Jennifer Chacón & Stephen Lee discuss immigration 30 days into Trump administration
Profs. Jennifer Chacón and Stephen Lee analyze the travel ban and subsequent 9th Circuit decision, DACA, the DHS’s most recent memos on immigration enforcement, and other immigration issues that have arisen in the past 30 days since the inauguration of President Trump.
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Jennifer Chacón
Professor of Law
Expertise: Immigration law, constitutional law, criminal procedure and criminal law -
Stephen Lee
Professor of Law
Expertise: Administrative law, immigration law
Featuring:
Podcast Transcript
[Narrator] Welcome to UCI Law Talks, presenting bold perspectives on law from the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Join the conversation on Twitter @UCILaw, #UCILawTalks
[Stephen Lee] Welcome to UCI Law Talks. I'm Stephen Lee. I'm a professor here at UCI Law School and I'll be your host for this episode. With me today as our friend and colleague Jennifer Chacón, who is also a professor here at UCI. She's an expert on immigration and criminal law matters and we're here today to talk about immigration policy under the Trump Administration. Jennifer, it's great to have you here.
[Jennifer Chacón] Thanks Stephen, it’s good to be back.
[SL] So a few months ago after the election but before the inauguration, we did a podcast where we tried to speculate and prognosticate on what immigration policy might look like under a Trump Administration.
[JC] Yep.
[SL] Today we're going to talk about some of these policy changes but before we do let me just ask you how have these changes ushered in by this administration stacked up against what you anticipated? Better, worse, or about what you expected?
[JC] So I think what we're seeing in terms of the recent enforcement memos coming out of DHS, President Trump’s executive order from January 25 and even aspects of the travel ban it's all in line with what we suspected would happen and we can talk about some of what we're seeing in those in a minute. So it's about what we would expect. I think what has been unexpected particularly around the travel ban is the degree of ineptitude with which the programs have been rolled out and that has been just really sort of amazing to watch. To see an administration try to roll out an immigration policy without adequate consultation with the Department of Homeland Security…
[SL] Yeah.
[JC] …or the department of state. The chaos that that created on the ground, the litigation opportunities that that created. That was somewhat unexpected.
[SL] I mean the sheer number of leaked memos that have come out…
[JC] Yes.
[SL] … in the just the first month. It almost makes you wonder if this is just all by design or if it really is just on the count of ineptitude or incompetence. It's kind of amazing and dizzying. So I guess that's a natural segue to the to the lawsuits running the Muslim ban and I guess a good place to start is what are your thoughts on just the merits of it? In other words, do you see this passing constitutional muster if and when that issue comes before a court?
[JC] So we saw that the travel ban ,as initially rolled out, which had in it a number of provisions that seem plainly unconstitutional. Particularly, the provisions that applied to lawful permanent residents, which seem to run afoul on constitutional case law in cases like Fleuti and Landon v. Plasencia, which create burdens on LPR,’s that seem inconsistent with a constitutional structure. So there were clear constitutional problems there. We're now hearing tell that the administration plans to roll out perhaps sometime today a new version of the travel ban that avoids some of the most obvious constitutional pitfalls but that would still target the same seven countries and potentially raise some of the other constitutional questions that the old travel ban raised. And those are the harder constitutional questions. So it seems pretty clear that the litigation strategy is revolved around the notion that this is a religious ban and one that evinces impermissible religious animus given the Trump statements about why he was choosing these particular countries, what the objective of this ban was. It doesn't seem farfetched to say that he is targeting Muslims and that it is religiously motivated in that it is…
[SL] Farfetched? That is generous!
[JC] It seems that – it seems like we have evidence of that. I think the arguments are more difficult to make than we might think against the backdrop of the constitutional case law in the immigration context where some of the common sensical notions around equal protection and protection of religious freedom that we have in domestic case law hasn't really infiltrated the fabric of constitutional case law and immigration.
[SL] So, I love that. I love that and that’s the part of this that’s been almost… This is the part that’s been a little shocking. So for the people who aren't perhaps up to speed on their civil procedure. You know, it's important that currently the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this law is currently stayed before the Ninth Circuit. So the Ninth Circuit panel had a motions panel that issued a per curiam opinion upholding the stay issued by the district court. And then one of the judges on the Ninth circuit as is a judge’s right under Ninth Circuit rule called for the case to be reviewed by en banc proceedings which is just a larger, more representative panel of the Ninth Circuit. And then upon representations by the federal government, they decide to stay those proceedings as they waited for a new executive order to be issued and allegedly it’s supposed to drop any time today so for the listening public you may already have this before you by the time you get to download the podcast. But in any event we're operating right now on the assumption while we're still waiting for that executive order to drop. Now there are a couple things that I wanted to say in response to Jennifer Chacón’s really helpful insights. Number one: the first inquiry that courts make in evaluating whether or not an injunctive order should be upheld is the likelihood of success on the merits. And it’s important to note that the state of Washington had two claims. So one had to do with the due process claims and that has to do with all of the Plasencia and Fleuti case law that you talked about. But the other one was a religious discrimination piece and that ties into both the establishment clause of equal protection but I gave you – I gave you trouble a second ago by calling it farfetched.
[JC] Yes you did.
[SL] But part of what’s been interesting is that the State of Washington has cited President Trump’s public statements about the desire to implement a ban on the admission from Muslim countries. So you never see that kind of you know loose lipped reflection on someone's motives or intent because usually people are keeping that under wraps but because this is floating around in the public domain, the State of Washington are able to point to those statements as evidence of likelihood of success on the merits. Now, the other piece I’ll say about that as a sort of irreparable injury piece. And that's a second inquiry, like not just whether or not you're likely to succeed but whether or not the party would be irreparably injured and here is where the State of Washington really made all of its arguments about how workers are being separated from their families. I mean this is you know going all the way back to Chae Chan Ping. You have someone who is in the green card holder who has permission to leave the United States under the promise of being able to come back and then under the Muslim ban they would have been stranded. And so in that formulation, that's where the ripple injury came. You know one more point about this and I'd love to hear some other thoughts. Did you – have you read the opinion recently and did you see the citation that the court offered in terms of why they were not going to reduce the geographic scope of the injunction?
[JC] No.
[SL] So it's a great read. I mean truly only immigration junkies would catch this but if you read the order carefully one of the arguments that the federal government offered was that well as a secondary line of defense, we argue that the state of – the District Court in Washington errored in crafting a junctive of national scope as opposed to one that was limited just to the states of Washington and Minnesota which were the two parties of interest. What was interesting is the Ninth Circuit responded by saying well look this would run afoul of the interest in a uniform national immigration policy.
[JC] Right. Texas v. U.S.
[SL] You know Texas v. The United States! And again for the – you know – benefit of our listeners that was of course the case that enjoined the implementation of President Obama's 2014 Deferred Action Program. So for anti-immigrant advocates and nativists, it was a sort of be careful what you wish wish for moment. I mean it was it was really – you couldn't make this stuff up.
[JC] Yeah, that's right so we have that nationwide injunction now sort of everything frozen pending word from the administration as to how they plan to proceed but you do see. What's been fascinating is watching the Trump Administration in some ways work both sides of the boundaries. On the one hand trying to telegraph and very clearly telegraphing and saying to the base that this is a Muslim ban, that this is the ban that was promised. While at the same time, taking the position in court but that's not what this is after all.
[SL] That’s right.
[JC] This is in fact a targeted the list of high security concerned countries that just happen to be predominantly Muslim and watching them walk that line has been very interesting.
[SL] In the – I don't know if you listen to the oral argument but I listen to it with the three judges holding the hearing telephonically and Judge Clifton, a moderate judge in the Ninth Circuit from Hawaii, seem the most sympathetic to the federal government. I mean he was pointing out that the ban applied to only seven countries and he pointed out that empirically only a small percentage of the world's Muslim population comes from those countries so he wondered whether or not it could be characterized as demonstrating anti-Muslim animus. But even he ultimately signed on to uproot your opinion so it does raise a lot of question as to what will come of this you know if and when this goes before the court which I guess leads to another question that is: so even if you get this more narrowly construed Muslim ban from the administration, does that resolve all the constitutional issues?
[JC] No I don't think it does and in some ways it leaves the most interesting constitutional questions unresolved. So to the extent, there is impermissible animus that's motivating this law and I think there's lots of evidence from outside the record and from the statements of the administration that there is impermissible animus. It really tees up the question that the courts really haven't had to grapple with or haven't really since Chinese exclusion in some ways which is what are the bounds of the federal government's ability to discriminate impermissibly on the basis of religion when you're dealing with exclusion policies? Is there is there no limit at all? Or at the end of the day, when they're acting in ways that are motivated by impermissible animus, does the court have the capacity to step in and do something? So it's – I think this is you know – this will be very very interesting to watch. Those questions won't and can't be resolved I don't think by a new executive order.
[SL] Yeah and I also just don't buy the argument that the issue is moot if the executive issues another order because you have all those cases that talk about cases that are capable of repetition of evading review. And if you allowed an executive order to moot this and all the president have to do was just issue and rescind and executive order back and forth to avoid any problems with it.
[JC] That's right.
[SL] So let's talk about the memos issued by our Secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly. So these memos came out; they purport to do a number of things. So what was your reaction to the memos?
[JC] So I guess the first reaction that I had was what does it mean to see a signed order coming out of the Department of Homeland Security that the White House says they're still vetting or they haven't quite signed off on. There was a sort of a procedural mystery to the to the rollout of these memos. The memos were clearly intended to effectuate President Trump’s executive orders of January 25th and to give guidance to the Department of Homeland Security for the implementation of the directives of those two executive orders. But there was this procedural oddity that the White House claim not to have signed off on them or to still be reviewing them which was interesting given that presumably they were going into operation. So the two memos do track quite closely with the executive orders of January 25th and I think in that regard there are no surprises but I think it's important to highlight the way that we do see many of the issues that we had talked about in the previous discussion popping up in these memos. So it seems quite clear based on the read of these memos that there is a plan to significantly and massively perhaps expand detention capacity. So detention will be an important tool of the administration in effectuating its immigration policy. And individuals who previously would have been released on their own recognizance or perhaps with a small amount of bond will pretty clearly be detained under the new policies and so we're going to see more reliance on detention in the memos talk about the need to increase detention capacity and obviously that requires funding. It's not clear exactly what the department can do in the absence of a congressional infusion of cash but in the meantime their policy will be to expand detention capacity as much as possible and to use that as an enforcement tool. The second thing that we see that I think we knew we would see was – is an expressed desire to rely more heavily on states and localities to implement immigration enforcement policies. So under President Obama, there was a real scaling back of the 287G Program which involved cooperative enforcement between the federal government and states and localities whereby states and localities became federal government actors in some senses for purposes of immigration enforcement. Those memorandum of agreement came under massive fire from immigrant communities, immigrants’ rights organizations for being unprotective of the rights of immigrant communities generally for resulting racial profiling for resulting in bad arrest practices and detention practices. And so the Obama Administration really rolled those back and you see in the memos coming from Kelly's office yesterday the stated intention to expand those policies to the fullest extent possible to maximize cooperation from states and localities. At the same time that those memos suggest that they'll be phasing out funding for portions of the office that do advocacy on behalf of immigrants. So I think what we see here is a potential break storm where you get more and more actors engaged in the immigration enforcement system, more and more people with inadequate training and perhaps with the wrong motives getting involved in this enforcement effort and then really fewer and fewer checks from the federal government to make sure that the powers are exercised in ways that are rights protective.
[SL] Yeah. I was reading this the other day and I saw Criminal Alien Program, I saw S-COMM, I saw 287G. I felt like I was going to a high school reunion.
[JC] It was all the greatest hits.
[SL] I got to see you again? It was amazing.
[JC] S-COMM too, that's right. So the Secure Communities Program was the program that was rolled out by the Obama Administration in 2013. It said that states and localities would, when they made arrests those – information from their arrests would be run through the DHS database and then DHS would, if appropriate, issue detainers and initiate proceedings. And that was also met with significant resistance from states and localities who didn't like this policy and felt it interfered with their relationship with immigrant communities from immigrants’ rights advocates and from immigrants who felt like it really strained their relationship with the local police. And the Obama Administration responded in some – the view of some inadequately but certainly responded by rolling that program back to something called the Priority Enforcement Program wherein they said they would really – the arrest checks would still happen but the department would be much more selective in terms of when they chose to exercise their power to ask states and localities to hold and when they would exercise their own powers over those individuals and and seek to remove them. So S-COMM goes away and is replaced by Pep which looks a lot like S-COMM but is supposed to be more selective and is supposed to rely more heavily on prosecutorial discretion by the DHS. And well, the Kelley memos from yesterday make clear is that that is old news and we're back to Secure Communities whereby that kind of exercise of discretion won't be an important function.
[SL] It just feels completely divorced from a lot of the empirical evidence that has been put forth by a lot of people in our community.
[JC] Yes.
[SL] I'm reading section B, the section that identifies the resuscitation of all these different programs. And you know, I kept thinking of that great study put out by Tom Miles and Adam Cox on how S-COMM actually doesn't make community safer. So you know, I get it, it makes for a great talking point if you’re catering to your base but it's not actually advancing policy in a meaningful way at all.
[JC] That's right.
[SL] And in fact, it might be making things worse. You know, another portion of the memo that found really troubling was just in the part A identification of the department’s enforcement priorities. And I think this has gotten some attention but I think it's worth spending a few moments on this where you see the third paragraph where the DHS announced that we should prioritize anyone who’s been convicted of any criminal offense and okay – so that's fine, have been charged with any criminal offense that's not been resolved or have committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense.
[JC] Right.
[SL] So I'm got to say something about this. You know, some people argue that relying on the criminal justice system is rational and smart because it identifies immigrants who are most likely to be dangerous and morally objectionable. And there's some issues with that framing, but you know, I think that's an argument that I understand and the strongest data point in favor of this argument is that the criminal justice system provides procedural protections that aren't available in most other parts of the system. So that, you know, by the time you get a conviction you have some degree of certainty that this person is in fact a dangerous or morally compromised.
[JC] Those of us who study criminal law would…
[SL] Yes, yes, yes!
[JC] … have objections that but yes.
[SL] I’m saying that some people say that. I'm not, I'm not necessarily buy into that. So I would say that that's absolutely right but the data point that is probably, you know, the most useful in defending that position is again the conviction. That is a part of some sort of meaningful procedural protections. But when you have this set of priorities that expand well beyond conviction to people who are charged but are still in a situation that hasn't resolved or people who’ve just committed something…
[JC] That's right.
[SL] …that destroys the strongest defense of that argument at all.
[JC] Right.
[SL] So to the extent that there is a position to justify going after criminal aliens, and I think that this set of priorities just – it totally undermines that position.
[JC] Yeah. So this this – the set of priorities there articulated in the memo exactly track the set of priorities that were laid out in the January 25 executive order. So there are no surprises there except to the extent that you might have been hoping for something a little bit more circumspect of the expansive language that's used in the executive order but I think you're absolutely right. There are no procedural protections at all. It relies on frontline detection by anyone really who suspects potential criminality and those individuals then are prioritized as criminals for purposes of enforcement. I think the same sorts of questions can be raised about gang affiliation which is which is mentioned several times in the memo and included in the enforcement priority section. Gang affiliation undefined and presumably I know it when I see it as a local law enforcement official which again has the potential to be overly descriptive particularly and in certain communities of color. So I think we should be worried that to the extent the criminal justice system ever provided any effective screening function in immigration enforcement priorities that breaks down the way that these enforcement priorities have been rolled out. I think what's interesting about the memo is it does, at the end of the day, it resends all prior enforcement priority memos but it does exclude DACA which we can talk about in a moment and excludes the DAPA memo. So we have those sort of put off to the side, DAPA non-operative of course. So – but then it says, after resending all of the other priorities and then listing this very very broad group of individuals who might be prioritized under the new memo, it does contain this language in there that says we should really because we have scarce resources. We should prioritize and then it lists the series of sections that include the criminal grounds for exclusion and removal, the national security grounds for exclusion and removal. And so, we can see that they're sort of, in some ways sort of, making the nod to the fact that they don't have the resources to deport anybody, that the Obama-style priorities and recent entrance again also in this list…
[SL] Right.
[JC] …basically the same priorities that Jay Johnson identified are the purported priorities for their own enforcement policies because you can't deport everybody so that's interesting. And what makes this, I think, more problematic is because there's not any effort to sort of define that class of people narrowly and carefully it's sort of a free for all, almost anybody could be identified as someone who's a priority based on crime of the way crime is defined in that memo. I think anybody has committed some act that could be chargeable as a criminal offense given the way that statues were written.
[SL] That’s right.
[JC] So it's a set of priorities that sort of lacks priority. And I think what this does is effectively unleashes agents who have felt constrained in the past by priorities to essentially operate in a universe where they are unconstrained. For those agents who have always exercise discretion will – it's likely that they'll continue to do so but this sort of creates an opening for those who are the least likely to exercise discretion in a meaningful way and allows them the opportunity to bring pretty much anybody who's removable under the rubric of a priority.
[SL] That's right. I think that ultimately it has an aggrandizing effect that's experienced most acutely by ICE prosecutors and then certainly ICE agents who are in the field. I think that's an unmistakable consequence forming from this. So let's go ahead and transition to another topic that's been getting some attention in immigration law circles and that is removal proceedings that have been initiated against a handful of DACA beneficiaries and I think generally speaking this raises a larger question of what is the state of DACA and now? What can we expect moving forward? So maybe the place to start is, you know, what have you heard about how DACA recipients have been treated in these removal proceedings?
[JC] So what we see in the memos is and – is that so far there's been no executive order rescinding DACA notwithstanding Trump's promise to do that on day one. Trump now says as he said shortly after the election this is a troubling issue for him he's not really sure how he wants to deal with it. It's certainly…
[SL] He loves these kids.
[JC] … That’s what he says. And – but I think it's definitely a politically fraught issue and you can see that the Department of Homeland Security memos that issued yesterday walk around that issue and say that that's not what they're discussing in these enforcement memos. So DACA has a clear carve out which means that unless and until the president does something about the program it continues to exist and those individuals are at least potentially subject to greater protections. Of course, the problem is and this is what we're witnessing, it's very easy to category jump under the broadly defined criminal category that the Trump Administration is pursuing here. So we have heard about individuals who are DACA recipients being detained by ICE. In one case, it sounds like ICE was there with a warrant for somebody else and this individual who was in the home was arrested at the same time not understanding of the fact that the individual had papers demonstrating DACA. The purported justification is gang affiliation and I think this is one that we’ll probably see again and again because gang affiliation requires no paper.
[SL] Right.
[JC] It doesn't require criminal conviction; it doesn't require a record. And so then if a story about getting affiliation can be told in any way that becomes a reason to category shift. So someone moves from a protected DACA recipient to an unprotected priority of foreign enforcement.
[SL] That’s right.
[JC] The second case involved an individual in San Antonio who purportedly had a small amount of marijuana. Again you can see the category jump. So this person who was a deferred action recipient is now committing acts that are potentially chargeable as a crime that would be a priority for removal under the current administration's enforcement priorities so the category jumpers. So I would say in theory, DACA recipients have so thus far been unaffected by the orders and that's certainly how they're framed. In practice, DACA recipients like everybody else is increasingly vulnerable under the orders as they’ve been framed and that would include lawful permanent residents, residents present on nonimmigrant visas and any individual who is unauthorized who now might potentially fit into this more broadly defined category of priorities.
[SL] And we should be clear that for those out there listening trying to figure out where DACA fits within the universe of immigration priorities thus far the total evidence we've seen suggests that DACA recipients are not the direct targets of efforts. It seems that in both the cases in Texas and Seattle they were sort of collateral damage or incidental arrests to other primary targets. At the same time and for all the reasons you highlighted, it's not as if it creates the sort of immunity card right in the moment of confrontation with the ICE officer. So it's certainly something that people should be aware of but it's not something that – I don't think yet should be cause for alarm. I should say that generally speaking though I do wonder how the government plans to initiate these because you know everyone knows that due process protects you from arbitrary deprivations of property and liberty. And there's this long case – the Supreme Court cases that suggest that government conferred benefits can create a kind of property liberty interest that is protectable under that clause. And it seems clear to me that deferred action very much does that. I mean, it provides individuals with work authorization, which allows you to work and build a career. And there are a lot of cases that show that those are protected property interests, similarly reputation if you were outed as someone who's undocumented and someone who doesn't have that ability that also is a protectable liberty interest. So it's not clear to me how this fits in with a larger strategy in terms of efficient allocation of resources on the government’s side but in any event, that's what's happening right now.
[JC] Right.
[SL] I should also say the other thing too about this. This is a point I just I can't emphasize enough when I talk to people about DACA and immigrants generally and that is: I think more than anything the sort of anecdotal arrests of dreamers have crave the opportunity to show how reductive the labels are. So we shouldn't take this as just another opportunity to double down on dreamers of the great immigrants and we should rally behind them. I mean of course we should do that but I think generally we should rally behind immigrant community generally. I mean a lot of these programs are just mean spirited, inefficient, arbitrary. And so, just because someone is not a dreamer that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care any less about the fact that they're now being targeted by these new shifts in policy.
[JC] Yeah. I think if anything, these moments that we've seen over the last couple of days where DACA recipients have been caught up in enforcement efforts highlights that if you buy into a narrative that separates criminals from others, you wind up with a category of criminals that can be expanded to encompass people that you formally thought were protected. So there's a real danger to buying into those tropes especially when the categories are as ill defined as they are in these enforcement priority memos.
[SL] Yeah, and I should also say too a statistic that I just recently learned of was that over the last 10 years, unauthorized migration has decreased by 65 percent.
[JC] Right.
[SL] So you know again, to the extent that people think of these shifts in a force of policy as something that's necessary to deter migration, it just doesn't really map on the empirical realities at all.
[JC] Yeah. So these memos just like the executive orders that prompted them reflect the high degree of fear and concern about unauthorized migration as a national security risk and as a growing problem. And in fact, there's one point in the memo where it compares the statistics of unauthorized arrivals in 2016 to 2015 and notes about a 10,000 number increase. And the reason they're comparing to 2015 is because 2016, 2015 we are at record lows for people arriving at the border without authorization. If you compare these numbers to the 1990’s, to the 1980’s, you will see how minuscule the flow of unauthorized migrants is at the southern border. The idea that this is now suddenly a massive national security threat because more Central Americans, 10,000 more, came in 2016 versus 2015 is just specious in the context of the broader flow of migration from the south. We're at a point in time when this really isn't a pressing concern and we ought to be thinking about how to really help to integrate populations that have been here for a really long time. That should be our focus and instead our focus is now on how we're going to get rid of some of a population that's been with us for a really long time and that just seems to me to be a wrong headed national security concern.
[SL] That last point is a great one in that you know people have been here a long time and so your status changes accordingly. I mean the court has said that in a number of instances and I think that. And also of course with common sense which is part of the reason why I've been so encouraged by this move towards universal representation that… Localities like Los Angeles and Santa Ana have been putting forward this idea that you know immigrants should go through removal proceedings without the benefit of counsel as as you know and many listeners know the right to counsel appointed counsel exists only in the criminal context and very limited context beyond that certainly not the immigration context. And of course the statistics are really astounding in terms of the outcome differentials. People are six times more likely to get relief if they have immigration proceedings. They are four times more likely get bonded out if increased fairness. The outcomes are more accurate. You know, our clinic has really been doing a lot with the other clinics such as Western State and other organizations like OCOIU. And those are again all very predictable sort of participants in this movement but the other thing that I found really encouraging is that it seems that a lot of the local bar associations and private attorneys have also tried to step it up.
[JC] Right.
[SL] So I don't know. I think that there's a lot to be discouraged by. At the same time, locally here in Orange County, I'm seeing a lot that give me some hope for the next few years.
[JC] Yeah. I think there is a recognition that when you're talking about removing people who have been here for a long time you’re talking about removing the breadwinners.
[SL] That’s right.
[JC] You're talking about separating parents from children; you're talking about decreasing a support network for US citizen children. And that has a cost for communities and localities and counties. And that if the person really has a valid claim to relief from removal then it's less costly for the County to assist that person in gaining that relief from removal than it is to have that person removed with all of the attendant costs that that separation will entail. And so, we've seen jurisdictions like Los Angeles move toward universal representation on the theory that it's going to be cost effective and community enhancing for them and I think that – I hope that we'll see that move in other places as well. I think that's the right answer. But one other thing that I'll say I guess the other concern that I have coming out of these memos is we do see a clear intention for the department to rely very heavily on deportation strategies that do not require a hearing before an immigration court. So significant expansion of proceedings under Section 235 which are administrative only. They go through a DHS agent and then with appeal to an immigration judge but never to a court. So those those proceedings are meant to be streamlined and to ensure that you don't actually in most cases even get to an immigration court. And we see because of the increase reliance on detention a desire to get people to stipulate to removal or in the cases involving individuals with criminal record, perhaps administrative removal under Section 238. And all of those are mechanisms by which DHS can get people removed from the country without actually these immigrants having their full day in court and the memos and the executive orders that they implement were clearly intended to do as much of that as possible. And this is where the intervention of counsel at early stages when it's possible will be critically important. But also, we need to sort of be focused on making sure that there is a right to counsel that is enforced in these early stage proceedings because this is where the rubber is going to meet the road I think for the next few years as this administration rolls out its deportation plans.
[SL] Well I'm sure there'll be more for us to talk about in the next month or so we'll have to do this again. Well thanks Jennifer.
[JC] Thank you.
[Narrator] Thank you for joining us at UCI Law Talks. Produced at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
