From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made when the Trump administration began pursuing two parallel goals.

First, detaining college students who are visiting this country on visas, who are speaking out against Israel, which the administration deems to be anti-Semitic, and then deporting anyone thought to be associated with South American gangs.

No matter how thin the evidence, as the administration targets political dissidents, a number of cases have sparked demonstrations in the legal community.

Mahmud Khalil is a student at Columbia.

Last year, Khalil was the lead negotiator for the encampment in the 2024 Columbia University pro-Palestinian campus occupations.

He was taken from his New York City apartment by Ice agents on March 8th.

The agents were acting on orders from the State Department to revoke Khalil's student visa, but Khalil is a permanent resident, so the State Department decided to revoke his lawful resident status instead.

Khalil was sent to a detention center in Louisiana two days later.

A U.S. district judge ordered that the Trump administration not deport Khalil, pending a review of his case and his arrest.

The Associated Press reports that this detention was the first publicly known deportation effort related to pro-Palestine activism under President Donald Trump, who has threatened to punish students and others who he says support Hamas or promote anti-Semitism.

But it was quickly followed by more.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that more than 300 visas have now been revoked from students who are opposing Israel or calling for support of the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement against Israel.

Perhaps the most prominent example in that category is Ramzy Turk, who is a 30 year old Turkish student studying at Tufts University.

Ozturk is a Fulbright scholar and was studying on an F1 visa.

Last week, video showed her surrounded on the street near her apartment by masked agents.

They took her away in a van with tinted windows.

A U.S. District Court judge ordered the government to explain why she was detained before transporting her out of state or out of the country.

But the Department of Homeland Security explained to the judge that she had already been sent to a detention center in Louisiana.

The department told the judge that Turk was, quote, engaged in activities in support of Hamas, glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans, end quote.

Their evidence was that she wrote an op ed calling for an end to the siege on Gaza and support for the BDS movement against Israel.

Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

I want to listen to some of what the Secretary of state said defending this new policy of aggressively targeting political dissidents on college campuses.

When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is, which is how this individual entered this country on it as on a visitor's visa.

Okay.

You are here as a visitor.

We can deny you that visa.

We can deny you that if you tell us when you apply.

Hi.

I'm trying to get into the United States on a student visa.

I am a big supporter of Hamas.

A murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages.

If you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this, and if you tell us when you apply for your visa.

And by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student antis Semitic activities.

I intend to shut down your universities.

If you told us all these things when you apply for a visa, we would deny your visa.

I hope we would.

If you actually end up doing that.

Once you're in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it.

And if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa, while you're here and those activities we're going to kick you out.

All that is going on.

The administration is also deporting anyone thought to be connected to South American gangs.

But as a number of journalists have explained, the administration is using outdated legal filings or flimsy tattoo evidence.

Here's an example detailed this morning by journalist Nick miroff.

He writes, quote, the Trump administration acknowledged that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lacked jurisdiction to order his return from the mega prison where he is now locked up.

The case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three Planeloads planeloads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador's grim terrorism confinement center on March 15th.

Attorneys for several Venezuelan deportees have said that the Trump administration falsely labeled their clients as gang members based on their tattoos.

Trump officials have disputed those claims, but in Monday's court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmer Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally.

Although ice was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador.

A Braco Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error, the government told the court.

Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring him back now that he is in Salvadoran custody.

Simon Sandoval motion by Abrego, Garcia's attorney, said he's never seen a case in which the government knowingly deported someone who had already received protected legal status from an immigration judge and, quote, the full story of how they got this wrong is remarkable.

We'll share it coming up.

In the last month, we've talked to retired judges who are concerned about a growing attack on the judiciary in this country.

Today, we welcome the chairman and president of the Board of Trustees of the Monroe County Bar Association.

The local bar recently published a statement affirming their commitment to the rule of law, supporting the judiciary and speaking out in favor of the three branches of government having equal power and not to be overrun, ignored, or threatened.

This is part of an ongoing series of conversations on these topics.

Let me welcome the president of the Monroe County Bar Association and chairman of the Board of Trustees.

Welcome back to the program.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for having me, Evan.

What is the general climate that you're seeing right now with everything that I just described?

The lawyers are concerned.

People are afraid.

they're afraid for many reasons.

Number one, people seem to not have constitutionally protected rights.

promised to them in the Bill of rights that they have enjoyed up until what appears to be, the most recent administration.

people either with green cards, which is a step away from citizenship.

People here for that are students.

People that have legal status in this country, whatever it may be.

People are very concerned when you look at the state of the judiciary, when no less an authority than the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court has to speak out and say there should not be threats.

No one should be afraid if they're a judge, if they're a family member of a judge, based on how the judge decides the law based on what, the evidence is that's provided.

people are concerned all over.

But the bar.

Really?

And when I say the bar, I mean across the state, across the country, the bar is concerned that, the ability to petition a court because you feel you have been violated in whatever capacity is being taken away.

So you've been an attorney for a number of years.

Everybody who has worked in trials, everyone who's worked on legal cases, everyone has had to file and appear before a judge has had times where you think a judge got it wrong.

That's inevitable.

I'm sure that's happened with you.

Yes.

What the administration is saying is this isn't just a case where judges are occasionally getting it wrong, that we now have an an out of control judiciary, an activist set of judges who must be taken down a peg or even perhaps ignored, as Stephen Miller said.

Do you think it's anywhere near that point?

I think the the fear of that is what brings people to the streets.

the fact that people are saying that we have the right or the need to ignore a judge's order, is in fact, is very frightening.

there's no such thing as an out-of-control judiciary, regardless of where you stand politically.

we've heard many times.

Oh, this is a Trump judge.

It's an Obama judge.

It's a Biden judge.

Respectfully.

And, you know, I say it to all of our colleagues.

That doesn't make any sense.

you go into a courtroom.

You argue your points.

The opposing side argues their points.

And you would think that there's no way that these could be arguments where there could be a decision that would be different.

Judges create, they put down an order, they write a decision, and it's supported with case law, with statutes, with with authority.

You have to respect the judge's decision, whether you like it or not.

And for someone to say that we're just going to ignore it or blow it off.

That's not how this country works.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, we heard his comments in the introduction.

And part of his point is that, yes, we do have constitutional protections in this country.

But if you're here on a visa, if you're a student on a college campus as roommates, a Turk was studying at Tufts, you don't get those protections.

And if you're going to come here and write op eds that are in Secretary Rubio's mind.

anti-Semitic, supporting terrorists, supporting those who would seek to do harm to the United States, then we are not obligated to protect that right of speech.

And we are, in his view, obligated to say, see you later.

You're out of here.

Well, unfortunately, with due respect to the Secretary of State, that's not the law.

the law says that there are certain forms of speech that are protected, certain forms that are not.

And if somebody accuses a student, whatever their status, whether they're green card holders or citizens or even foreign students here on a visa, if somebody is going to make an accusation that they have somehow violated the terms of their visa, that's fine.

Make the accusation, provide the evidence.

Let's go to court and let's have a judge make a decision.

After you have proven your case and the defense has had an opportunity to be heard, and if the process is such that it's so open and shut, I think a judge or a panel of judges, if it goes to an appellate level, can make that decision.

It's not a time ever.

What we're seeing now, we've never seen this where all of a sudden people are being grabbed by masked, plain clothes.

I don't know if they're authorities or if they're police or agents or whatever they are, and being bundled into a nondescript van, and next thing you know, they're taken to a different state.

that's not the America and that's not a judicial system that we've been raised in and are a part of.

So now the federal government is saying that universities like Tufts could lose funding and support if they don't aggressively, on their own, shut down and campus encampments root out protest.

And I want to listen to part of a Senate hearing last week.

The subject of this hearing in the US Senate was anti-Semitism on college campuses.

You're going to hear Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

He was defending the idea of defunding schools.

In this clip, you're going to first hear from Kenneth Stern.

That's the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate.

Stern argues that only targeting anti-Israel protesters is not only unfair, but actually not helpful in rooting out problems on campus, like antisemitism.

Let's listen to this exchange.

Senator, I've been very clear that OCR has a very important role, that there are complaints that should go through the process.

When you start using the department of Justice and threatening universities funding, you are opposed.

I just want to get this on the record.

You are opposed to investigating Columbia University and others for anti-Semitism?

No, that's what you said six days ago.

I am not opposed to doing it the right way.

What does that mean?

Doing it the right way?

Not to claw back funds, not to say we're holding the ransom.

We're getting the faculty Jewish.

You were asked about an investigation for failing to protect Jewish students, and you said that's just weaponizing anti-Semitism.

It makes students less safe.

It is.

When I think of justice has a list of places they want to go to.

The senator remark is question.

Oh, I heard Senator Markey's questions.

I heard his whole speech.

I thought it was insane.

I just want to say, for the record, I thought it was totally insane.

And I think your positions are similarly insane.

I think the idea that we would bend over backwards to hug and kiss and make nice to a pro Hamas rioter, because that's what Carlisle is, and that we would say, heavens, we have, we can't remove him.

And that makes Jewish students less safe on our campuses.

That's not Senator.

That's not the Rabbi Stein's point.

If you look at American history, the times were Jews were most vulnerable, was doing the Palmer Raids in World War One when there was political.

Jews are vulnerable now on our campuses because of people like Carlisle.

And I want to say for the record, I'm glad he's gone and I hope he never comes back.

And Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, talking to Kenneth Stern from the Bard Center to end hate.

let me ask you.

So we're finally president of the Monroe County bar.

when you hear that exchange, what comes to mind for you?

I think the the characterization of someone whose speech is somehow opposite of how you would like speech to be as a pro Hamas or pro anything, as opposed to just speech is a very slippery and dangerous slope.

from my understanding, there were demonstrations that occurred across the country, on campuses and on other public areas and grounds were in favor of an end to the bombing, an end to war, pro-Palestinian, political situation and resolution.

And I don't think anybody ever said, here we are, we are pro Hamas.

And I think it's very, very dangerous to characterize someone or someone's who have spoken in favor of a certain side, or a certain idea as being pro Hamas, because that's a that's a gross mischaracterization.

the second thing I would say is with lawyers, there are many lawyers in the government for them to be saying that because one side has been in fear or the other side is demonstrating and causing something.

There is always a process that has to be followed.

If anything, we are lawyers.

And first and foremost, when we take our oath, we promise to defend the Constitution of the United States and of whatever state we are barred in.

This is not a way to defend the Constitution by saying that people should be picked up and thrown out.

There is always a process that has to be followed, and the procedure is most important because today it's Carlisle or Ozark.

Tomorrow it'll be anybody else who raises an opinion, whether they're citizens or otherwise, that may not be popular with some members of the government, and they too, will find themselves on the other side of a, of an order that seeks to imprison them or otherwise.

I think this is also where the lay public, like myself, struggles to see where lines in certain speech might be because you say, well, look, no one is saying that they're pro Hamas.

There's probably some somebody somewhere who has said, Go Hamas.

Yes.

just as there are American Nazis, there is there are people are part of Nazi movements that are part.

And I don't mean to create any sort of I'm not doing an apples to apples.

I'm I'm explaining that there are people who who make statements, who conduct speech, who post on social media, who write op eds, who believe things that may chill you to your core.

But I'm not sure where that line goes other than to say, you know, you can't.

I guess you can't physically harm somebody.

This notion of violent speech, I think, would Senator Holly would say, Syria is when you support Hamas.

That's an organization that wants the death of our ally.

That's an organization that would seek to kill Americans.

Therefore, you are engaging in an act of violence speech.

I think that's what he is saying.

There.

what do you make of that?

My my guess.

And I don't want to put words in the senator's mouth, but I think that the statements that he was making, in support were more political.

I believe that he was playing to a vote bank versus anything else.

you said it better than I can.

There are numerous organizations and entities in this country who have had some of the most vile speech ever.

We have seen it.

It's like you said, social media in print and everywhere, calling for all sorts of inappropriate behavior.

There have been insurrections against the U.S. government.

They have raised arms against the US government on our own soil.

Nobody has said we're going to take away their citizenship.

Nobody has said we're going to take away their right to vote or do what have you.

They, like everybody else, were brought to charges.

They went through whatever trial or appeals, were available to them under the Constitution.

And whatever the results have been, they have been.

But to remove the protection of the right to be heard and the right to defend yourself, the right to even know what the charges are against you when there's not even a dossier presented saying, this is what you're charged with.

That's where the public lay public, a professional public, have to be aware of the things that are being advocated for as far as how the system is being changed, literally turned upside down under what's head and what the, what the government is doing.

right now we're going to get some feedback in a second.

Lisa, in Rochester, I'll start with you on the phone.

It's 844295 talk.

It's toll free.

8442958255263 WXXI if you're in Rochester.

2639994, you can email the program connections at skywalk.

there's a broader question I want to ask you before I jump to our phone call.

Syria, which is this I'm talking to today, as in your professional capacity as an attorney and the president of the bar locally.

You've been on this program a number of times, and you've represented this community and done work in this community in a number of different ways.

In the past, as president of the of the Islamic Center of Rochester.

And you are the first Muslim to be president of the Monroe County Bar, I know that's something you've told the RBA that that you're aware of and you're proud of, that you want to break down more barriers and, you know, you represent a wide range of attorneys.

Is this a case when you look at what is happening, just take the student visas before we get to deportation efforts.

Just talk what the student visas and what the Secretary of state was talking about.

Is this a case where you believe the vast majority of the attorneys under the Monroe County Bar umbrella, no matter their political backgrounds, no matter how they voted, no matter whether they would self-identify Republican, Democrat, conservative, progressive.

Is it a pretty uniform view that what is happening now is illiberal and against the ideas the country espouses 100%?

The Monroe County Bar Association is a strictly apolitical entity, an organization, and the lawyers that, are within our membership are almost uniformly, I am sure, appalled at what's happening as far as the removal of any and all rights and due processes.

for people that are being detained, you've got to have some Republicans who are lawyers locally, right?

I'm sure you do.

Solutely not that you're checking, but but you haven't found the tinge of politics pushing back on this issue.

We have not had as of my speaking right now.

Yeah.

Anybody coming to us and saying we are in favor of what is happening as far as the loss of, due process and equal protection under the law for people that are being, charged or not even charged, being detained, transferred and ultimately deported without even being hurt.

And then the other aspect of this, it's I bizarre, is watching a Trump administration in which some of the people appointed since January have had virulently, virulently anti-Semitic statements in the past, the kinds of which, if a college student said some of the things that some of the appointees maybe not to the top cabinet positions, but pretty high up, have said they would be immediately detained based on what we're seeing.

And yet that standard does not seem to apply to certain people.

who have been appointed in this administration.

I find that strange.

Do you think there is a special policing of speech around Israel right now?

I think that you should be able to criticize whoever you want, whenever you want, as long as you are not calling for, you know, violence against people, protecting, etc.. We are seeing these college students, these professional students.

Miss Oistrakh was a Fulbright scholar.

She wasn't somebody here just at an ABC college.

She was a highly respected academician.

The the politicization and attacks on someone for criticizing what's happening abroad.

It's something we've never seen.

And yes, it seems to be uni focused on actions that the government of Israel has taken with respect to what's gone on in Gaza.

in the last 18 months, there have been numerous, numerous protests on college campuses and not college campuses since 1947 and 48, when the issue first started.

Somehow the issue of arrests and deportations, the fact that they are anti-Israel now has taken on some prominence with this government.

otherwise, I will tell you that whether it was anti-Israel, anti whatever, you've never seen it like this before.

there's a film that won an Oscar.

No other land that has been, a number of theaters that have shown it have had threats to not show the film, to not share the message of the film, which depicts what has happened in Gaza.

and I, I look at that growing movement that seeks to, to limit speech again, I think to, to Syria's point, you could find people who don't want to allow speech of any direction.

I understand that.

It's just looking at what the government is targeting.

Marco Rubio is not saying that if you are expressly Islamophobic, if you expressly anti Palestinian statehood, choose an issue that we're going to revoke your visa status.

He's saying if you're support BDS, if you're if you're critical of Israel and we think it looks anti-Semitic, you're out of here.

It doesn't look uniform to me unless I'm missing something.

I can't seem and I've looked, but I haven't seen ever in our history, the government really focusing in, on how they have behaved in the last three months in looking for students, specifically, Mahmoud Khalil.

he was a green card holder, and he wasn't, espousing any kind of violence.

In fact, he's being reported as a negotiator with the administration at Columbia University.

last I checked and heard the Columbia University, authorities didn't ask for him to be arrested, didn't have him charged with anything.

He was never charged, even by local law enforcement.

the police, the, the state attorney general, nobody, for anything that that resulted from this, how this has now risen to a matter of, criminalizing speech, because somebody was a student.

They thought he was a student.

He's a green card holder.

really, it is is a much different, problem that we're seeing.

you made reference to the movie.

it was never shown in in America.

You couldn't get a theater to show it.

And the movie won an Oscar.

I don't know how that happens.

it.

Was it really the message that that sends all of us that you can't even get a showing on a movie that won an Oscar, that had a message to tell.

by the way, it was co-produced by a muslim and and a Jew.

You couldn't have asked for a better melding of the minds to create this thing that that told a message, but you couldn't get it.

And now I don't know what's happening with it now, but these are the things that you're seeing, at an official level and even at an unofficial level.

let me get a phone call from Lisa in Rochester first.

go ahead, Lisa.

All right.

it seems that Rochester's got a long history of, bipartisan support for, you know, address seeing overreach by the government.

the Talisca center for justice was named after a federal court judge who was a Republican who was the head of the Republican Party.

But he was someone who believed that the if the government, engaged in overreach, it should be it should be addressed and often solicited pro bono representation for that.

I, I wonder if mister physically could speak to what's happening now with law firms being targeted for taking cases that are against what some people in the federal government, believe should happen?

Okay.

Thank you.

Lisa, are we hearing that happen locally?

I don't think it has happened locally, but across the country, some of the largest law firms in the country have been, they have been the subjects of executive orders, issued by the president, which sought to take away their, their security clearance, which sought to blacklist them from future government contracts, because they have espoused or excuse me, because they've represented people, or entities that have been against the president in a prior life.

you saw the Paul Weiss law firm, agreeing they they settled after they were facing, the loss of certain rights and potentially income, where they agreed to resolve, some complaints from the president and their alumni cracked back.

There were over 150 of their alumni, former associates, and partners who, when they heard about this, they came out and put, pen to paper and said, this is the wrong thing for you as a law firm to do.

without fighting back.

in fact, our, the Monroe County bar's, general secretary, spoke on, NPR, I believe it was a week ago Monday.

She was the representative that was asked, to speak, when when they were, when they brought this up.

Skadden Arps has done the same thing.

These are very well-respected, large institutions that have previously represented entities and taken positions that were opposite to, how the administration is acting now and to the president that are now facing some heat.

Others have sued back, others have sought orders protecting them, and their ability to continue to do business with the government based on, prior work that they've done.

And they have been successful.

Let me read one other, something else that stood out to me that was published yesterday morning.

And this comes from one of the most conservative publications in the country.

It's National Review long time conservative publication.

Jeffrey Blaylock wrote a piece called Where Do You Draw the Line now?

Blaser, who I read often, he writes a lot on culture, writes on politics since October 7th, Blaylock has been, I think, a very loud a critic of a lot of the campus protest movements.

He has been disgusted by some of the rhetoric that he has seen on campuses.

He feels that some of it is pretty vehemently anti-Semitic, but he's watching what this administration is doing.

And again, this is a conservative for a conservative publication who says, where do you draw the line?

And he writes, I draw it here.

I want to read from some of his piece.

He says if the case against Ose Turk reduces to little more than her, having written a column in support of the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement and or her not liking the Jews, then I reject what happened to her.

I reject it vehemently on a prudential legal level and on a moral level.

Revoking a visa for criminal violence or active subversion is one thing, but to capriciously eject people from the country without warning, merely for publishing an unpopular political opinion in a student newspaper is no matter what Trump's defenders or special leaders may beg, utterly abhorrent.

I will accept the legal point if you insist.

No visitor or immigrant truly has a First Amendment right to free speech until the second after he or she has taken his, her, his, or her formal oath of citizenship.

And I will tell you in response that no moderate administration has insisted on this standard before, and the idea that foreigners who are here on valid visas should live under fear that their every political opinion might become grounds for sudden incarceration in Louisiana or El Salvador, is inhumane and close to un-American.

In spirit, this sets a hugely dangerous precedent, one nearly limitless in its potential abuse.

Deporting non-citizens for expressing unpopular opinions as opposed to committing crimes doesn't just violate the spirit of the First Amendment.

It opens Pandora's box when this administration and popular opinion changes, as it inevitably must.

This same malevolent spirit of the law now unleashed, will be turned on us all.

End quote.

That's Jeffrey Blaylock in National Review, one of the most consistently conservative publications for decades.

What do you think, sir?

I don't think anybody on either side, the left, the right in the middle, is ever going to complain that somebody who was found guilty in a court of law, of espousing or calling for acts of violence and transgression, etc., when they lose their right to be here after a full hearing and after having had an opportunity to defend themselves and they're kicked out.

I can tell you one thing.

The president of the Monroe County Bar, as it stands right now, is not going to complain about that.

but when you start looking for reasons to kick people out because they've, they've written an op ed that you don't like or that calls for some kind of a political resolution, good, bad or otherwise.

However people may feel about it.

you are treading on very thin ice because we've seen that countless times, not just by students or green card holders or Fulbright scholars.

We see it by the common lay public American every single day in every single newspaper, whether they're writing a letter to the editor, whether they're getting an op ed, piece published in one of the widely or one of the most widely circulated periodicals, or something that you're lucky to find socially in your neighborhood or social media.

Where does that stop?

Where does the prosecution of someone's, rights to be heard stop?

If any time you open your mouth, you have to look over your shoulder.

This is still America.

Whether it's 2025 or not.

We have to remember that.

And I say it all the time.

You know, you create the monster, and then the monster turns around and eats you.

This is what we are looking at.

We got to fight for speech that we don't like.

We have to fight for the right for people to say things that we don't like.

That's absolutely right.

You matter even when it's hard.

Yeah.

No matter who says it or what they say.

Donna in Webster next on the phone.

Hey, Donna.

Go ahead.

Hi.

Thanks.

thanks for taking my call.

I have to say, I'm.

I'm really, really frightened about what's going on in my country now, we've lost the legislature, and we're in the process of losing the judicial branch.

And it brought me to think about a German pastor in Germany who at the beginning of the Nazi regime was, part of it.

And he began to realize what was happening and what was, and he had a change of heart.

He wrote this quote first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak.

Thank you, thank you.

Donna, anything you want to add?

Syria.

You know, people love to make fun of lawyers.

I make I make fun of lawyers all the time.

as a lawyer yourself.

As a lawyer myself, we have a we have a good sense of humor, regardless of what people may think about us.

and right now, it is.

This is literally fallen in our lap.

And if the lawyers don't step up and speak out, regardless of where they stand on so many different issues, this is a fundamental attack on the Bill of rights.

the right to free speech, the right to petition the government for whatever grievances you may have the right to to to congregate lawfully and legally.

You know, you you take these things for granted and little by little you start to lose something.

And you may not realize it because it's not you until it is, and then it's too late.

That's why the local bar put out the statements it has so far.

Absolutely.

That's exactly why the local bar has supported either put out statements or supported others that have been written because, we have to be heard on these issues and, and we will be heard on these issues.

The president of the Mono County Bar of Syria, he's my guest for the hour.

More of your feedback, and we're going to talk a little more about what the administration's disposition is to deportation.

On the other side of the only break of the hour.

Coming up in our second hour, some rather remarkable new medical technology is designed to address Parkinson's disease, to look for signs in the brain of the disease and then counteract those.

I mean, I'm not even sure I'm describing it correctly.

It really is an amazing piece of technology.

So what does the medical community say?

Who has access to it?

Is this the future?

We'll talk about it next hour.

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Org's Summer.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Back to your feedback in just a moment, but let me turn to what I mentioned off the top kind of this parallel issue.

So we've been talking about student visas, foreign nationals who are studying in the United States who are now having their visas and their status revoked because the Secretary of state doesn't like an op ed they wrote or Ice doesn't like what they've written or the president doesn't.

Well, when it comes to deportation, what the administration has been doing is looking for indications that someone is involved with foreign gangs.

And journalist Nick miroff has a pretty blockbuster story today on a deportation mistake that even the Trump administration admits.

So I'm going to read from Murphy's piece now.

Quote, court filings show that Kilmer Abrego Garcia came to the United States at the age of 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador.

In 2019, he received a form of protected legal status known as withhold of removal from a U.S. immigration judge who found that he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back a preggo.

Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a five year old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in this country, according to his attorney.

And according to records, the Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but they still called him a danger to the community and claimed he is an active member of Ms13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a foreign terrorist organization.

His attorney, Garcia's attorney, said those charges are false and that the gang label stems from a 2019 incident when a Braco Garcia and three other men were detained in a Home Depot parking lot by a police detective in Prince George's County, Maryland.

During questioning, one of the men told officers that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, but the man had no proof and police say they didn't believe him.

Filing show police did not identify him as a gang member.

Abrego Garcia was not charged with the crime.

He was handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the arrest to face possible deportation.

In those proceedings, the government claimed that a reliable informant had identified him as a ranking member of Ms13, a brigade.

Garcia and his family hired an attorney and fought the government's attempt to deport him, and he received withholding of removal status six months later.

That's a protected status.

It is not a path to permanent U.S. residency, but it means the government won't deport him back to his home country because he's more likely than not to face harm there.

He works full time as a union sheet metal apprentice.

He's complied with requirements to check in annually with ice.

He cares for his five year old son, who has autism and a hearing defect and is unable to communicate verbally.

End quote and journalist Nick miroff goes on to say that the Trump administration is using AI to scour social media and past postings.

That's how they found out that he got arrested six years ago, and the claim was he's part of Ms13.

They apparently did not follow through and read that it got investigated, that a court decided he wasn't, that, in fact, he was more likely to be targeted by at 13 and got protected status.

Well, now they put him on a plane saying, we'll know what happened six years ago.

We're changing our minds.

You're out of here.

And now they've admitted it was a mistake.

And yet Syria, what they've said is, yes, we made a mistake, but he's already out of the country.

He is in a Salvadoran prison that's considered one of the grimmest in the world.

And he's their problem now.

And we're not going to do anything to get him back.

What do you make of that?

First of all, I have a hard time believing that my government can't put the process, put a process together and get it started to bring this gentleman back.

I, I think my government has a lot more power and a lot more authority than than what they're letting on.

David made the mistake, and mistakes happen.

Mistakes are happening every day.

as you can see, I don't have words for a family who, through no fault of their own, are facing these circumstances by their own government.

And the government says, sorry, we can't help you.

I, I don't have words for that.

I do have words for the fact that had the process and the procedure that's in place been followed, this would never have happened.

And not understanding and respecting that process, that the process works.

As you know, as the bills coach says, you got to trust the process.

You trust the process.

It works most of the time.

A heavy majority of the time, like you said, mistakes happen.

There are appellate courts and things of that nature, but you have to follow and trust the process that that's in place for us to avoid specifically these instances.

But here's where this administration, most notably Elon Musk, has said the process doesn't work.

We can't trust the process.

And I want to sum up some of what Musk has been saying to get your understanding or your take as both an attorney and the president of the bar.

What Elon Musk has said is that in regards to two different categories government spending generally and immigration, this country moves way too slow to fix what it what he thinks are problems.

And as a result we spend too much.

We have too much waste with too much fraud and abuse.

And with immigration, we have too many people here undocumented.

We don't have a system that moves quickly enough to address it.

It drags on forever.

So what he has said is through Doge and through this new administration, they are going to move fast and break things, and they're going to cut funding to programs and they're going to deport people and they're occasionally going to get it wrong, sometimes really, really wrong.

But he says that's how you find out when you've made a mistake, when you make a mistake that hurts, then you fix it.

So when you fire the people who work on our nuclear program, you can go, whoops.

The next day you invite them back and you say, just that was a mistake.

Just kidding.

We didn't mean to.

We see that was a mistake.

He says.

If there's any USA aid programs that actually we're doing any good, we'll find out if people start dying or if disease spreads, and then we can reinstitute those programs.

And he says with deportation, when we make mistakes, we'll get those people back.

We'll we'll reinstate their status.

But it's better to move fast, especially with immigration, with 8 million or 12 million or 20 million people that this administration wants to deport, he says.

Move fast, do it fast, don't worry about due process, and then you will figure out as you go the mistakes you made and you correct us.

That's a better way than saying we're going to adhere by the process that you just described, Syria, because that will take years and this country can't afford two years.

What do you think?

I think if if we're going to start fixing problems by first seeing the consequences of our inappropriate actions, we're going backwards.

We're not going forwards.

You know, everybody in this country, citizens, should I say they have a vote and they elect their representatives based on how those representatives claim that they're going to act on certain things.

They earn their votes, they earn their support.

Elon Musk, really is not he's not elected.

he's appointed an immigrant, perhaps himself.

And, I don't think he's in a position to be telling us that he's going to make mistakes and he'll he'll fix them later.

You cannot bring a dead person back to life, no matter how much you try.

I think we have to be able to have reform.

If, in fact, the electorate feels that we need reforms, there's a process in place to fix.

The electorate wants immigration reform.

The electorate wants waste, fraud and abuse gone.

Absolutely.

We all do.

So let the people that have been elected to fix those problems fix those problems.

But for somebody to say that they're going to push a button and just start willy nilly taking decisions that have little to no basis in law or in reason, when the people that have been entrusted to do that, our legislatures, our House of Representatives, our senators are taking a very back seat if they're even in the vehicle, and watching this mayhem is grossly inappropriate and is not how the government is supposed to work.

There's a way to do these things.

Laws get passed, they get codified, they get put on the books, and then we can argue about them in the courts to decide what is and is not appropriate.

Are they constitutional?

Are they not?

They get tested.

That's how this country has survived.

That's how this country has prospered.

We have succeeded by bringing the smartest of the smart, the most brilliant of the brilliant people to this country as immigrants, as students, we have profited.

Our country has, by leaps and bounds, grown on the backs and the brains of not only our own citizenry, but the people that we've imported.

They have managed and maintained, succeeded in our institutions and become a huge part of our country.

Not by what's going on now, but by what's gone on in the past.

You have to be able to see that and respect it.

And if changes need to be made, they can be made, perhaps not in the way that we're seeing today.

Charles emails the program and says, odd.

I don't recall anyone whining and crying about due process during the MeToo movement.

Awful lot of instances of the lives of men being ruined because allegations got made by hashtag, as opposed to, you know, an actual judicial process run by impartial parties.

It's almost as if the radical feminist couldn't win the game unless they played on easy mode.

If you're complaining about due process now, you are a hypocrite and you deserve to be looked down upon.

That is from Charles.

I don't think any bar association, local or national, ever has given a statement or been in favor of the removal or eradication of due process in any charge.

the MeToo movement was real.

It continues to be real.

I don't need to talk about the numbers.

The numbers are there for people to see whether it's about salary, whether it's about promotion or what have you about women.

Those numbers are what they are.

However, people were prosecuted under the so-called MeToo movement, and I'm not sure that I even like the way that that sounds as if a favor was done due to a specific group of people, because it wasn't.

Charges were levied, people were brought up on charges, investigations were done, process was followed, and you were either found guilty and charged and found guilty, or you were exonerated.

And at no point was there ever anybody who was deported who lost their ability to defend themselves or or lost the ability might got kicked off campuses, you know, a sexual encounter that was consensual.

Maybe one person later says, I regret it.

Therefore it was not consensual.

Charles is pointing to stories like that.

The rolling Stone cover story is saying that there are people who did lose real things.

They lost jobs.

They lost college opportunities because they didn't have due process in this movement.

I think that if there were examples where due process was not followed, then you it's a problem and you are going to absolutely it's a problem.

You're going to find people who are going to speak out against the lack of due process or loss of it there as much as they are today.

There was not going to be a lawyer necessarily who will say it was okay then, but not now or vice versa.

We have to follow a process.

Yeah, I think I would say to Charles if he were to call this program, I would say, even if your formulation is correct, that you feel that there was way too little due process during what you call the MeToo movement, why is the why does that then insulate this government from following due process with issues like free speech, student activism, published opinions, social media usage, deportation because you didn't like what happened in the MeToo movement?

Due process.

That's it.

That's the end of it.

I mean, it's strange, but a member of Congress, Meghan Mac, I think Indiana, a congresswoman from Indiana, said last week that if you have violated the law, you are not entitled to due process, which, as far as I understand, is not at all correct.

It it's almost oxymoronic because you need to have and follow a system of due process, for it to be demonstrated that you violated the law, whatever it is, whether it's jaywalking or something much more severe.

there the process is the process.

And we have seen how successful that process has been.

Lby it could be unpopular, when we hear that this decision was taken or that decision was taken, by a judge or a jury or whatever the tribunal is.

But the fact of the matter is that you have to have due process in order for the decision that's ultimately taken to have any merit in any way.

Victoria Sparks is the name of that member of Congress, congresswoman from Indiana, who said last week, if you violated the law, you don't deserve due process.

That's wild.

Stephanie says, does the Tufts student have lawyers pursuing a hearing for her?

What can be done to stop this?

What do we know about that?

Yes.

she is represented by immigration counsel.

emergency, motions were filed, to prevent her deportation.

I believe those are pending.

I think an order has been issued that has said that she shall not be deported until further order of the court.

So, yes.

there there are lawyers.

I know one in particular who is representing her in immigration court, who's whose name has been advertised as her counsel, that has taken steps to, to arrest any further, extrajudicial movement by the government.

but yes, when when you have a situation like this where literally seconds matter, you know, from going from the streets of Boston after having she was coming back from, a gathering where they were breaking their fast.

It was the month of Ramadan for Muslims speaking to her mother overseas.

And all of a sudden she's surrounded by these masked, men in plain clothes men and bundled into a vehicle and not knowing where she's going to end up.

And she ends up in Louisiana.

And it took it took a small act of God to prevent her from being deported before anybody even knew what was happening.

so yeah, she is represented by counsel down to our last minute.

Kevin says he thinks that the larger issue is this is part of Trump's effort, he thinks, to challenge the legitimacy of the judiciary branch.

He's using these issues to test how far he can go.

That is from Kevin.

And Alex says, I don't want to live in interesting times anymore.

Do any effective systems which might stop or slow this remain?

Are we all at the whim of aggressive nativists in positions of power?

45 seconds.

What would you say to Alex?

I continue to have incredible confidence in the rule of law and how our judiciary operates.

As I said earlier, and as you said, Evan, people may not like sometimes decisions that judges make.

Regardless of the topic, we have to have a system that puts in place a certain set of guidelines.

We got to stay on the rails, and we need to be able to defend ourselves, prosecute those against whom reasonable investigation has been done and charges are brought, and we need to be able to have a level playing ground so people can be prosecuted and defended.

I like the gentleman.

You know, I could use a little bit more boredom in my day, let's put it that way.

I, I but I have full faith in the courts for the federal.

You still do that.

They're going to.

Absolutely.

If we lose that, we have nothing left.

Chief Justice John Roberts put out that statement that we talked about a couple weeks ago on this program, that extraordinary statement saying that it is not appropriate for a president to call for the impeachment of judges, that we have an appellate process for a reason, and it should still work.

And you're saying it still works?

Absolutely.

All day and every day.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

So here is the president of the Monroe County Bar Association, chairman of the Board of trustees of the association.

We always appreciate his time and listeners.

This is part of a series of conversations on these matters.

And and your voice will be welcome as they continue more connections coming up in a moment.

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