Representative Magaziner talks immigration, Kristi Noem, and ICE at League of Women Voters event

"What I’m focused on is the stuff that has an impact on the illegal actions the administration is taking: doing the oversight... fighting in the courts, and fighting in the court of public opinion."

On Saturday at noon, United States Representative Seth Magaziner and Kathy Cloutier, Executive Director of Dorcas International RI, spoke with the League of Women Voters of South County. Allow me to skip ahead to the following exchange:

Question: Congressman, I’m very supportive and impressed by what you’re doing for Rhode Island. [Applause] I want to discuss an issue and hear from you directly about your vote to support ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Representative Seth Magaziner: I haven’t voted in support of ICE. I think what you’re talking about is that this is one of the things that happens when the other party is in charge. They put up stuff you have to vote on that is not how you would’ve written it. There was a resolution a couple of weeks ago that was about the attack in Boulder, Colorado, where several, mostly elderly, people outside of a Jewish community center were attacked by a guy with Molotov cocktails, who tried to burn them to death. And there was a resolution condemning that attack and condemning antisemitism. Virtually everything in the resolution was stuff that everybody here, I think, would agree with. And then there was a line toward the end thanking first responders and police, including ICE, because the person who committed the attack was an immigrant who was here illegally because he had overstayed a visa.

So, is that the way I would’ve written it? No. But on the other hand, this is one of those gotchas where they’re going to say, “Well, if he voted no, then he’s voting against condemning the attack. He’s voting against condemning antisemitism. He supports the terrorists. Blah, blah, blah.”

At the end of the day, it’s not the way I would’ve written it. It’s a lose/lose vote either way. What I’m focused on is the stuff that has an impact on the illegal actions the administration is taking, doing the oversight, fighting whenever we can with this government funding through our legislative levers, fighting in the courts, and fighting in the court of public opinion. But it’s a fair question.

Question: Well, thank you. I wanted to hear your answer, and that reassures me.

Steve Ahlquist: Excuse me. Weren’t there two resolutions? 481 and 488. 481 didn’t have any of that [problematic language]. 488 did.

Representative Magaziner: I voted for the other one too, but again, it doesn’t - I mean - however many resolutions there were doesn’t change the fact that a ‘no’ vote would’ve given Republicans an opening to say Democrats voted against condemning antisemitism and voted against condemning the attack.

Steve Ahlquist: [Representative Gabe] Amo did not vote for the second [resolution].

Representative Magaziner: Yeah, understood. Something like 80 Democrats did. It’s a lose/lose either way, but ultimately it’s a symbolic resolution. What matters, I think, is exposing the illegality of the administration and fighting back, and I’ve been very vocal about that. I mean, as you all have seen, I’ve been very vocal in calling out the abuses of this administration and the way that they’ve been using ICE.

To support his statement, Representative Magaziner’s Director of Communications, Noah Boucher, sent me the following Instagram links: Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, and Instagram.

At least two House Resolutions condemned the Boulder, Colorado, attacks. HRES 481, introduced by Representative Jefferson Van Drew [Republican, New Jersey], is pretty standard and not very tricky. Here’s the relevant part:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

1. condemns in the strongest possible terms the June 1, 2025, targeted act of terror in Boulder, Colorado, as a cowardly act of ideologically motivated violence;

2. recognizes this attack as part of a disturbing pattern of targeted aggression against Jewish individuals in the United States;

3. reaffirms its commitment to protecting the rights of all Americans to assemble peacefully and practice their faith without fear of violence;

4. calls on Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to ensure thorough investigation and prosecution of all such incidents; and

5. urges elected officials, community leaders, and civil society to speak out against antisemitism and politically motivated violence in all forms.

It’s the second resolution, HRES 488, introduced by Representative Gabe Evans [Republican, Colorado], that is problematic. It reads:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives—

1. condemns Mohammed Sabry Soliman and his antisemitic terrorist attack on peaceful demonstrators supporting the release of the hostages held by Hamas;

2. affirms that free and open communication between State and local law enforcement and their Federal counterparts remains the bedrock of public safety and is necessary in preventing terrorist attacks; and

3. expresses gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland.

This resolution is a weird place to put in a line expressing gratitude to ICE for “protecting the homeland,” considering that ICE had nothing to do with the capture of the prime suspect, Soliman. Instead, ICE appears to have arrested Soliman’s spouse, Hayam El Gamal, and their five children, aged 17, 15, 7, 4, and 4. The children were separated from their mother and sent to a South Texas detention facility. ICE can’t stop a terrorist attack, but they are certainly adept at brutalizing children and breaking up families.

Another problematic part of the resolution is the affirmation that “free and open communication between State and local law enforcement and their Federal counterparts remains the bedrock of public safety and is necessary in preventing terrorist attacks.” In the context of this resolution, this is a call for cooperation between federal immigration enforcement agencies and state and municipal police. Support for this resolution flies in the face of policies prohibiting members of the Rhode Island State Police Department from cooperating with federal authorities in the apprehension of undocumented immigrants. Similar prohibitions against municipal police officers cooperating with ICE exist in Providence and Central Falls.

75 Democrats, including Representative Magaziner, voted for House Resolution 488. 137 Democrats, including Representative Gabe Amo, did not.

Here’s the rest of Representative Magaziner’s event with the League of Women Voters:

Representative Magaziner: Like many of you, I feel a profound sense of anger and rage at many things the administration is doing, but particularly in the immigration space, I sit on the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives. I’m on two committees, Homeland Security and Natural Resources. On the Homeland Security Committee, we are very much in the trenches fighting against the deportation of innocent people, the tearing apart of families, and the rolling back of the fabric of who we are as a country.

We are a country of immigrants. Unless there’s somebody here in this room who’s a hundred percent native, every one of us is descended from immigrants, and our state, Rhode Island, was founded by a refugee as a place of refuge for other refugees. This is our identity as a country and a state, and always has been. The cruelty that we’re seeing from the administration is being driven, certainly, by Trump, but particularly by Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who I had the pleasure of arguing with strenuously when she was in front of our committee a few weeks ago.

What they are doing is different from what they have said their goal is. What they have said their goal is, in whatever over the top language they use, is to get rid of criminals, gang members, rapists, et cetera. That, for the most part, is not what they have been doing, according to their data. Since the administration started six months ago, they have detained and or deported just under 300,000 people. Of those, more than 70%, more than 200,000, had no criminal record. These are mothers, children, and people just trying to work, make a living, provide for their families, and contribute to our economy.

It’s been widely reported that a month or two ago, Stephen Miller called all of the regional heads of ICE to come to Washington in person and yelled at them for not deporting enough people and not meeting this artificial quota of 3000 people a day. One of the regional directors said, “But we’ve seen you all say on TV that you want us to focus on criminals and people with removal orders.” And Stephen Miller has reportedly said, “No, forget about that. Go to Home Depot, go to 711, round up whoever you can.” So the administration’s goal is not to do what they say they will.

Speaking for myself, if all they were doing was focusing on people with criminal records or removal orders, we could quibble over whether some of those people should be removed. If that’s all they were going to do, I think most Americans would be okay with that. But that’s not what they’ve been doing. Their goal is to remove immigrants from this country, period, whether they have committed any crimes or not, whether they’re here legally or not, because, as you all are aware, there have been many, many people who have been detained who are here lawfully and committed no crimes: [such as] students expressing political opinions or writing op-eds.

A gentleman from New Hampshire was being held at the Wyatt in Central Falls for a few months. He was a legal green card holder. His only criminal record was a simple possession of marijuana from about 12 years ago, but otherwise, he had a clean record and was a legal green card holder, here legally. What they are doing is so expansive, unnecessary, cruel, and self-defeating.

The vast majority of undocumented people here have no criminal record and are actively contributing and working. It is estimated that 20% of the construction industry, 30% of the hospitality industry—food, beverage, and hotel workers—and 40% of agricultural workers are undocumented. They are central to our supply chain and our ability to keep costs down for American consumers.

What do we do about it? There are three things to consider: litigation, legislation, and agitation. Let’s start with litigation. There are over 300 lawsuits that have been filed against actions that the Trump Administration has taken: funding freezes to states and agencies, potentially illegal actions on immigration, birthright citizenship, etc. If you look at those 300 or so lawsuits, the administration has been losing more than they have been winning, and for the most part, the administration has been following court orders. Earlier in the year, there was a big fear that Trump would just ignore the courts.

“I’m going to do whatever I want. I control the military, I control ICE, I’m going to do whatever I want,” but, for the most part, that has not happened yet. Instead, they will do something illegal, like round up three airplanes of people and send them to a prison in El Salvador with no due process, and no hearing. A court will say, “You should not have done that,” then the administration won’t do it again until they appeal to a higher court to tell them they can. I compare it to Jurassic Park, when the velociraptors kept trying different parts of the fence to see where they could bust through.

That’s the way the administration is handling these deportations: They keep testing the fence and doing things they know are probably going to be found illegal by the courts, but maybe there’s one court that will say, “Okay, you can do that,” and then they find an opening. That’s he way the administration has been handling it. They’re hoping that ultimately, the Supreme Court will be very permissive with them, but in the meantime, they’ve mostly been doing what the courts have told them to do, so we’ve got to keep supporting these lawsuits. Several good organizations are involved: Democracy Forward as One, the ACLU, and others. The litigation front has been very active and, for the most part, has been our most effective arena so far. It’s not perfect, and I’m not saying we’re winning everything, but there’s some effectiveness there.

Legislation is our toughest one because the reality is that Democrats are not in the majority, and therefore, our leverage is limited. People always ask me if there are secret procedural tricks you could use. Believe me, we would’ve done it if there were, especially in the House of Representatives. I mean, look, I did something I never thought I would do when elected to Congress. I voted to shut down the government, knowing full well that millions of federal employees would not get paid, people would not get their benefits, and there was a real risk that public opinion would turn against us because shutdowns tend to be very unpopular. But we House Democrats, with our leader, Hakeem Jeffries, wanted to force a negotiation. And out of 215 of us, we got 214 to vote to stop funding the government and try to force an unsuccessful negotiation in the Senate. We don’t know if we forced the shutdown or if it would have worked, but we were very much of the mind that we had very few levers at our disposal.

We’re going to try to work the few levers that we have. The next time there’s a funding deadline, like this fall, I imagine there’ll be a big push to try that again, and hopefully, the Senate will go along with us this time.

The most important thing we can do legislatively is, and I recognize that the League of Women Voters has to be non-partisan, but I don’t. So I’ll just say legislatively, the most important thing we can do is win back at least one chamber of Congress in the midterm elections. I cannot overstate the importance of this because if we win back at least one chamber - and the House is probably more likely than the Senate - not only will that give us much more leverage whenever there’s a funding bill, debt ceiling deadline, or any sort of a must pass situation like the annual defense bill - the military doesn’t have the authority to operate if we don’t pass this bill so that’s a must pass - but It will give us more leverage to do things, like “Hey, we’re not passing this unless you protect DACA recipients,” or “We’re not passing this unless you help Afghan refugees.”

It will give us the ability to do that. But the other thing that it will provide us with the ability to do is investigations where we can subpoena members of the administration and force them to testify under oath, turn over documents, and shine a light on what is going on in ways that will make them very uncomfortable and put pressure on them. People forget that Steve Bannon went to jail for contempt of Congress, for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena. That’s how powerful that tool is. We will use it aggressively when we’re back in the majority. In that case, I’ve got a list - I cannot wait to subpoena Stephen Miller and Tom Homan and get these people in our committee under oath, get them to produce documents, and get them to show us what’s going on so that we can expose whatever illegality exists.

The third bucket is, for lack of a better word, agitation. Public opinion is hugely important, and in the immigration space, I think the best thing that we can do, and what I try to do whenever we have a hearing or a press conference, is elevate the stories of some of the people who’ve been caught up in all of this. Andrew Hernandez Romero, the gay makeup artist from Venezuela, left Venezuela fleeing gang violence and harassment for sexual orientation, is currently locked up in that prison in El Salvador, a country that he’s not from, and he has no criminal record. But the craziest thing is that he didn’t enter the country illegally. He showed up at a port of entry outside of San Diego and asked for asylum. He tried to do it legally. He didn’t sneak across the border or do any of that. He didn’t overstay his visa. He wanted to do it the right way, and while he was waiting for his hearing, they sent him to El Salvador, where he still is today.

I tell the story of the 4-year-old U.S. citizen with cancer who was deported, along with his mother, who was not a citizen, but had no criminal record and had been here 10 years as a law-abiding individual in the United States.

More and more of these stories are emerging. There’s Narciso Barranco, the gardener who was beaten by ICE, who has three sons who are all United States Marines.

There’s Sae Joon Park, a legal green card holder in Hawai’i. People don’t realize this, but green card holders can serve in the military. He was a U.S. combat veteran. He had served in the military in the eighties and nineties, was shot twice in Panama, a Purple Heart recipient, came back, and like a lot of veterans, had some mental health and substance use challenges and was convicted of some drug offenses. Now he is being shipped to South Korea, a country he hasn’t lived in since he was seven. This is a combat veteran who has taken two bullets for our country.

I am elevating these stories, and if we continue to elevate these stories, public opinion turns, which helps us in the midterms. It also helps put pressure on the Trump Administration in the short term. In the last few weeks, for the first time since the beginning of the year, Trump’s polling is underwater on immigration. This has always been his strongest polling issue during the campaign. It was his strongest polling issue in the administration’s first six months. That has now begun to flip.

You have right adjacent talking heads, like Joe Rogan, who has several times on his show said the administration is going too far with this deportation stuff. Dave Portnoy, the Barstool Sports guy, is the same thing. These guys are influencers and starting to realize that this is a problem. We’ve got to keep public pressure on.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I wish I could come here and say, “Here’s the silver bullet and everything’s going to be fine tomorrow.” No, we are in a multi-front fight against the Stephen Millers, Tom Homans, and Kristi Noems. We’re not going to win every battle. We won’t be able to save every person, but we will fight this fight on every front. We’re going to fight it in the courts, we’re going to fight it legislatively. We’re going to fight it in the arena of public opinion, and we’re going to do everything we can to stand up for the values that our country and our state were founded on.

Question: I’m pissed, and I think we, Democrats in particular, need to be making a lot more noise. We need to be better organized on the highest and lowest levels, but we need some leadership here. The people are ready. Somehow, the leadership is lacking. I don’t know what you can do in Washington, but Trump, even when he wasn’t president, was around the country and had a hundred thousand people at a town hall. Why aren’t we doing that? Why aren’t you four guys doing that? If you call it, the people will come. We need to raise the energy level of this whole thing.

Representative Magaziner: I’m always open to ideas. If there are other things that you think I should be doing personally or that Democrats in Washington should be doing, give me ideas, let me know. I’ll take those back. I’ll tell you what we have been doing is being vocal in every hearing. We’ve got a lot of [Democratic House] members who have been doing oversight visits at ICE detention centers, including my colleague on the Homeland Security Committee, LaMonica McIver (Democrat, New Jersey).

And by the way, if you’re inclined to make small donations from time to time, donate to her right now because her campaign account is also her legal defense fund, because they’re trying to lock her up for conducting her congressional oversight.

We’ve got members going to ICE detention centers and holding town halls, not only in our districts, but in Republican districts to try to force the issue there. But I’ll just say, again, I can’t speak for the Senate. Our senators, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, voted the right way on this. Not all of their colleagues did, unfortunately. But we don’t have a lot of levers in the House, but one lever we do have is government funding, and we try to do that in the spring. We will most likely try that again in the fall. But by all means, if there are ideas for other things we should be doing, let us know.

Question: Becoming a naturalized person means becoming a citizen. Is that right?

Representative Magaziner: Yes.

Question: I know there are many categories of people, but is there a way of saying, approximately, how long it takes someone to become a citizen? And of that number, how many people register to vote?

Kathy Cloutier: It takes five years. Someone who has been an immigrant for five years can apply to become a naturalized citizen. There is a cost involved, and sometimes, cost is a barrier. There is a fee waiver and many things, but it can get expensive.

More than half of the immigrants in Rhode Island are naturalized already. There are only about 23,000 right now who are eligible to be naturalized. We’ve done a good job of getting those eligible to naturalize—the League of Women Voters. I understand 90 plus percent. At every naturalization ceremony in Johnston, which happens in Rhode Island, the League of Women Voters registers naturalized citizens to vote, and 90% of them register. The League in Rhode Island is doing an amazing job registering immigrants who want to vote. Voting is one of the reasons they naturalize - because they often come from countries where they don’t have the right to vote, they don’t have a democracy, or they believe in civic engagement. Most of the clients we work with, as we teach them civics, are excited about the idea.

Almost 83,000 folks in Rhode Island are naturalized and eligible to vote.

Question: I’m curious if you could explain what ICE’s legal authority is for operating in public. We’re hearing stories of people being essentially kidnapped, and also about bystanders who want to be helpful in some way, are getting charged with the crime of impeding, when they’re just looking to see if the action is being done legally.

Representative Magaziner: It’s a complicated question about the legality of the way that ICE is acting. There are two parts to this one: The Biden Administration used many of the executive tools they had to try to make it easier for people fleeing violence and poverty to come here and start applying for citizenship. The executive branch has a lot of tools to facilitate that, which means they also have a lot of tools to take those pathways away. TPS [Temporary Protected Status] is a good example. TPS was Biden using his executive authority to grant waivers to people fleeing certain countries. The flip side is that the current administration has the legal authority to take that away. However, the law is also very clear that everyone in this country, including people who are not citizens, people who are undocumented, and everyone in this country, has the right to due process.

One of the illegal stances that the Trump Administration has taken is trying to lock people up and deport people without due process. That is the focus of a lot of the lawsuits I mentioned earlier. As an example, the three airplanes of people who were sent to the prison in El Salvador, including Andry Hernandez Romero, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and some other high-profile cases, were illegal. A judge said you cannot do that again without at least giving people a hearing, so the administration hasn’t yet. They’re appealing the ruling. Of course, they want to resume doing that, but they haven’t. So it varies.

There are certain things that they have legal authority to do, but there are other things where they’re stretching or violating the bounds of their legal authority. They wait for a court to tell them no, and then they’ll try something else. That’s a complicated answer to a simple question, but it depends on the action.

Question: What is the legal basis they’re asserting to pick people up and put them in their van?

Representative Magaziner: I’m not a lawyer, but in my opinion, they do not have the legal authority to do that. They might try to claim you’re impeding ICE as they try to carry out their duty to remove people who are here with removal orders, et cetera, et cetera. I don’t think it would stand up in court. But again, they will try to do things until a court tells them to stop. It depends on the situation.

Question: I’m interested in how closely you collaborate with Representative Gabe Amo, especially on this issue. I’m sure that he’s also very much involved because you mentioned working with our senators, but I’m wondering how much you collaborate.

Representative Magaziner: He and I are partners in the House. We represent Rhode Island together. We work very closely. He is very good on these issues, and of course, as the son of immigrants in Rhode Island, has a very compelling personal story to tell.

One other thing I’ll just note is that all of us in the delegation - me, Jack, Sheldon, and Gabe - we all have full-time caseworkers in our office. Each of us has at least one full-time immigration specialist in our office. We’re not lawyers, but we can help connect people with legal resources, be a go-between with the State Department and others to check on the progress of visas or applications for citizenship. We’ve been assisting in that way, not just on the macro stuff but also on the micro.

Kathy Cloutier: Our staff works closely with all four of their offices.

Question: I’m wondering what you, as the Congress, are doing about these people being arrested by masked people without uniforms. There has to be an investigation...

Representative Magaziner: Absolutely. Congress has oversight of the executive branch, which gives us the right, for example, to go to detention centers, to be admitted to detention centers, and to see and speak with people detained there. There have been a lot of hotspots in the country, such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Members are going into the centers to see what’s going on. That being said, the strongest tools that Congress has are tools that can only be authorized by the majority of Congress, which, with the Republicans in charge, they will not let us do.

Congress can issue subpoenas and compel ICE or the Department of Homeland Security to give us documents about a certain case. But an individual member can’t do that. It takes a vote of the full Homeland Security Committee, and the Republicans won’t let us do that right now. There are certain narrow rights that we have as individual members to conduct oversight, but the real power to conduct oversight comes when we’re in the majority, can issue subpoenas, and call people in to testify. Also, when we’re in the majority, we can also pass budgets with strings attached that say, for example, that the Department of Homeland Security’s budget is X billion dollars this year, but you cannot use this funding to deport people without due process. You cannot use this funding to have an ICE officer go out without identification. We can use the budget to set parameters for how ICE can act, but we can only do that when we’re in the majority. We’re not able to do that with Republicans in charge.

The last thing I’d say is this: It’s not like ICE calls us and tells us when they pick someone up. We often don’t learn about it until we see it in the media or hear about it secondhand. I had somebody call me a couple of months ago, and again, there hasn’t been as much ICE activity in Rhode Island as in other places, but there has been some. Somebody called me a few months ago and said, “Hey, I just saw what looked like ICE pick somebody up off the sidewalk in front of Tortilla Flats in Providence.”

So right away, I called my staff, and we called the ICE office. We asked, “Did you all pick someone up in Providence by Tortilla Flats?” And they said, “We can’t tell you anything unless you give us a signed letter from the individual or their family.” We said, “Well, we don’t know who they are, so we can’t get a letter.” And they were like, “Tough shit.” So again, our ability as individual members is limited, but when we are in the majority, our ability to crack down on this kind of thing will be much expanded.

Question: There is such a thing as a shadow investigation, and I know that Jeffries and several people have had them, and I wonder why that isn’t being done.

Representative Magaziner: We can do what’s called shadow hearings instead of having an official committee hearing - and by the way, the Republicans have been doing very few official hearings because they don’t want us asking questions. So the Homeland Security Committee hasn’t had a full committee hearing since Kristi Noem came in about two months ago. We can do a shadow hearing, where Democrats only do our own little fake hearing, where we can bring in witnesses and the press, and we can say things and ask questions.

We are doing that, so I’m organizing one on this topic right after the 4th of July. Pramila Jayapal, who’s on the Judiciary Committee, another committee with jurisdiction over immigration, did one last week on this topic.

The difference, though, is that these are unofficial hearings. We’re not allowed to issue subpoenas or compel the administration to testify before us in a shadow hearing. It’s a way for us to get press attention.

We are doing that, but it doesn’t have the same kind of teeth. Again, I’m working with Delia Ramirez, a colleague of mine from Chicago, on the Homeland Security Committee. She is the child of two undocumented parents. We will have a shadow hearing on this topic right after the fourth.

Question: I read recently that the Administration limits oversight visits to the ICE detention centers.

Representative Magaziner: This kind of gets back to the velociraptor trying the fence. They will try different arguments until a court tells them they can’t. A law, passed a couple of years ago, says that if a member of Congress presents themselves at an ICE detention facility, they have to be allowed in to do an inspection. That law is on the books, but they’re trying to say, “Okay, we’ll honor that, but you’ve got to make an appointment,” or “you’ve got to give us 48 hours’ notice.” They will claim that it’s for the safety of the inmates or whatever, but we’re going to have to get a judge to say, “You can’t require 48 hours’ notice.”

You see what I mean? Even this administration, which bends the law to a maximum degree, knows they can’t let us in anymore, but they’re trying to find little ways to limit us. That’s part of the back-and-forth, but members are still committed to going.

I can tell you they’re filing bogus criminal charges against LaMonica McIver to try to scare us out of doing our oversight, but they’re not going to scare us from doing that—quite the opposite.

[Note: It is here that the exchange I talked about at the beginning of this piece took place.]

Question: Since the agitation has largely been on a grassroots level, is there a way of getting some leadership from you and your colleagues, but as a way to publicize what’s being done on a grassroots level and on a broader scale?

Representative Magaziner: I am very happy to participate in rallies, events, et cetera. I have been doing that, and Gabe, Jack, and Sheldon have also done it. I’ll continue to do that, and I want to encourage that. But we all have a role to play. I try to raise the profile of this issue with my work in the Homeland Security Committee, with my posts on social media, where I post and talk about this a lot. We’ve been focused on growing our social media channels, press releases, and press conferences. We’re going to do the shadow hearing, as I said, and as far as things like rallies, I’m happy to participate in those, and I think that’s helpful, but the big ones that were happening eight years ago, the women’s marches and stuff like that, it’s not like those were organized by members of Congress. Grassroots movements have to be grassroots. But that doesn’t preclude the fact that just like back then, those of us who were in elected office showed up, spoke, showed support, and will continue to do that this time too.

Question: I didn’t mean leadership as in you step in and plan the rallies, but rather, you can contact a lot of people, and perhaps the growing links between these different grassroots organizations can reach each other.

Representative Magaziner: You mean we can help publicize what’s happening? Yeah, absolutely. That’s good.

Question: There are a lot of people who are tolerating the illegalities of the administration around immigration for a specific reason, and that is, in my opinion, that Trump and his group have portrayed the Biden Administration as having completely opened the borders and allowed in a flood of refugees. There are a lot of people who still believe that and are not willing to look the other way because they see it as a bigger problem.

How true do you think that accusation is? If it’s true, what are the Democrats nationally doing regarding proposed policy changes that would prevent that from happening in the future? And if it’s not true, what are they doing about getting the message out to convince more people that it’s not true and we ought to stand up more against what the administration is doing?

Representative Magaziner: To what extent is the anti-immigrant backlash we’re seeing now and the permissiveness of what Trump is doing connected to a perception that President Biden was too loose with the border, and was he too loose or not too loose?

I’d say multiple things can be true. It is true that President Biden’s policies were more permissive, particularly on people claiming asylum at the southern border, than probably any other president. And if you look at the numbers, the number of people who came into the country who were undocumented was significantly higher under President Biden than in any other four-year period. That doesn’t mean that the people who were coming in were all criminals, terrorists, et cetera, et cetera. We know that is not the case.

Yes, when millions of people come in over four years, will there be some bad actors here or there? Of course. But the vast majority of people who are coming are people fleeing poverty, violence, and persecution, looking to take advantage of our strong economy to get a job, survive, and maybe send a little money to their family members. That is the overwhelming majority.

Under the law, people can claim asylum and ask for a hearing. They can say, “Hey, I’m fleeing a terrible situation. I deserve to be let in. Can I at least have a hearing?” Part of the problem is that there is such a backlog of asylum cases waiting to be heard before an immigration judge that it takes years and years for people to hear their cases.

When Democrats take back the majority, one of the tangible things we can do to fix this situation is to hire more judges. In many cases, the judges may say, Sorry, you don’t have a valid asylum claim. You’ve got to go. But in other cases, the judge will say, yes, you have a valid claim. Clearing through that backlog will at least get most of the people here their status resolved, leading to a much more orderly system. We as Democrats have to acknowledge that we need an immigration system that is orderly and safe, and that what happened under the last administration, as well as intentioned as it was, was not always orderly and was not always safe for the migrants themselves, to say nothing of others.

We need to learn from that and do better next time. Part of that includes resources for judges and making it easier for people to initiate their asylum claims when they’re still in their home countries, before they get to the United States, to help streamline things before they come.

There are common sense things we can do to have a better system next time, but none of that excuses the horrible way in which immigrants, both undocumented and not. They are being treated under the current administration. None of that changes the fact that under our constitution, everyone who is within the borders of the United States, whether they are a citizen or not, is entitled to due process. That is constitutional. That is without question. The Trump Administration will try to fight it, but that has always been the case.

When we’re back in charge, we’ll have to learn from the last administration’s experiences and do it better next time. But in the meantime, many innocent people are being caught up in terrible situations, and we have to fight back as hard as we can.

Here’s the presentation Katherine Cloutier gave at the beginning of the event: