The FRONTLINE Interviews

Laura Reiff

Attorney

Laura Reiff is an attorney focused on business immigration law and regulation.

This is a transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE’s Gabrielle Schonder conducted on July 12, 2019. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Zero Tolerance

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Laura Reiff

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Defeating the Gang of Eight Bill

So it’s 2013.This is the time period of Gang of Eight.The bill has passed the Senate.But there is a group just off the Hill at the “Breitbart Embassy”—Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon—who look at comprehensive immigration reform in a very, very different way.A lot of disdain.Who are those individuals at that time period, and how do they view immigration?

Those three individuals.Well, you know, Jeff Sessions has been harping on immigration reform for a long time, but his ideas about immigration reform are very different.So when the Gang of Eight came together originally in 2000—it was actually back in 2000-2001—he was learning from what the bipartisan group of individuals that eventually became, you know, came to be known as the Gang of Eight.In 2013, he started to learn from where they were going with legal immigration reform across the board—from family immigration to refugee immigration to business immigration to dealing with the undocumented and how do you deal with border control.

So there was a lot of spadework and learning that he was privy to because he heard all the arguments.He was part of the—you know, part of the debate.So when the bill finally passed—and that was a huge uphill battle to get S. 744 passed—he knew all the arguments.You could see him go to the floor and say: “Look at this huge bill.You know, it’s thousands of pages; nobody could read it.”And he knew every page, perhaps.Or it’s been parsed out for him.

So there was quite a learning curve.And by that time, they knew pretty much all of the tricks, if you will, or the back doors or, you know, what the left or the center right that supported immigration really wanted.

So vulnerabilities—he was sort of looking out for that.He was—I think you had maybe said he would go to the floor in the afternoon and early evening and just start sort of ranting for these amendments to many of these bills that clearly were not going to go anywhere.What was that strategy?

… Everybody knew that he had serious concerns with what had been agreed to in 2006 and ’07; I think it was S. 2611, which was the big comprehensive reform bill that was passed in 2006, the [Sen. John] McCain-[Sen. Edward] Kennedy effort.He would go to try to socialize and frankly scare people if you were listening to it.And, you know, maybe he’s got YouTube clips of it, or, you know, obviously somebody kept track of it because they’ve been replayed now.

How did he do it?

So yes, he would see that, let’s say, there was an effort to increase business immigration; that there was an effort to change the number of H-1B visas, which are typically used by professionals and high-skilled, high-tech.“Well, this is displacing U.S. workers.Clearly there are problems with U.S. workers’ jobs.They’re underpaid; they’re being displaced.”And he would trot out examples of where there may have been some abuses.And there are companies that do abuse some of these programs.But those were the norm, not the exception to the rule.

And that really got the attention, at least in 2013, that got the attention of, I believe, the Trump strategists and those who were looking at like-minded immigration reforms.

And what were the views of these guys?How did they view immigration?

Hmm.Immigration is something that is not important to American business, American families, American values.Immigration was something we tolerated, and we kind of had to be forced into taking certain numbers of refugees and asylees, and even then we need to question their motives and what they ultimately might do.

So immigration was something that was almost a dirty word, you know.It’s not something that we really embraced, despite, you know, Ellis Island, despite the Statue of Liberty, despite where most of them came from, honestly.We all were, you know, products of immigration unless we’re Native Americans.

So it’s a very different mindset, and not one that I would have ever thought would have been embraced by what is now considered to be Donald Trump’s base.

Can you describe who Sen. Sessions is?

So Sen. Sessions is a very kind of congenial Southern gentleman—I grew up in the South until I moved here when I was a teenager—and just the guy down the street.Very smart.Very driven.Congenial.Family-oriented.Very easy to talk to.Just an all-around nice guy.I think one of his closest friends in the Senate most recently was Al Franken.And the two of them shared grandchildren stories, and their wives were friends. …

How did you make sense of his views on immigration?

Well, as I said, I came from the South originally, and there are a lot of implicit or explicit biases against people who are not like you, whether they’re just people of color or they’re immigrants.And I saw a lot of that growing up.So maybe there’s some of that Deep South/Alabama, a little bit frightened about people who don’t look like you.And so I don’t know whether that’s—I don’t know whether that’s it.But it certainly could be, given his background and where he comes from.

I also, you know, when I had conversations with him, and I didn’t have a lot of direct conversations, but in those two intense rounds of negotiating sessions in 2006 and again in 2013, he would continually point to people of color in his state, mostly black Americans, who he would say don’t have jobs.How can we be talking about this open-borders immigration for businesses when there are people who are of African American descent or black Americans who don’t have jobs in my state?

So, you know, you present some data to him and show that there are businesses that recruit and can’t find workers; it still just didn’t seem to resonate.He seemed to be very intent on just, you know, sticking to those guns; that there are people in the United States that don’t have jobs, and immigration’s undercutting them.

Defeating Eric Cantor

An early success of Bannon, Miller and Sessions is unseating [House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor in his race over this issue.Do you remember sort of watching the news that night that the Cantor loss is reported?

People were shocked that Dave Brat came in and kind of pulled the rug right out from under Eric Cantor.It was—it was very surprising. …

What message did it send on immigration?

We have more than you think.We’re not just vocal; we’re not just out there pounding the table.We have some support, and some of our messages actually do resonate in parts of this country.I think that’s what we’ve seen with the, quote, “Trump base.”

Was that a surprise to the Washington establishment?

I think so.I think people were—this is a wakeup call.You know, I keep scratching my head because it used to be, you know, that the Republicans would say, you know, America is becoming more diverse, much more diverse.There’s legal immigration.We have a huge immigrant population coming in.There’s no way the Republicans have a chance to win the White House unless they embrace immigration.That whole theory blew up, and a lot of it has to do with what these three gentleman cooked up and sold and America, a certain portion of America, has embraced.

Stephen Millers’ Work for Jeff Sessions

… Do you remember Stephen Miller around that time period in Sessions’ office?Did you ever engage with him then?What do you remember about him?

You know, not a whole lot of engagement in some of the meetings about business immigration issues.On S. 744, there were some interactions.My experience with him is that he wasn’t that personable.He wasn’t—certainly wasn’t the key—any of the key negotiators, staff negotiators, but he seemed to be very uncomfortable in the meetings.I don’t know whether that was because of his boss’ position and his position, or just he’s not a very social person.

But he would have been uncomfortable because you guys were talking about something that was just completely—

Opposite of what he would want to do.And I, you know, we’ve had in the past over these, what, last 20 years lots of negotiations with staffers and with principals who had differing opinions, but his was not malleable at all.There was no give-and-take from what I could tell.

How did he strike you?

Not very social.Not very comfortable in a negotiating session.

And also as a communications guy, and so the idea that he would also be involved in some of the negotiations is unusual.And yet he would—our understanding is that he would insert himself into some of these processes.

Very, very unusual, because he wouldn’t be the person I’d put out as the negotiator.He’s not your typical L.D. [legislative director] or somebody who’s, you know, your judiciary counsel who would really know the issue well and have some rope to really negotiate.It’s not in his DNA from what I can tell.

And not an attorney?

No, not that I know of.He was not judiciary counsel, that’s for sure.Very strong opinions, though, but not judiciary counsel and not somebody that would normally negotiate.

Do you remember some of the opinions?

He echoed what Jeff Sessions would say about, you know, we need to take control of the border; we need to deal with the flow of immigrants across the border.We need to deal with the undocumented here; they can’t just earn a way to legal status; they need to leave the country.We need to deal with employer sanctions; employers need to be penalized for hiring these undocumented people.

So some of the same themes that we’re seeing now: We need to—our borders are porous; we have people coming in from countries that they’ll—they intend to do harm.Not that well articulated, but some of the same themes, some of the same themes that you would hear from Jeff Sessions.

The Trump Campaign and Transition

Let me jump ahead to the Trump campaign.When Sessions endorses Trump, how big of a moment is that?What does it signal in terms of where they both fall on immigration?

Yeah.Having Jeff Sessions endorse Trump was a lightning bolt, again, to the advocacy community.It was a strong signal of things to come, and that have come.It was frightening.It was unimaginable that this is the direction that we could be moving in.So we, because we knew exactly where he was and we knew where Stephen Miller was—and it was—it’s been a wakeup call every single day of this administration.

Let me ask you about the election.They win, and they begin to populate the new administration.So Sessions obviously goes to Department of Justice.Stephen Miller goes to the White House.Gene Hamilton goes to DHS [Department of Homeland Security] initially with [John] Kelly.This is their opportunity to make the change that they have been calling for, right?

Mm-hmm.

Help me understand.Were you surprised by all the hires?Did this make sense to you?

Totally made sense, of course.There was the, you know, the mantra out there that there’s the deep state, and all of these agencies, whether it’s State Department, Homeland Security, Department of Labor, these are the agencies that have made regulatory proposals.They have made guidance—you know, decisions on guidance on everything from adjudicating petitions to who can apply for visas and who can’t.So no, it made total sense that there’s a regime change, that folks that were like-minded from the Hill, a lot of them from the Hill, a lot of them from very what you might call anti-immigration think tanks were being placed in the agencies to kind of carry out that vision of Stephen Miller, Bannon, Jeff Sessions and ultimately Donald Trump.

And what was the mission?

So I think the mission was to do a lot of reversal of things that had happened over the last eight years, and actually even before that, because George H. W. Bush [sic] was an amazing person when it came to immigration.He and his Commerce secretary and his Homeland Security secretary, [Michael] Chertoff and [Carlos] Gutierrez, they were marching the halls of Congress trying to get immigration reform through.They were pushing for immigration reform.So there were two decades of policies and guidance memos and procedures that needed to be rewound, undone, reissued, and that was the mission.

And Sessions gets to work.

Yes, Sessions starts working at the Department of Justice, which oversees all of the immigration judges and all of the office of immigration litigation cases that are happening in federal district court, and he starts making policy decisions that impact daily asylum seekers, refugee seekers.And we saw the same kind of ripple effect through the State Department and Homeland Security.

And what’s happening at Stephen Miller’s office?

So I think that Stephen Miller still has the president’s ear and is still working with others in those agencies—Department of State, Homeland Security and Department of Labor—on how we continue the march to undo and reshape immigration policy as we know it.There’s just been dozens and dozens of actions that have happened that, you can point to.

Help me understand some of the folks that have come over from the Hill with them.Who are they?Some are attorneys.What is the mission that’s shared amongst all of them?

So, you know, like any administration, you’re going to have people that are pulled from similar party background who know about the issues.So the House Judiciary staff, there are a number of folks that came over to either Department of Homeland Security or Department of State.So you see a lot of folks from House Judiciary staff who worked with former chairman [Robert] Goodlatte and other chairmen before them, who have gone into Department of Justice and Department of State.Same thing with—you had mentioned Gene Hamilton, who was Sen.—former Sen. Sessions’ staffer who was on Judiciary, and a couple others, Sen. [Chuck] Grassley’s two key staffers on immigration.One was a detailee, Francis Cissna, who was the director of Homeland Security, elevated to director and has just recently resigned.And Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, who had been with Sen. Grassley for years and years and years, and is now a chief immigration policy person.

So it is a natural progression, something that I never had thought would happen because I think a lot of us underestimated how this message would resonate and, you know, are figuring out ways to get around the message and revise the message.

Divisions in the White House

So we talked a little bit about Sessions going to Justice and sort of immediately starting to work from within the apparatus.Bannon will eventually leave, but Miller remains, and he sort of digs in around this time period.He ingratiates himself with [Jared] Kushner to a degree.But what is he doing, and, I think more importantly, what are the dynamics at play in the White House between the Kushner/Ivanka [Trump]/[Gary] Cohn camp and Stephen Miller and Stephen Miller’s close relationship with the president?

You know, it’s a tough nut to crack.It seems a bit schizophrenic.It sounds like, from what we’ve discussed with the Domestic Policy Council and with the Kushner immigration team, that they are moving ahead, trying to make some constructive changes to immigration laws.And then there always seems to be this—I don’t want to say “Grim Reaper,” but I just did—this outside force that might come in and say, “No, that’s not what we want; that’s not where we’re going; this is not going to happen.”

So it seems to be bifurcated or trifurcated, schizophrenic.… But I think if Miller was looking at the plan that the Kushner team put out, he would not—he would want to make significant edits to it.

And the push and pull between those two, what is—that seems to be an ongoing war.

Yeah, from what I can tell.I’ve never seen them interact together, but it does seem to be, you know, two titans fighting, because one definitely has the president’s ear, and one is the president’s son-in-law and also has the president’s ear.So it’s an interesting push/pull.

But I think you see that in a lot of issues in this White House.I think there’s, you know, a lot of competing ideas, and we’ll see which idea becomes the idea du jour.

The Dreamers and DACA

… Can I ask you a little bit about DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] and the “Dreamers”?Do you have a sense of why that doesn’t happen early in the administration?There was talk that that was maybe like a day-one EO [executive order], and ultimately it doesn’t happen.Do you know why?

… So I think it was probably, you know, all the hiccups they had with the travel ban, and then they were getting, you know, the refugee situation, and TPS was coming up, Temporary Protected Status for many countries, and they were dealing with, you know, the non-renewals or the announcements that they weren’t going to be renewing TPS.So it probably just got pushed farther down the list.

Let me ask you about ultimately when the announcement is made by Sessions to wind down the program, to wind down Dreamers and wind down DACA.This is a surprise?Do you remember sort of watching that?

Oh, it wasn’t a surprise.I think everybody was just waiting for that to happen, because people were so upset about DACA.I mean, there was litigation already about DACA.It was just, what’s going to happen to these DACA recipients in the meantime? …

… At the point of Sessions’ announcement, there was some discussion that the president would actually give those remarks and not Sessions.He decides not to, and we understand that he’s a bit torn on what to do about the Dreamers.Does that sound—

That’s what I understand, you know.I think there is a feeling that he wants to get something.He does want to get something done.He thinks Congress needs to come up with it.But—and Congress has come up with several different proposals on a bipartisan fashion as well, but the announcement itself, I think Jeff Sessions really took it personally when Obama went beyond his authority, according to many people, and did this.And so I think Sessions—this was kind of like “I’ll show you; you don’t do this.”The irony is that there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening by executive order and executive fiat these days that a true jurist probably wouldn’t agree or a constitutional scholar wouldn’t agree that this is where the executive should be.And those were the same kind of issues that came up when President Obama issued the DACA order.

This is payback in some ways for what Sessions was witnessing during ’14.

If you remember, there was DACA, and then there was DAPA [Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents].And DAPA was ended; it was stopped by, I believe it was Rick Perry then, who was the governor of Texas.There was a big lawsuit that stopped the parents’ version of DACA.And we were, I think, very grateful that it didn’t end DACA.But yeah, I think it was payback, and it was vindication, some kind of vindication.

How so?

He thought it was wrongheaded.It was outside the authority of the executive to do it then.It should have been stopped in court; it wasn’t stopped in court.So at a minimum he could do that.But as I said, he was—there’s a long laundry list of things that he was successful in doing, or undoing, that he wanted to do.And it was on his playbook from day one when he joined the Trump administration.

Jeff Sessions as Attorney General

Something we didn’t talk about in the list of things that he did was referring cases back to himself.

Yes.

How unusual is that?It does happen, of course, but—

So immigration court is a part of the Department of Justice.So it is not a separate Article III court system, which many believe it should be…But because it falls under the Department of Justice, these courts, the attorney general has the right to reopen cases and re-decide cases, and he’s done that.And that is something that I believe the new attorney general is continuing.

So until we can move the courts out from under Department of Justice, I think we will continue to see this kind of, I believe, overreach, but honestly it’s within their purview to do it, given where the courts sit.

A legacy he’s certainly left us with.

Yeah.

Trump Wavers on DACA

You referenced some of the bipartisan efforts that have been made to give this White House a deal on immigration.I want to jump to Jan. 9.This is the meeting at the White House, the bipartisan meeting at the White House that’s carried live on CNN.This is the Cabinet Room meeting where [Sen.] Dianne Feinstein is there.It looks as though the president is going to maybe do a deal on DACA.Do you remember watching this?

I do.

What did you see?What were you thinking?

I actually thought he might come make a deal, too.It was—you know, it was kind of earlier on in the presidency …and I thought, you know, he’s going to be reasonable here.He’s heard from, I think, his daughter and his son-in-law that this is important; these are children.And I really thought we were going to see a deal happen.He’s got [Sen.] Lindsey Graham kind of pushing him, [Sen. Dick] Durbin, Feinstein.I just—I don’t know what happened in the interim; I wasn’t privy to all those conversations.But it may be that the president had a change of heart.It may be that Mr. Sessions got to him.It may be Stephen Miller said, “No, this is not the way.”I don’t know.

Help me understand Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin in this moment.Who are each of them, and what are they trying to do?

So Sen. Graham is now the Judiciary Committee chair on the Senate side.He took over after Grassley, Sen. Grassley moved over to Finance—still on the committee, but not chair.And he’s worked very closely with Durbin in the past.They’ve been able to work in a bipartisan fashion.And it—I think these two really did think that they had come up with something that was going to work.And the president even seemed to embrace it.

So it’s—I think it was a shock, although nothing’s really a shock anymore.At that time, it was a little shock to see that, no, this is not going to—it’s not going to fly, and we need something else.

… Dick Durbin’s been around a long time and has been working on this issue in particular for decades.

Yeah.And Lindsey Graham has been, you know, worked with McCain and Kennedy and when back when [Sen.] Arlen Specter was chair of the Judiciary Committee.It’s—yeah, I mean, Obama was part of the gang back then.And yeah, you made a deal; you stuck to it; you got a deal through.That doesn’t seem to be where you are; a deal’s not a deal unless it’s actually signed into law.

Two days after this meeting, the president calls Durbin and says, “Come back to the White House; I’m ready to sign something; let’s do this.”And Durbin and Graham jump in an SUV and start driving across town.In a very short period of time, they are at the White House, and some other folks from the Hill have now joined them: Representative Goodlatte, Sen. [David] Perdue, Sen. [Tom] Cotton are all there.Do you know that story?Can you help us understand what’s happening there?

Well, I think that was the genesis of this whole merit-based immigration kind of push.Mr. Cotton and Mr. Perdue had not been part of the earlier negotiations back in the 112th, 113th, 114th, 115th Congress, except to, I think in the 115th, Cotton and Perdue introduced their RAISE Act, which has been embraced as a merit-based immigration system that the White House likes.

So I think when Sen. Durbin and Graham saw who was in the room, they realized, you know, the deal’s off.There, you know, there are new factors.There are new players here, and it’s—it was, frankly, shocking at the time, but not really shocking.

It must have been a huge setback.I mean, he’d just gotten the call.

Yeah, yeah.Somebody—he got the call, and that’s when, I imagine, others who had been working for Mr. Goodlatte or had been working for Mr. Perdue and Cotton or knew of their proclivities on immigration maybe made the call and said, “Yeah, you need to weigh in with the president here.”

… What do these guys represent to Trump on this issue?

Cotton and Perdue?They are the people that he—[are] their go-to people on his merit-based program.And he’s got the White House team looking at a merit-based immigration—“Buy American, hire American” merit-based program along the lines of this RAISE Act, which had never really been discussed in comprehensive immigration reform circles before.The Bush administration had talked a little about a point system, but it was nothing like the RAISE Act and what was included in it.But they made themselves very important to the president on merit-based immigration.He kind of reaches out to them as a litmus test, as well as Sen. Graham.

And to folks that don’t know sort of what merit-based immigration is, give us the 25-cent version of their idea.

So their idea is that you need to have some kind of intrinsic, quote, “merit” to come here.And that doesn’t mean that you have a family relationship or that you’re part of the Diversity lottery that was set up, you know, in 1990.It is you have value added; you are contributing cash, investment; you are contributing your time, your talent; you are a scientist.This system would be—the way it’s set up now—a point system.So you get points for speaking English, for being educated, for having a high-level position, having a job that pays well.So you get points for all of these things that we would consider to be upper middle class.And you don’t get points for being a refugee from Somalia or needing shelter because you have been abused as a, you know, Guatemalan woman who’s bringing her kids across the border.There’s no—there’s no room for that.

This would be a real recalibration of our immigration system.

Well, that’s the whole point.We don’t want any new numbers, and we want to shift around the numbers that we’ve got now cut out of some of the family categories that don’t make sense.Cut out the Diversity lottery program, which is 50,000 green cards a year for underrepresented countries, mostly African countries these days, and shift those into this merit-based plan.So it’s a—and you know, scrap the old employment-based and family-based system.

It’s a very different view of immigration.

It is an extremely different view of immigration.It’s America for Americans, America first.And you know, the refugees and asylees, they should be going to other countries because we’ve done our fair share, if not more than our fair share.

In that meeting that Graham and Durbin are in with the hard-liners, this exact conversation happens.The president says: “Why can’t we have more immigrants from Norway?Why are we taking in people from shithole countries?”Do you remember when you heard about this and what you thought?

Well, I use the word “shocked” too much because nothing is shocking anymore.It was so anti what this country’s immigration policy was built on.We are, you know, a country that welcomes immigrants and was started by very poor immigrants who were just trying to make a living, whether they were from Norway or Sweden or Ireland or Germany or, you know, Malaysia.So it was insensitive.I don’t know if he really wanted it to become public; I’m not in his mind or his psyche.But it was—it was unprecedented that it got out and that it was corroborated, and not really—nobody really seemed to have any regret in the White House over those types of statements.

Lindsey Graham said, “I’m a descendant of folks from a shithole country who came here with nothing,” and really pushes back on the president.Does that sound like the Graham that you know?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.He, Lindsey Graham, has always been kind of hooked at the hip with John McCain in pushing forward on comprehensive immigration reform.It’s a good working relationship with Durbin and with Feinstein and with Sen. Kennedy.So I think he knows what has to happen; he’s been involved in the last two major comprehensive immigration reform debates.It’s just a matter of threading the needle with this administration and this president.It’s difficult.

Zero Tolerance and Family Separation

I’m going to jump ahead to “zero tolerance.”When Sessions makes that announcement, are you watching?This is a speech he gives down at the border.

Yeah.Yeah.That was—I did watch the speech.I—the words “zero tolerance” and “immigration” are—maybe Obama would have uttered them with respect to criminals, but zero tolerance with respect to people who are coming across the border for asylum was, again, just something that I never thought I would hear that out of an administration.

But it’s something that is very important and has always been very important to some of the hard-liners, like Jeff Sessions, that, you know, our border needs to be shut down, and it needs to be secured, and we can’t just be letting people across the border, even if they are asylum seekers.There needs to be a better way to do it.

This administration hasn’t figured out a better way to do it.Things are—as we all know, we hear on the news every day, things are just not great.Immigration judge backlogs are horrible.People are now under this agreement with Mexico, in shelters in Mexico that are probably not very safe.A lot of those shelters are full.People are wandering the streets.We haven’t figured out how to handle this shutting of the border and building the wall and, you know, regulating asylum in a better way.I know that Lindsey Graham really would like to thread that needle and figure out a way to do that.

How do you think Stephen Miller felt about some of these ideas?The announcement?

Oh, I’m sure he was behind them.I think that’s all been part of the grand, the grand scheme, the grand plan.I think it’s been, you know, again, rolling back what had been done by other administrations and building this hard line on immigration.So I think this was part of the strategy.

Sessions in his case for the strategy uses the Bible to defend the practice.What does that sort of tell you about Sessions’ beliefs about this program?

So it’s interesting.Again, going back to Southern roots, a lot of Southerners are very devout evangelicals, Baptists, who believe that, you know, the Bible is the source.And I don’t know whether Mr. Sessions is of that ilk; I would imagine he is.I’ve never talked to him about his religious background.But I am the daughter of a pastor and went to church all the time and don’t believe that those were the teachings, or Christian teachings.People have different interpretations, but I don’t see where we could justify that based on a Christian heritage or background.But he may have seen something I didn’t.

Yeah, I would cite you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.

Love thy neighbor and welcome them.Yeah.There’s all kinds of places that you can quote.But, you know, yes, you want to uphold the rule of law, and criminals should be prosecuted and deported.But love thy neighbor; welcome them.And you know, if you look at Southern Baptist Convention, you look at a lot of the evangelicals and the Mormons, they are all embracing immigration and immigration reform.So yeah, you can pick out Bible verses, but I think overall the message from the religious community is that we are a welcoming nation and we need to do—we need to protect and shelter people who are in need, like refugees and asylees.

In that speech announcing the policy, he says, “Do not bring your minor child here.”This is pretty explicit.

Yeah.

What does it tell you about what he sort of sees is at stake?

Well, I think there’s—you know, down the road there’s always this concern that people are going to come in, bring their children, their children will become citizens, or they’ll have children in the United States, the so-called pejorative term anchor baby.So it’s more of—it’s less of a religious thing; it’s more of America for Americans first.We don’t want you to bring your families here; we’ve got enough people; we have to take care of our own people, so—and that’s played out through not allowing people to, you know, give birth and have their children become citizens and through these tough immigration laws.

Trump ultimately doesn’t like the coverage, sees it as a crisis, and ends the policy with an executive order.Is it a setback, do you think, for Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions?

No.I mean, if you look at—well, maybe that one issue is a bit of a setback.But I think in terms of the plan, the grand plan to roll back a lot of policies, there is a silent wall, I think, that people talk about being built, and that’s being done at the agency level where you can undo a lot of good things that have happened over the last 20 years.And there is—if there was a scorecard, their scorecard would be awfully high now.So yes, this may have been a bit of a setback, but in the grand scheme of things, no, they’re marching ahead.

Have you ever seen anything like this happening at an agency level, as much activity in this way at so many different agencies, such a cohesive sort of interagency plan?

No, not on immigration.I have not seen anything quite like this.My life span has been, you know, George Bush I, Daddy Bush; and then Bill Clinton; and then George H. W. [sic] Bush; and then Obama.And that’s kind of been my span on immigration.And there have been pretty like-minded ideas about immigration—some, you know, divergence, but generally like-minded ideas about bringing immigration in for business needs, for refugees.So I’ve not seen something so diametrically different as this administration.

So no, I haven’t seen—people at the head change, you know.There have been some changes in the political people, but generally the policies have been fairly open and fairly friendly and fairly, you know, trying to move forward even though Congress hasn’t been able to get immigration reform through. …

Trump’s “America First” Strategy

What’s so different about these guys and the last four presidencies?

So I think in the last four presidencies, we saw a real goal to recognize that, you know, we’re a global player, and global players not only embrace NAFTA and have cross-border movement of things and interaction of companies and diplomats, we actually have a lot of cross-border movement with people, and we embrace that.Those last four administrations embraced that and realized that we need foreign students.We need to play in the world of refugees and asylees.We need to be a global player when it comes to movement of highly skilled people and lesser-skilled people.We’re a dwindling population, and this makes sense from an economic perspective, from a political perspective.That seemed to be the underlying kind of theme.

And that’s not the theme anymore.It’s America first.And you saw those first executive orders coming out: “Buy American, hire American.”And it—we’re not an island.And I think hopefully this administration, if it continues past 2020, will realize that we are not an island, and we are world players.And that means that we have people coming across our borders every single day for many different reasons, and they’re not to be feared; they’re to be embraced.

So I didn’t have an experience with, you know, not being progressive and kind of moving forward embracing the reality.The world’s getting much smaller with technology; you can’t just put a wall around you and say “American for Americans.” [sic]So it was kind of a wakeup call to a lot of people in the advocacy world.And for the business community, it’s a huge wakeup call.Just thinking about people who are scared to death about ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids this weekend, it’s not just the families that are scared; it’s the businesses—the family-owned dairy farms; the peanut farmers in Georgia; people in the president’s base who are scared that their, you know, there will be raids on their facilities.So it’s very different, very different.

The Caravan and the 2018 Midterm Elections

Let me ask you about the midterms.They had a strategy which was to talk about the caravan that is coming, in sharp contrast to the more establishment Republican view which is “Let’s talk about the tax cuts; let’s stick to the positive economic message that we can run on.”But the administration really sort of doubles down on talking about being tough on the border, law and order.You are sort of watching sort of the discussion about the caravans around that time.What do you think of that?This is kind of a pretty new idea.

Yeah, scare-tactic politics.Kind of backfired a little bit.The House overwhelmingly went the other way.But it honestly scared a lot of people who are not that educated and just listened or followed Twitter and listened to, you know, the far-right pundits.And it frightened them.People in Florida were afraid, you know, getting guns because they were afraid these caravans were going to come across into Florida.Like, well, no, you know, that’s not happening.

It’s a different way of campaigning, that’s for sure.And as we know, those caravans were a bunch of very, very poor people who were fleeing horrendous situations in their own countries.So making them out to be thugs and people who are smuggling women across in cars in their trunks, it was strange descriptions.But it did resonate with part of the base; it didn’t resonate with the other part.It will be interesting to see what happens with the next round of elections and whether that is used again, because I don’t think it actually worked.

The Government Shutdown

… The shutdown over the wall is a pretty dramatic end to the year.Can you talk to me a little bit about what the view is from the Hill and certainly from experts like yourself about this showdown that happens?

… So I honestly didn’t think we would have a shutdown of more than two or three days.I didn’t think that they would do that.But I was wrong.It was shocking, and you know, when you have a shutdown like this, it just wreaks havoc to a lot of immigration programs that have to be renewed.It wreaks havoc on all kinds of thing, but from an immigration perspective, it was crazy.And to do it over immigration was even just kind of surreal.It was surreal.I didn’t think it would happen.

And then to just come back say: “Eh, all right, we’re going to open it again.Go ahead and pass something.”It was, “OK, I changed my mind.We’ll work on it some other way.”

A lot of this, you know, you can’t just say, “Oh, the Trump administration is horrible, and this is their fault.”A lot of this has to do with Congress being at a gridlock, you know.We had two incredible immigration bills passed over the—you know, back in 2006 and then again in 2013.If either of those bills had been taken up in the House and passed, we would not be in this situation now.It would be a very different world.But Congress hasn’t been able to act.

… And so, you know, Congress has to take up the mantle again.People keep saying, “Well, our constitutional system is in jeopardy because this administration is doing all these things by fiat and, you know, testing”—well, if Congress stepped up and did what it was supposed to do, then we wouldn’t have a lot of this angst.

… Do you think Miller or anyone from that group learns a lesson from the shutdown?

Yeah, I don’t think they’ll do that again.Honestly.I think they don’t realize the ripple effects of a government shutdown.It’s not just inside the Beltway or in this—in the D.C. region.It reaches across the United States, across the world frankly, because you’ve got federal employees all over the place—farm subsidies, farmers, all kinds of national parks, veterans.It’s—the ripple effect, I don’t think, was anticipated.

They didn’t understand how big of a deal this was.

Right.Right.So it’s—I don’t think it will—I don’t think it will happen again.Maybe a short shutdown, but who knows?I may be wrong.I’ve been wrong a lot lately.

Changing Leadership at DHS

Let me ask you about what’s been happening at DHS these last few months.There’s a purge in DHS that is driven, our understanding, is by Miller and by the White House.Of course, the more higher-profile firings are [Kirstjen] Nielsen and Cissna.

Cissna, yeah.

But certainly you have a DHS that’s now pretty much run by acting directors.

…Can you describe a little bit about that sort of, how immigration is really sort of being run and how involved sort of this White House is and—

I think the White House is super-involved in immigration, from the border crisis to asylum process to changes in business immigration to these ICE raids.Francis Cissna was confirmed to be director of USCIS, and he was a longtime bureaucrat, really knew his stuff, honestly.Knew his immigration law.From what I could tell was, you know, really respectful.And now we have a former Virginia attorney general who is acting head of USCIS going out and talking about ICE raids.He’s not ICE; he’s not Customs and Border Patrol; he’s not DH—almost acting like he’s the acting DHS secretary.

So it’s very odd.He doesn’t have a background in immigration.He doesn’t have, I don’t think, a desire to actually get into the nitty-gritty of how USCIS, which is the benefits section of immigration, really works, whereas Francis Cissna knew that, and how was an H-1B or H-2B processed, and how are, you know, student visas run.I don’t get that sense that acting director [Ken] Cuccinelli is even interested in that.And nor do I believe he’s actually going to be confirmed.

So yes, I think White House is running immigration policy.Maybe there’s a direct line between Cuccinelli and Miller; I don’t know.Perhaps.I would think that might make sense.But it’s interesting how you govern through chaos.And it’s almost like designed chaos because these people, “Off with their heads; they’re not working out, so we’ll just handle it ourselves and put in acting people.”That’s kind of the sense that I feel, you know. …

What does it tell you about the White House?

Well, I think they feel that they found an issue that resonates with the base, and they want to control it; they want to control it from a political point of view but also control it substantively.And it feels like that’s what’s happening.There’s always the punt that, “Oh, Congress just needs to handle it.”Congress needs to handle DACA.They need to handle TPS.They need to handle, you know, H-2Bs and H-2As and whatever, H-1Bs.They need to pass the, you know, merit-based immigration act.

But in the end, it’s “We’ll just do it here by fiat because we have the power, and we can do it.”And it’s very odd.Never seen it before.

And Miller’s role in all of this right now?

I think he’s consulted on everything, honestly.I really do.I think he’s consulted on everything.From what I understand, this is his thing in the White House. …

The 2020 Election

Looking at 2020, I imagine this is going to continue to be the defining issue for this campaign, but we sort of talked about ’16, and we talked about ’18.What do you sort of see already happening in the lead-up to an election?

Well, legislatively I don’t think anything is going to happen.… The system is a mess.I don’t know who’s going to take the initiative to fix it.I know that, you know, there’s some goodhearted people on the House side that have been passing bills, that have wanted to get stuff out.But without a bipartisan kind of effort, nothing’s going to happen.

So I worry that we’re just going to see more of the status quo up through the election and just more of the immigrant bashing as we move towards the election and 2020.

It’s worked for them in the past.

Yeah, it really has in some of these rallies and some of the base.The raids may backfire.As much as I hate to see this happen, the raids may backfire, especially with some of the businesses that stand to lose a lot of people who they depend on.And we’ll see.So maybe the rhetoric won’t be as strong, but I kind of doubt it.It’s worked in the past; you’re right.They’ll continue to kind of push that message.

The Legacy of Bannon, Miller, and Sessions

The legacy that Sessions, Miller and Bannon leave on immigration long after this administration?

… It will be a longstanding legacy.Very difficult to unwind.And again, this will be what Congress will need to do if Congress can ever work in a bipartisan fashion together again, which—they snipe at each other all the time, but this will be for Congress to undo.We’ve needed comprehensive immigration reform for so long.We need to have it done this way, not through an executive, you know, who’s just run amok or doing what they feel is important to do to serve a certain ideology or a certain base.

What is the brand that’s left in all the agencies?

Scarlet letter.We are not an America that welcomes everybody.A merit—it’s that whole, that first executive order where “Buy American, hire American.”America first.We want merit-based immigration, people who contribute, whether they’re from Norway or from Ireland or wherever.We want a very limited number of people.We want to vet them very thoroughly.And we want them to contribute at a very high level.And other than that, you know, stay in your home country.And that’s sad.That’s a little sad.So hopefully we can undo that once this administration has moved on.

Following up on what you just said, what are the long-term effects about how people view America, the long-term effects on the institutions, to come back on this as you sort of define what needed to happen?When you look at it specifically, what are the things that really will have changed because of these strategies, these tactics that have been used?

I think ultimately our—America’s population is changing, and it’s changing pretty dramatically.We are—our younger people are growing up.They’re living in a world that’s much more diverse.They’re much more accepting of people of color and people who identify themselves in different ways.It’s not as threatening.And so the optimist in me says that it’s not going to take too long to undo some of this stuff because we are a world that’s becoming smaller and smaller, and we are interdependent on each other.And we have a younger generation that’s more tolerant that’s coming up.

So I think despite what we’re seeing, you know, the dozens and dozens of reversals of policies and, you know, things that are not helpful to immigration in general will be undone and will move in the right direction.

I’m also heartened—you know, I sit on the board of the National Immigration Forum; I was their chair for sometime.And we started many years ago our Bibles, Badges and Business and veterans’ groups.We called it the BBB.And so the people of faith, as we talked about before, all denominations, law enforcement generally speaking across the country, and businesses also understand that this nation is really built on immigrants and immigration and values immigrants from many different perspective.So that group—including our veterans.And there are many immigrants in our—in our service.

So I think, you know, there will be those groups that will also come forward and say, yes, we think those—we need to have a change; we need to reverse some of these policies, and we need to go back to pushing for comprehensive reform, because we do need to have laws that we can live with and live by, because our current laws are antiquated and outdated.But it will become the way it has always been, I think, America: a welcoming place.

So I think there’s hope.There’s always hope.And I already see it.We saw it in the midterms.

Jeff Sessions as Attorney General

You had told Gabrielle at one point that Jeff Sessions basically saw the job of attorney general as being a kid in a candy store, which I think is interesting.What did it mean to him to get that job? How did he view it, and why was it so important to him?

Well, you know, he was a former prosecutor in Alabama, and he’s always been on the Judiciary Committee.And he is a very law-and-order type person.And this is a high honor, to be the attorney general of the United States.And he had other pet issues that I’m not as familiar with, but it was a, you know, I think a vindication of all of his work in Alabama and in the Senate, to be chosen to be the attorney general of the United States.And a lot of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle were happy for him because he got to this point in his career.

I see it through the lens of immigration, and, you know, he is a kid in a candy shop from an immigration perspective, because he sat in the catbird seat, and he was able to do things that he was never going to be able to do as a senator.And he did them.And he felt that they were the right things to do.Whether we agree with them or not, he felt that they were the right things to do.So this was, you know, a high honor for him.And I think it was embarrassing and very upsetting when he was fired basically and asked to leave.

So—but he did leave his mark, his brand.He started that brand, or continued the brand that continues on now.

Family Separation as Deterrence

And lastly from me, zero tolerance led to family separation.Using family separation as a tactic, how do you view that?Why was it used as a tactic, and what’s your view of that?

Yeah.I mean, I’m not as connected to that, but if it was a tactic, it was used to scare families: “If you come to the border, your children will be taken away from you.”And it sounds very cruel and heartless, and I personally think it was fairly cruel and heartless, but I believe there was a feeling that if that message rippled down through El Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala and Nicaragua that you would see people stop coming to the border.I don’t think that really bore out, and it did seem ultimately to be too cruel and heartless for the American population to stand.

But I think there was a concerted effort, and there was a thought about how we can deter these, quote, “caravans” coming up here.And that was one of the tactics.I don’t know that for sure, but I’m sure—I’m pretty certain that that was on the list of things to try.And it didn’t work.

Did it surprise you that somebody like Stephen Miller would have been involved with dreaming up a tactic like that?

Oh, not at all.No.As I said, I think—you know, this is his job. This is what he does.So he’s all things immigration.He is working with every agency on what moves forward the agenda as he sees it.And so I would think that he’d be intimately involved in that.And he used to work for Jeff Sessions, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually was asked to draft something like that.

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