interviews
Labor and the White House
by Dave Weigel
March 31, 2021
This interview with Dave Weigel, national reporter covering politics for the Washington Post, was conducted and condensed by franknews and Payday Report.
DW | The White House's involvement in the Amazon union drive was a big surprise. I mean, we know where it could have originated, the union talked to the White House; they have kind of an open door with Biden that they didn't have with Trump. We know that Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’ campaign chairman, and his group, Perfect Union, got involved. So, there was public pressure.
The fact that the White House and the president released that video was a big deal to people. And, he made this decision to get involved very early on in his presidency. It was within his first 50 days. He decided to do what hadn't been done before and give a message in support of the union. It was a very careful message. The new labor secretary, Marty Walsh, when asked specifically about Amazon, responded in more general tones.
But, no matter what happens, if you are in for a penny, you are in for a pound.
A lot of previous presidents, including Barack Obama, said a lot less about these union drives and, in doing so, limited their own exposure. If the drive didn't work, people didn't say that the president supported something that didn't work. The fact that Biden made a statement, early on, when it wasn't clear how this was going to go, is a real political statement of what they thought was important.
frank | How do you think his background plays a role in this?
He's always leaned in really hard and identified with workers in the same way he's tried to identify with different civil rights movements. Joe Biden has always wanted to be seen as the kind of person who is coming from Scranton, who has lived through the sixties, and who wants to jump to the front of the march if there is a struggle happening.
He frames everything in terms of fairness. He's not as natural as other members of the party in talking about this. When Bernie Sanders talks about this, for example, he talks about greed, he names CEOs, he says nobody deserves that much money, he talks about a maximum wage and how there should be no billionaires at all. Biden doesn't go that far. Biden has never gone after Jeff Bezos. He's never gone after individual heads of companies the way that Sanders does. He does this sort of a "Hey man, these guys are under assault, somebody needs to stick up for them."
That is something that he has always wanted to be part of his brand. Even when he was voting for trade deals like NAFTA as a Senator, he was never really comfortable. He had the same ideological mindset as a lot of the Democrats in the eighties and the nineties. He did it because he saw that that was the way things were moving and he voted strategically. But, the stuff that fired him up was when he could side with workers. It is the same thing with the projects he took on under Obama when he was Vice President.
During the Democratic primary, he didn't get the same amount of labor support that Hillary Clinton did, but, Sanders didn't get it either. There wasn't the same sort of a landslide of labor to get in early and say, this is our candidate. Instead, they were demanding more of the candidates.
I would cover presidential primary events with the Teamsters in Cedar Rapids or the Building Trades in DC and you would kind of look to the level of applause as an indicator. The interesting thing is that at those events Sanders would lay out the things he did and what he wanted to pass. Biden would go on at length about non-compete clauses and about wage theft and things like that. It was less, "I have studied all of the papers on this and I've decided this is my policy," and more of "this seems unfair and I'm against this thing."
I think the Democratic Party is increasingly understanding what labor can mean for them strategically.
Republicans have gotten kind of tangled up on labor. They have done better with union households, but they are basically the party of deregulation still. They've never really moved on the labor part of their messaging. That makes it easier for Biden to compete for these workers. When it comes down to it, Republicans want “right-to-work." Josh Hawley, who branded himself as a working-class candidate, for example, supports a national right-to-work.
Biden was very concerned with winning back more union households. Union workers were saying, “Democrats had the presidency for 16 years. What do they do for us?” Biden didn't have all the answers that labor wanted, but he was making a lot of specific promises about how he was going to act. He talked about infrastructure spending and about how he was going to run the NLRB and how he was going to approach employers. It was less than Sanders did, but that's way more than Democrats had done in the past.
I mean, the McCain/Romney era Republicans had no appeal to the sort of voters who voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump. Biden only peeled back maybe 10% of them depending on where you're talking about, but it has made life easier for Democrats.
This fight has in large part been framed in the context of continuing a battle for civil rights. Do you see Biden lean into that messaging?
Biden did not really lean to the racial justice aspect or the civil rights legacy aspect of this labor fight. When the congressional delegation here came down a couple of weeks before the vote, they were much more explicit. Someone like Jamal Bowman or Cori Bush is much more comfortable saying that than Biden. That is the thing about Biden. He basically sets boundaries. He says what his position is and backs off and lets the action happen without his constant commentary. It's very different than Trump in that way too. And that's different than the Sanders position. And it's different than what Warren said her position would be as president.
Can you give us context on how or why you started covering this story?
I started covering the Amazon drive because of the president and members of Congress intervening. I mean, labor decided to get involved months before, but the fact that Democrats were getting involved was new. It has been interesting to monitor their investment in this over other Democratic Party causes.
There's a little bit of intervention from the Democrats, but not, I'd say equal to what Amazon is doing. They are not the advertisements on TV. We all know the Democratic party is kind of involved, but it is not the same political project that I've seen in other places.
There are two stories that kind of were happening at the same time; they have merged, but not completely. One is this labor drive, which is smaller than most drives that have succeeded. It is not overwhelming. You don't see labor signs everywhere you go. But, on the other hand, the level of national involvement is kind of new.
Had Biden said nothing, there would have been a story, but it wouldn't involve the White House, it wouldn't involve the Democratic Party, and it might not involve the PRO Act.
And I think that's going to change because of this.
New interview w/ @daveweigel @PaydayReport
— frank news (@FrankNewsUS) April 6, 2021
"The White House's involvement with the Amazon drive was a big surprise ... Previous presidents, Obama comes to mind, said a lot less. The fact that Biden did that early on is a political statement of what they thought was important." pic.twitter.com/MwYlmqE4xQ
That was a big decision Biden made to be a part of this.
Right. And that political story is interesting. The story here is much more independent. A lot of the people who've come in to help canvas are from smaller groups. You have Black Lives Matter and DSA groups from the area, but you don't have the Democratic Party getting involved in a huge way. I think that is something that people will revisit after the vote.
Should the Democratic Party, like most left parties in the world, be very involved with labor? Should they always take the side of labor?
Most social democratic parties are labor parties and they build up from there. Their coalition includes labor unions. In the British Labour Party, for example, labor has a role in electing the leadership. That is not the case here. That's the conversation I think they're going to start having when this votes over. For example, if there are, and the union says there are, hundreds of people around the country calling them saying, "Hey, I have some questions about what I can do at my fulfillment center in my town," that will be a question for Democrats.
And if Amazon wins, do you get spooked? Amazon has been very punchy in their PR. They might say that a bunch of elite Democrats stood with the union and the workers stood with Amazon. That is very comfortable turf for Amazon to be on, and that leaves a big question open for Democrats. If the union succeeds, throw all of that out the window. I think the lesson that everyone would take in that case would be that if it takes less than a three-minute video from the president to get momentum for something like this, then we should keep doing that. As we talk, I don't know the answer to that question. I think that is something that is going to be answered when the votes are in.
interviews
On the History of Family Detention
by Peter Schey
August 17, 2020
This interview with Peter Schey, president of the Center of Human Rights and Constitutional Law, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
The Center of Human Rights and Constitutional Law is a nonprofit, legal services group based in Los Angeles, California. We focus on immigrants' rights, international human rights, and prisoners' rights. These are large class action cases that may impact several thousands to hundreds of thousands of people.
We focus on the rights of immigrants and refugees because we feel that those communities are among the most vulnerable and marginalized in the United States. Within that population, we tend to focus on immigrant children, both those who are accompanied and are unaccompanied with parents, who have been detained by the federal government.
I know the Flores Case is central to a lot of that work. Can you walk us through what the Flores case is and its importance?
In 1986, we brought the Flores case, to the federal court in Los Angeles in response to a policy adopted by the Reagan administration that, in effect, detained immigrant children in facilities with no medical assessments, no medical treatment, no education, no visitation, and no case management. There was no effort to detain children in safe and sanitary conditions. Children were held as bait to apprehend their parents.
The Flores case was litigated over the next 10 years, and in early 1997, we arrived at a nationwide settlement in what is commonly called the Flores Settlement.
Unless a minor is a flight risk or a danger, he or she has the right to be held in a non-secure, licensed facility. Children also have the right to bedding, blankets, to adequate temperature controls, drinkable water, edible food, et cetera.
A second part of the settlement is that it creates the right to release for detained children.
What does release mean? Where are they released to?
The settlement specifically provides a hierarchy of relatives that a child must be released to -- a child has a right to be released to any parent in the United States. If there's no parent, children have the right to be released to a grandparent, an uncle, an aunt, or a brother or sister. They also have a right to be released to a licensed group home licensed by a state for the care of dependent children.
There are only three reasons that a child may not be released. One, if the child is a significant flight risk. Two, if the child is determined to be a danger to herself or others. Or three, if the relatives to whom the child may be released, have been vetted and determined not able to provide a safe home for the child. For example, if they have an arrest warrant, or they have a serious criminal history. Other than those three circumstances, children have the right to be released to family members.
Traditionally, have administrations complied with the terms of Flores Settlement?
It covers all detained minors in the United States, whether accompanied or unaccompanied by parents. Various administrations complied with the settlement by promptly releasing any apprehended minor, generally within a day or two after processing their information.
But, in 2014, President Obama adopted the DACA program, and a couple of things happened.
The program allowed hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who had been brought here as children to surrender to the federal immigration authorities and obtain temporary work permits. Several hundred thousand young immigrants came forward and applied for DACA benefits. Opponents of President Obama and anti-immigrant organizations and elected officials were strongly opposed to the DACA program. They believed that it was an amnesty for undocumented people. Then, in the spring of 2014, there was a surge of immigrants apprehended at the southern border, including accompanied and unaccompanied children. These surges are not that uncommon and seem to occur every two or three years, especially in the springtime. President Obama's opponents initiated a public campaign blaming President Obama's DACA program for the surge. They basically argued that the DACA program was serving as a magnet to induce or encourage unaccompanied minors to enter the United States and parents to bring their children to the United States in hopes of winning DACA status. There were hundreds of newspaper articles and right-wing op-ed pieces that blamed President Obama's DACA program for this spring 2014 surge.
The two were, in fact, completely unrelated. None of these children that were coming in 2014 qualified for DACA. Immigrants are pretty well informed about these things back in their home country - they follow the news through immigrant networks, or their smugglers will provide information. Most immigrants who are planning on entering the United States understand the lay of the land and the policies before they make their entry. There really was no empirical connection between the DACA program and the surge.
Previous administrations had opted to release the families promptly after apprehension. The Obama administration decided to instead set up mass detention camps for accompanied children. They contracted private, for-profit corporations to operate large scale detention facilities in Texas. The cost was hundreds of millions of dollars, and those facilities could detain thousands of families.
How are they able to work within the parameters of the Flores Settlement at these detention centers?
When the Obama administration in 2014 responded to the surge there wasn't much they could do with regards to unaccompanied children - their rights were set by The Flores Settlement as well as by 2008 TVPRA.
We filed motions in the federal court that oversees compliance with The Flores Settlement in Los Angeles. We brought a motion to enforce the settlement, arguing that the lengthy detention of these accompanied children, with their parents, violated the release provisions of The Flores Agreement. The judge agreed with us and issued an order that required the government to come up with procedures to release accompanied children if a parent, designated a relative to whom they wished to have their child released. That is an important note - the Flores Settlement does not require the forced separation of children from their parents. It creates a right to be released that the parent is free to exercise or not exercise. Once we won that court order, the Obama administration figured out a way to come into compliance with the terms of the settlement. They had to figure out how to get kids released fairly promptly.
The way that they did that is through the asylum process. Almost all apprehended families are entitled to an interview that is called a credible fear interview - it's an interview to determine whether they appear to have a credible fear of returning to their home country because of persecution. It's a preliminary assessment of their right to receive asylum in the United States. The Obama administration accomplished these interviews fairly promptly. On average, within a week or two, if the parent has established a credible fear of persecution, the Obama administration would promptly release those parents and their children.
The Obama administration had over a 90% credible fear approval decisions. Therefore over 90% of children were released with their parents within about 20 days. That is how the Obama administration achieved compliance with the right of children to be promptly released. That way, they did not have to set up procedures to identify family members living in the United States, and they do not have to set up procedures to vet those relatives to make sure they could provide a safe home for any child released to them. So they achieved compliance with the settlement through the back door. But the bottom line is the result was that the vast majority of children were released reasonably promptly.
What happened after Trump was elected.
For the first year or two, there's really not much of a change. President Trump strongly opposes the settlement, and repeatedly publicly denounces the settlement. He says that he thinks children should not be released, that they should be detained, and that most of them should be deported. He urges Congress to enact legislation to override the settlement. He sought to terminate The Flores Settlement in federal court in 2018. And in 2019, his administration issued regulations in an effort to terminate the settlement. We blocked all of those efforts successfully.
But because of his restrictive asylum policies, the credible fear approval rate has now dropped from about 90% to about 10%. So the Obama approach of releasing the majority of children promptly no longer exists.
Is there any difference in the actions of officials at the border due to his rhetoric?
Border Patrol, ICE, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, commonly called ORR, all take heed of what their boss thinks. So, they straddle the fence.
They are releasing unaccompanied children, but instead of doing it promptly within about twenty days, they're often detaining children for much longer.
So when we see the videos of kids in cages, that is due to them dragging their feet?
Yeah, absolutely. The fiasco on the border in 2019 actually was not the fault of the Border Patrol. It's complicated, but Border Patrol agents are supposed to turn over unaccompanied children to the ORR within 72 hours. They can only do that if the ORR has room. In 2019, when there were hundreds of children detained for weeks by the Border Patrol, which has no capacity to detain adults or children for more than a few days, ORR was simply not picking up children.
Why was the ORR not available to take the children?
ORR was not available to take custody of these children because they were at about 97% capacity. The reason they were at capacity was not because of surges, but, again, because they were straddling the fence due to the pressure they felt from the White House to not to release children at all. They couldn't do that because they would be in contempt of court, they'd be in clear violation of the settlement. So instead, they straddled the fence by creating vetting procedures for the relatives that were extremely challenging and took a long time. This way, they remained somewhat in compliance, while trying to appease the wishes of their boss, the president of the United States.
Because of those delays in releasing children, ORR reached 97% capacity in their facilities. If they had just released children in a couple of weeks, they would have been at 50% capacity. But because of the difficult process that they created, they were not moving children out of their custody quickly.
So when a surge of unaccompanied minors being apprehended at the border developed in April and May of 2019, Border Patrol would say to ORR, we have a hundred kids, come pick them up in 72 hours. ORR would just say, we're not going to pick them up because we were at capacity, sorry. That's what created that crisis.
More recently, the detention of accompanied children has increased substantially because the Trump administration has adopted far more restricted policies on who does and who does not qualify for political asylum. They've adopted a policy that states immigrants who are fleeing gang violence are not eligible for asylum. They have also issued a policy that domestic violence does not count as “credible fear.”
The government has also started to assign Border Patrol agents to conduct these interviews, as opposed to professional well-trained asylum officers. As a result, the approval rating for asylum went from over 90% down to about 10%. The mechanism that the Obama administration had used to comply with the settlement and to relatively promptly release accompanied children with their parents, that went out the window. Because now, instead of 90% of kids being relatively promptly released, now you only have 10% of children being promptly released. That creates a huge issue.
What is the legal justification for those changes?
They just made a policy decision. They just instructed their immigration judges and their asylum offices. Attorney General Jeff Sessions just issued opinions and DHS just issued opinions.
In March of this year, we brought an emergency motion to deal with the ongoing detention of accompanied and unaccompanied minors in light of COVID-19, and we won court orders in March, April, May, June, July, every month. We won court orders that basically now require that the government make additional efforts in terms of safe and sanitary conditions and that they reduce and eliminate some of the obstacles in the release of children.
How else has COVID changed things?
They can still apply for protection under the Torture Convention - which the United States is a party to. They do have to question people about whether they face torture, which is a quick interview conducted by Border Patrol. Very few immigrants are found to possess a credible fear that they are being tortured in their country. That has reduced the number of apprehended children because they are deported shortly after they reach the border.
Are there systematic changes that you want to see take place?
We will be urging both the Trump administration and the Biden camp to abolish family camps. We want to go back to what administrations did before the Obama administration- which was to release parents and children as promptly as possible. These people are not flight risks, and they are not a danger to national security.
If they were released with proper instructions as to the consequences of not showing up at their hearings, if they were treated fairly, they will appear for their hearings - their asylum hearings and their deportation hearings. That is a big change we would like to see. It is never going to happen under a Trump administration, maybe under a Biden administration. He was in the administration that began mass family detention in the first place, but hopefully, he has changed his thinking on that.