get 50% of the vote. He got the narrowest possible victory. Well, it's only defined as a mandate by him. Yeah, exactly. [00:10:48] No, I hear news people being like, well, he did talk. About doing this stuff. No, I understand that. And there is something to that. If you run on something, I guess we can't be too shocked when you actually do it. But you didn't get a man. I mean, if you got a mandate, then Barack Obama literally should have ascended into heaven as a God like. [00:11:05] And if AOC wins with like 54% of the vote, then she can take every single gun and just melt it down into a big carbon processing factory or whatever. Because he did not get a goddamn mandate. John, you need a birth certificate to get into heaven, so forget it for Obama. [00:11:23] He did the protest against him. He was illegitimate with his massive victory. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets its wings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.

The Young Turks: May 30, 2025