The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 12 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Trump is significantly escalating his efforts to foment fear among the nation’s immigrants. The administration just arrested and is moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil for being a suspected terrorist sympathizer, even though he has a green card and an American wife. And at Tuesday’s media briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dropped an ominous hint, suggesting that this effort is only just beginning. She also suggested pressure on universities to hand over such students is about to intensify in a big way. Meanwhile, the other day we learned that Trump is moving to require all noncitizens over the age of 14 to register with the government. All these things interlock with each other. The goal is to spread terror and get noncitizens to do what’s known as self-deport. Today, we’re talking about all this with Representative Pramila Jayapal, an influential progressive in the House Democratic Caucus. We’re going to discuss some news as well about a new bill that she’s introducing that could challenge some of these Trump efforts. Thanks for coming on, Congresswoman.
Pramila Jayapal: Thank you for having me, Greg.
Sargent: I want to start with your news here. Trump has recently announced that he plans to require all noncitizens to register with the federal government and get fingerprinted or potentially face prosecution. You’re introducing a bill Wednesday that would counter that. Can you talk about your idea?
Jayapal: Yes, absolutely. I am introducing the No Roundup Act, and this is a piece of legislation that repeals this long-dormant immigration law that Donald Trump is using to fuel his cruel and inhumane mass deportation campaign. This is the same law that came out of World War II; it was used for the internment of Japanese Americans back then, putting Japanese Americans into concentration camps in the 1940s. It was also the same law that was used—it was called Special Registration at the time—right after 9/11 to register and then put into deportation proceedings Muslims and Sikhs across the country. I fought back against it at the time around Special Registration.
And Trump has now said that he’s going to use this law and force immigrants to register and be fingerprinted. It would put a target on the backs of immigrants. And many of these folks—obviously, Greg, you know and you’ve covered this issue for a long time—have lived in this country for a long time. This law would apply to a wide group of people, many of them have different statuses. So this bill is a very simple one that just repeals that law because this is not the purpose it was intended to be used for, and we’ve already seen the stain on history from using it in all these ways.
Sargent: Your bill would essentially repeal the law that Trump is citing as the authority to do this, correct?
Jayapal: Exactly. Exactly right.
Sargent: I want to come back to this in a bit, but first, to the other news. The administration has arrested Mahmoud Khalil, and they’re trying to deport him even though he has a green card and an American wife. The administration is accusing him of ties to Hamas, but as The New York Times notes, officials have not accused him of having contact with Hamas, taking any direction from it, or providing any support to it. Your reaction to all this?
Jayapal: It’s absolutely authoritarian behavior designed to suppress dissent, designed to suppress free speech. And again, this is using a very arcane provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the secretary of state the ability to deport somebody if they are seen as a foreign policy threat to the United States. And this provision has—I’m actually doing the research now to see if it’s ever been used—certainly very rarely been used. It apps what the administration is doing, and the way they’re using it is a certain infringement on constitutional rights and free speech rights of everybody across the U.S. They are using it now on legal permanent residents, but in the way the provision is written right now, it would apply to anyone who’s not a U.S. citizen and it would essentially say, If you don’t agree with the Trump administration, we can use your immigration background to say that you’re a foreign policy threat. This is obviously in the courts. The deportation has been stayed for now. And I am working right now on this broader issue, and we’re going to have to educate Americans across the country about their rights and knowing their rights.
Sargent: I want to play some audio of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. It signals something pretty ominous; I think that they’re going to really escalate this. Here’s what she said about Khalil.
Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): Columbia University has been given the names of other individuals who have engaged in pro-Hamas activity, and they are refusing to help DHS identify those individuals on campus. And as the president said very strongly in his statement yesterday, he is not going to tolerate that. And we expect all America’s colleges and universities to comply with this administration’s policy.
Sargent: Congresswoman, the White House press secretary is saying there that the administration has given the names of particular people to Columbia and demanding help in identifying them. She seems to threaten some kind of action if Columbia and other colleges don’t play along. That’s pretty worrisome, no? Where could that lead? What do you think they have in mind here?
Jayapal: Well, it’s very worrisome. They’re using the free speech rights of people to protest foreign policy, the United States foreign policy. Right now, it’s focused around Israel and Palestine, but of course, this is not about Israel and Palestine. This is about fundamental rights. Do you stand up for free speech in every situation? We know that they’ve already targeted a number of other universities in the same way that they did Columbia; I know it because we have four in Washington state that have been targeted around this. And they are starting with an issue where they feel like there is enough of a divide that they won’t get people to speak out.
I want to be very clear: This is not about Israel and Palestine. This is about the right to free speech. This is about our constitutional rights, and it affects a very, very broad swath of people across the country. My phone is blowing up about this. I know members across the caucus are hearing about this. And I hope we have a very, very strong response, similar to my statements, Senator Durbin’s statements. This is absolutely authoritarian attempts to suppress any kind of free speech.
Sargent: I want to try to bear down on what it is the administration has in mind here. It seems like they’re really turning up the pressure on universities to manufacture the sense that there are people who are committing crimes of some kind or committing something that constitutes a threat to national security. She essentially said in that clip there that universities had better play ball. They’d better produce the names that the administration is demanding or at least information about them. That puts college administrations in a very tough position, doesn’t it? I think Democrats are going to have to stand up and defend them. What’s the basic endgame here? What are they trying to do with the universities?
Jayapal: Look, fear and suppressing of dissent is the playbook of dictators, of authoritarians, of fascists. And this follows on stripping federal funding from Columbia, nominally around not cracking down on antisemitism. Again, I would say that this is all about stopping universities from being able to have debates, conversations, and protests on campuses—a hallmark of American democracy. We are not Russia. We are not China.
We are not these other authoritarian places that don’t allow people to disagree with the government, but that is the endgame. They want to suppress dissent. They want to do it by trampling on the free speech rights that we have, and other constitutional rights, I would add. And they want to do it all in the name of having Donald Trump be the only arbiter of any justice, but only what he sees as justice, no disagreements. And they’re trying to get the universities to play ball by threatening them with money, by threatening their students with these deportation proceedings.
Sargent: You mentioned earlier that four of the colleges in your home state are getting this type of pressure or contact. Can you go into a little detail there?
Jayapal: Yeah, there was an article that just came out in The Seattle Times. In fact, I’m just talking to the universities that are in my district; the University of Washington’s Seattle campus is one of them. And they have basically said they’re investigating those universities for the protests that have been happening and for not complying with the executive order, not only around antisemitism. This is really, again, an effort to threaten the universities to get them to crack down on free speech rights and to silence all the conversations that are happening on those campuses.
Sargent: When you say that they’re being investigated, you mean by the Trump administration?
Jayapal: Correct.
Sargent: Right. I think part of the game here is to just create the impression for the public across the country that universities are harboring enemies within.
Jayapal: That’s exactly right. And who are those enemies within? This takes me back again to history. It takes me back to the Japanese internment; it takes me back to post 9/11 with Muslims and Arab Americans and Sikh Americans. They are trying to increase fear amongst the American people by targeting these groups of people who are exercising constitutional rights and have been here, in many cases, for a very long time and are married to U.S. citizens as what I believe to be an example. Because what they’re trying to do is saying, This is what happened to this person, we’re going to do it to you as well, so make sure you don’t speak out on anything that you disagree with us. And by the way, while this particular law that they’re using with Mr. Khalil is limited to all those who are not U.S. citizens, we’re seeing their attacks on the constitutional freedoms and protections of U.S. citizens at the same time. So they’re just doing everything they can across the board to destroy our constitutional freedoms.
Sargent: I think if you put together the effort to register all noncitizens along with this latest news, you really get to the to the conclusion that the administration is using all its tools to try to spread a reactionary terror of the state among immigrants. It’s almost as if the idea is that everyone needs to fear the knock at the door or fear getting snitched on by colleagues or your professor. There’s some signs this is working. What are you hearing from your constituents and from those of other members who are focused on this? How bad is the fear getting?
Jayapal: The fear is very serious, and it is in every sphere. Certainly with immigrants, it is substantial and we’re seeing it with people not showing up for work because they’re afraid they’re going to be targeted at their workplaces. We’re seeing it with teachers who are reaching out afraid because their students are afraid and don’t want to come to school. So we’re really seeing it in every sphere, and it’s going to hurt us. Of course, it’s going to hurt our economy. We’re seeing drops in the ability for people to get work done because the vast majority of immigrants are employed in very important industries that face worker shortages. So we’re certainly seeing it there.
From a pure democracy protection perspective, this is the start of authoritarianism. We are already in the midst of it, and it’s very terrifying. Everybody should be paying attention.
Sargent: Democrats have not exactly covered themselves in glory on the immigration debate recently. I think you’d probably agree with me on that. They appear pretty cowed right now. Many supported the Laken Riley Act, which was absurdly draconian. About this Khalil situation and the effort to strike fear into universities and into immigrants, don’t Democrats need to say more clearly what you and I have just been saying here, that there’s an effort to really create a reign of terror, that these are authoritarian tactics? And yes, it’s maybe politically hard to defend immigrants right now—but don’t we need to hear more from Democrats?
Jayapal: Absolutely. This is quite new; obviously, it just happened. I’m the ranking member on the Immigration subcommittee, so I’ve been trying to get at how they even arrested him. It’s very unusual for the secretary of state to be involved in deportation proceeding—that’s usually DHS—so it took us a minute to figure out what provision they were using. And my staff has been on the phone with Mr. Khalil’s attorneys, really both on that individual case, which many members have an interest in because of where the family is resident and constituent, and on this broader question that you and I have been talking about.
I am working on something right now that hopefully will get a lot of Democratic support because I do think it’s important to look at it from the larger perspective. Not that the individual case isn’t important—it’s absolutely critical—but this is not about Hamas. It’s not about Israel-Palestine. It’s not even just about Mr. Khalil. It is really about all of us and this constitutional protection for free speech, for dissent, for all the things that we see as so absolutely essential that Donald Trump and his cronies are trying to destroy so that they have absolute power. We don’t have kings in this country, or we’re not supposed to. And this is the behavior of a king, of a monarch, of an authoritarian, and it is a naked power grab.
Sargent: To be clear, you’re working on a letter that you’re hoping will get a lot of Democrats? Look, there are going to be some moderate Democrats who don’t want to sign this thing, right?
Jayapal: Well, this is going to be about the broader protections and the use of this provision and the problems with the use of this provision. I really do hope that we can get every Democrat to sign it. And perhaps there are some Republicans who are willing to speak out for free speech rights, I’m not sure. I do think it’s important to make it clear: This is not about a particular foreign policy viewpoint. This is about the right to be able to have free speech.
Sargent: Obviously, Democrats run the minority in the House and Senate, but can’t they do more going forward to try and exercise a little oversight here? This seems to me to be a really legitimate area where you could ask some very hard questions of the administration. For instance, have they produced an actual written rationale to Congress explaining the decision to arrest and deport Khalil? Could Democrats do more? Are you hoping to do more? Are you hoping House Democratic leaders and Senate Democratic leaders will do more to pressure the administration to be transparent about these policies?
Jayapal: I think they’re pretty transparent. That video clip you played makes it pretty clear to me what they’re doing, so I think we have to just stand up against that. I know what they’re going to say. They’re going to say, Oh, we’re trying to protect America’s foreign policy. They’re going to, once again, do the broad-brush of calling immigrants “criminals” and “terrorists” and all of those things that they’ve been doing for so long. To me, that’s what we have to continue to stand up for. On the immigration front, I’m working on that because, as you know, I thought Laken Riley was horrific. I’m so disappointed that so many Democrats gave into that and we’re working to build a unified, humane response to immigration that recognizes that both border security and modernizing the immigration system are critical. In fact, you can’t have one without the other because unless you have legal pathways for people to come in, the border is not going to be secure.
We are working on all of that, but it’s tied to a broader point that you’ve been making. We need to stand up strongly for our democracy. The more people understand that this is not about one issue or one group of people, that this is really about all of us, the more successful I think we’ll be and hopefully the stronger Democrats can be in really fighting back.
Sargent: Just to return to your bill, which would counter Trump’s effort to register all noncitizens under potential pain of prosecution, I do expect that that’s going to be something some moderate Democrats don’t want to support. Where are you on that? Do you anticipate problems there?
Jayapal: I’m just introducing it now, so we’ll see. But hopefully by using the real life examples of what happened in the Japanese internment, in Special Registration—which at the time that I started speaking out on this as an activist back then, I actually sued the Bush administration successfully around the deportation of then Somalis across the country, and we prevented the deportation of 5,000.... We were pushing back hard on Special Registration, and many Democrats were not with us at the beginning but they did come along later. This may be one of those cases. I hope not. I feel like we have enough history to show that we’re on the right side here by eliminating the special registry law that is always used to target immigrants, people of color, including Japanese-American U.S. citizens in the ’40s. So I’m hopefully optimistic that we will be able to get a good group of Democrats, but we’ll see. It’s always a push.
Sargent: It’s always a push. I’m really intrigued by your continual references to the post-9/11 atmosphere. It does almost seem like that, doesn’t it? I think the Islamophobia was more clearly pronounced at that time, but the overall phobia, the overall mania about immigrants and enemies within seems to be approaching that same level of hysteria. Maybe I’m overstating a bit, but what do you think?
Jayapal: No, I actually think it’s gotten even worse in some ways—because it’s now even broader. Throughout history, the U.S. has become a nation of immigrants not by everybody coming along easily. Every group, from the Polish to the Italians to the Arab Americans, has had challenges—certainly the Chinese Exclusion Act, [to name one]. We have all of these ways in which the immigration system has been pretty exclusionary and we’ve had to fight to change it and make it more fair and inclusive and humane. The phrase was the Statue of Liberty turned toward Europe and not to the rest of the world—we’ve always had some of those challenges.
This is, in some ways, going back to the earliest days of immigrant exclusion. Now it doesn’t even matter where you’re from, unless it’s maybe South Africa because of Elon Musk. Now it’s really turned toward everybody, and some much more than others like the African subcontinent, and Latin America, of course. It’s across the board, and you’re going to see it with this travel ban that they’re going to release shortly; we’ll see what the list of countries is like. This is all in the same frame of turning Americans against immigrants and forgetting that our history and our present is very intertwined. We have millions of people who are in mixed-race families across the U.S. We have trade with all of these different countries. We have global relationships. We require immigrants in every sector of the economy to get our work done.
I think what they’re trying to do is distract us from the fact that it’s unelected billionaires trying to steal money for their tax breaks for the wealthy billionaires that are really to blame for the woes of the American people, not immigrants. They want somebody to blame and they don’t want it to be Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or the billionaires. They want it to be the immigrant next door to you and me.
Sargent: Congresswoman, very well said. Thank you so much for talking to us today. Good luck with the bill.
Jayapal: Thank you so much, Greg. Appreciate it.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.