favorite debate moments, to share on social media. not able to watch, listen to the debate live on the c-span radio app. it's free to download from the app store or google play. live coverage of the vice presidential debate tuesday evening on c-span.org and the c-span radio app. up next, a forum on immigration, including legal analysis of some key. also, republican and democratic ideas on reform. journalists begin talking about immigration and the presidential campaign. >> how are you doing? >> all right, thank you. back to school. >> okay. well, we're now going to begin with the panels for the day. and as those of us who -- as those of you who have been faithful friends at this conference every year and others who may be new here, we characteristically have begun with a panel that's become a real institution. and that's a panel that we call the state of play. and it's basically what's going on with immigration in politics and in the broader policy-making and where it touches the political world. we, obviously -- this is -- this is like -- this is an attempt at a political science kind of a panel rather than a partisan panel. but every year we think, oh, well, we really exhausted the issues this year. then the next year comes around and it gets even more heightened and even more hypercharged, which surely is the case this year with the way in which immigration has hit center stage in the election campaign that we're having. so, i am particularly pleased to be able to introduce and work with the next hour or so with this group of people because they're wonderfully qualified to be talking about these issues from various different vantage point. what we're going to do is what we've always done in the past, too, is that i'll ask an opening question to each of the panelists and they'll give us their take on the issues. but then we'll try as much as possible to have some give and take. and i encourage the panelists to be asking each other questions and reacting to each other's comments. doesn't just have to be questions. and then, of course, we'll open the floor to q & a so you can all participate as well. the panel this year is karen item ulty, who is the national political correspondent at "the washington post." david frum, senior editor at the atlantic. rosalind gold, senior director of policy research and advocacy at national association of latino elected officials. and frank sharry, the executive director of america's voice. so, we're going to go exactly in the order that we've seated people here. and start with karen, request this question, karen. you're a veteran. you have covered lots of elections. you've covered a fair number of immigration battles. tell us why, in your reporting and in your experience, you think that immigration has become such a top-tier issue in this election. is it simply that donald trump has put it there? obviously, he's based his candidacy on this issue. or is there something deeper and is there something deeper going on that we need to really understand better in order to come to terms with the way in which this yash is being discussed in our political life today. >> well, thank you, doris, and thank you for the opportunity to be here. i always thank back to the days right after the 2012 election when it was absolutely, you know, accepted. i certainly knew -- i wrote it a number times, given what had happened to the republican party in 2012, given what had happened to mitt romney, that some kind of comprehensive overhaul of the immigration laws, that it was really not a question of if, it was a question of when. and you might recall at that time, the republican party conducted what later become known as the autopsy. you know, they, too, came to the conclusion that they were going to have to do something, you know, to sort of reflect the diversity of the country. marco rubio, essentially made an entire bet on his presidential campaign that being part of that would be an asset, but interestingly enough, and you can find this on the website at the u.s. patent and trademark office, six days after the 2012 election, mind you, the whole party is freaking out over how are we going to appeal to hispanics, a resident of fifth avenue in new york named donald j. trump wrote out a $350 and sent in an application to the patent and trademark office to trademark the phrase, "make america great again." and he -- you know, he included -- he submitted exactly what it would look like and the block letters. it's kind of of extraordinary to go back and look at this now because i do think that whatever and however you can fault trump on his lack of depth of policy issues, he clearly had a sense of what this campaign was going to be about for him and how he would run, even that far back. you know, so, yes, i think it's absolutely -- trump is a huge part of this, but what he sensed was, i think, in, you know, the disarray of the financial meltdown, in the recovery that left a lot of people behind, that, you know, people were going to start looking for explanations of this. and one, you know, one quick explanation, and especially you hear it a lot in the upper midwest and places like that where particularly noncollege educated working white class people have been left behind is that, you know, people are coming in and taking our jobs. the fact as has often been pointed out, the benefits of immigration are very widely dispersed, but that -- and globalization in a larger sense, but that, you know, there are people out there who see themselves as real victims of this. and so it is donald trump, but it is also something, i think, that it speaks to something larger. and, again, it is a real sense of people feeling like they're being left behind. >> okay. david, let's have you add perspective here. you know, i'm struck by the fact that, you know, when you see the stalemate that exists over immigration and that's existed, as karen says, she thought it was not a question of if but when, that we would do something about immigration reform. you look back, we have in presidents reagan, the first president bush, in president clinton, presidents that all signed bipartisan immigration bills. they were bills that had things in them that none of those presidents would have wished if they could have done it on their own, but at the end of the day, there was bipartisan agreement in the congress and they signed those bills. since that time we have not had anything. we've had paralysis and we've had, you know, extreme partisanship from the qurvetive side of the political spectrum. what can you tell us about what's changed that's critical between that time and the time that we've seen in the 2000s. and what do you think n looking ahead, it's going to take to bring conservatives back to the table on immigration legislation? >> well, i'm not sure conservatives should be back at the table. with immigration reform as it's been conceived for the past 15 years. i think immigration as we've been doing it is a program that's largely lost its purpose, at least from the view of native born americans. it had purpose at times in the past. today it is a program that is run almost entirely in the interest of new-comers and prospective new-comers. i say this as a naturalized citizen myself. if you visited hillary clinton's web page, immigration web page, every argument on the page is addressed to the immigrants -- interest of immigrants' and their children. zero to the interest of native born americans and their children. that's sort of why this thing has run aground. i think what we've seen is a revolt on the republican side of the rank and file of the party against the business elite. on the democratic side we have seen a steady drift in a very radical direction where any enforcement at all against noncriminal aliens who enter illegally is regarded now as unacceptable. that is a point that hillary clinton has hit very, very hard. unless the person has committed some kind of felony, they shouldn't be removed. that is true if they've been here for ten years, that is true if they arrived this summer from central america claiming refugee status. i think this issue has become so white hot. and i think conservatives have moved on it for three main reasons. the first is the way immigration interacts with social welfare programs. one way to -- a figure to fix this in mind, i don't like to use a lot of statistics because they get too overwhelming but in 2010 before affordable care act went into effect, 27% of foreign born were uninsured. maybe some were citizens, some were residents. the affordable care act, a response to the problem of the foreign-born population of the united states and its children. through the 1980s and 1990s when the social american insurance network was shrinking, the costs of immigration to the social welfare system became progressively less important an issue. but in the 2000s, beginning of medicare part "d" and bush administration, es sperlsly obama administration, the american social insurance system has begun to grow again. with the affordable care act it's growing in a very dramatic way. and so the costs of a population that is less skilled, that are going to be net recipients over their lifetime from the treasury, not knelt contributors, that's become explosive. especially when you have a native born population that's increasingly nervous about the stability of programs they depend on, welfare and social security. that's number one. second is interaction of wages and jobs. we're in a time of tremendous constraint on american wages and great insecurity about american jobs. quite unlike the period before 2008. and i don't think, karen, i would rephrase what karen said about the impact of immigration. immigration is a program -- is a policy that shares its costs and benefits quite widely, whereas the benefits are received by people basically -- immigrants themselves and people at the top, cede by people in the bottom third of the population. in a time of job constraint, a time when immigration numbers have become so big, those wage and job effects are very broadly internsed. the last is interaction with national security. less an american problem and more something we experience secondhand, watching europe. but -- we just marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. what's striking in retrospect is all 19 of the killers were foreigners, not many who had violated immigration laws to get into the united states. since the middle 2000s when we look at our allies and partners in europe, more and more of their security challenge comes not from foreigners but from second generation -- from the children of immigrants to their countries. the culturation mechanism that people once assumed would work automatically and so smoothly, americans see in europe that has broken down and they're worried a similar kind of breakdown could happen in the united states. obviously, the security problems here less extreme than in europe. i think that's the reason. those are the reasons why this issue has become so intense. this issue was waiting there for donald trump. he, as karen said, he had, for all his many faults, he's one of the world's great marketers. he had the acuity to see the leadership of the democratic base had taken that party's immigration policy in a direction where enforcement is so unacceptable and outrageous that really no compromise is easy to imagine as acceptable to anybody. >> all right. that gives us a lot to talk about, actually, and to follow up on, but i'm going to try to get all the issues on the table first. and then we'll come back to it. thank you, david. rosalind, you know, it's well-known latinos and other foreign-born minority voters were important in the prior two elections and were important parts of president obama becoming president and being re-elected. can you tell us, when you look at this election and when you're looking at the trends of what's taking place, what are you seeing about the possible impacts for these voting blocs in this 2016 election? what can we say, if anything, at this point about turnout, which is a classic problem and issue with foreign-born voters and other minority group voters, despite what the numbers may be? what's been going on with naturalization with voter registration? and how about some of the key states, where are some of the key states on these issues that are going to make a difference. >> thank you first of all, thank you so much, doris. i also very much appreciate catholic legal immigration network, georgetown law center and the migration policy institute for inviting me to be here this morning. this is a great discussion. you're absolutely right that latino and naturalized citizen voters played a pivotal role in the last two presidential elections and they're poised to do the same in election 2016. if we go back to 2008, these voters es srlly flipped states, states such as colorado or new mexico or florida, they helped flip those states from states that had supported president bush in 2004, those states became democratic for the presidential election in 2008. and latino and naturalized voters also helped to significantly contribute to the margin of victory to president obama in other states such as nevada or virginia or indiana. and as we look ahead, one possible scenario in this election is that history is going to repeat itself. i want to take everybody back to the 1990s and proposition 187 and pete wilson's ad where it shows immigrants going over the border and solemn voice entoning, they keep coming, they keep coming. i want to take you to 2006 and 2007 where hr-had 437 was enacted and you have another time, a very inflammatory and divisive rhetoric about immigration. and in both of those points in history, we saw record numbers of naturalizations followed by record numbers of participation by naturalized citizens and voting. so, a key question that we're looking at is, we're once again in a time where it's not just the fact that immigration policy is being debated, but the tone and the divisiveness and the rhetoric about immigrants is, you know, front and center in the campaign dialogue. so, we're going to be watching to see what impact that is going to have on turnout. right now we don't quite have enough data. we have certainly seen what of a bump in the people naturalizing. if we compare sort of a similar period in 2011-2012 to what we're seeing now in the last six, seven months, we are seeing a bump. we have a hot line that provides information about naturalization and voting to latinos and other legal permanent residents. and we are hearing an intensity of people who want to naturalize or who want to vote. this is all anecdotal. it's the same with voter registration. we're hearing anecdotally a great energy around increases in voter registration. but this is a story that's still unfolding. if we look at what states that are important, i think it's important to realize that this is not just about the presidential election. so, latinos are poised to make a significant impact in a very competitive senate races such as john mccain's race in arizona, mark kirk in illinois, nucleort carolina has very big senate and gubernatorial races. nevada may see its first latina senator, and florida has its own dynamics where you have a growing puerto rican population that tends to vote democrat. you still have a very politically active cuba-american population where some of the population has traditionally been republican voters but younger voters are a little bit more diverse in their political attitudes. and you have marco rubio running for re-election. so, these are all states where latino and naturalized citizen voters are, again, going to play a key role in the outcome. i want to go back to your comment about turnout in general among latinos and naturalized citizens. and, yes, we still have a ways to go to realize the full potential of the latino electorate. this is, in part, because of what we would really see as a dysfunctional component of how our political system works. candidates and campaigns come around and invest in voter outreach and invest in voter education every four years around presidential elections and they just target battleground or swing states. and in doing that latinos in places like california, texas, new york, they are completely ignored by the campaigns and candidates. so, what you end up is like 57% of latinos who are eligible to vote live in those states that really you don't see any kind of sustained investment in outreach, any kind of sustained investment in voter mobilization. you know, deputy secretary has talked about our identify as a nation. is part of our identity as a nation is to have a robust democracy, we need to have sustained investment in bringing out latinos and naturalized citizens to vote in every election no matter what state in the union they're in for the long term if we to want have a healthy democracy. so, we are thinking beyond election 2016 and well into the future. >> okay. well, frank, i put you fourth on the list because you've been in this for so long, and you've seen it from so many administrations and congresses of both parties. so, you know, we're in the middle of this pitch battle at this point, but it will be over with in, whatever, seven, six weeks, and then there will be the future to deal with, which brings us back to congress, brings us back to the kind of thing karen talked about, autopsies, whichever side will be doing the autopsies, they will be there and we will have a new congress. and there will be some in both parties that want to do things and others that won't, et cetera. give us your best thinking of what the after-election effects of what we're seeing in this election campaign on immigration might be. can you see any scenarios with a new congress where immigration reform would again be tackled? are we in the kind of scenario that david paints of people simply being so divided that there isn't room for a conversation again? what can you tell us about how you're watching of the congress -- you know, what are the things we should be paying attention to that might be coming out of this campaign that affect what the congress will do in its next iteration? >> okay. yeah, well, it would be a little naive to expect such a polarized age that congress would tackle big things and get them done. but i'm naive, so -- so i do think there will be a moment of truth. look, if donald trump gets elected, you know, get ready for barricades and civil unrest. i'm sorry. let's not kid ourselves. if hillary clinton gets elected and the republicans maintain control of both chambers, forget legislation. we're going to be talking about what kind of administrative and state and local progress can be made and the fights will mostly be there. but if the scenario -- if congress flips to democratic control of both chambers, i think it's just a matter offing inning with the lindsey grams of the world to get to 60 votes in the senate and we will have reform. most likely the prognosticators tell us we'll have a democratic president, a democratic senate and a republican house. and that's the scenario that i think most people are trying to game out as to what are the prospects for reform. if not reform, what kind of progress can be made through executive and administrative actions as well as state and local policies. and then, you know, what are the -- if not the short-term prospects, the long-term prospects. my view is that there's going to be a moment of truth if hillary clinton's elected, chuck schumer is senate majority leader and paul ryan is the speaker of the house. i doubt you're going to have a replay of 2013 where the senate is going to go first. i think you'll probably have a situation where the president and the majority leader and others sit down with speaker ryan and whoever he brings to the meetings and they say, are you going to act or not? i don't think you're going to see senate democrats running into action only to wait for the house to act because we know how that turned out in '13 and '14. there was no action. and it was very frustrating and if the house can't act and set up at least a conference committee and a possible final deal, there's not much point other than optics to move forward in the senate. so, but i do think it matters hillary clinton said this is one of her top priorities, one of her top three legislative priorities, along with criminal justice reform and jobs infrastructure bill. she'll introduce legislation in the first 100 days, she says. that will be a marker bill, i suspect. and the real question is whether the house republicans will move or not. is paul ryan different than john boehner? i think they both suspect reform and want reform but i think paul ryan gets it. if he's going to be the leader of the modernizing forces the conservative movement, they've got to deal with immigration reform before it's too late. maybe too late is not for five or ten years, but you can't defy public opinion and demographic changes in this country as long as the republicans seem intent on doing without paying a hef price. they're already paying a price at the presidential election and it really is a matter of time and redirecting for them to pay a price at the house level as well. so the question is, will paul ryan exert the kind of leadership that, quite frankly, we haven't seen much evidence of to date, but the idea of him standing up to the nativist wing and even if he falls on his sword and gets ready to run for president as the person determined to lead the republican party out of the wilderness and into the future, maybe. at least i think we'll have that moment of truth. if you have a senate democratic majority, you have chuck schumer with a track record on immigration reform on a bipartisan basis, a clear commitment to it. he's restated it publicly and privately many times. so, i think there will be maybe a six-month intensive effort to press to see whether there, in fact, is some possibility of movement in a republican house that could lead to a final vote. but i think none of us would be smart to put all of our eggs in that basket. i know for us as advocates, we're looking at how to make good on her promise to go further than president obama on administrative reforms and executive actions. there's a huge list. we're not just talking about dopa, you know, which is tied up in the courts and may take some time before it comes back. we're talking about a whole range of issues from enforcement priorities and implementation to detention issues to the treatment of central americans who are fleeing violence in the northern triangle and on and on. so, there's much that can be done that would make lives better that wouldn't require legislation. let me say that the reason that i think that -- i know there's lots of looks -- you know, lots of eyes as all of us have been watching trump and his rallies and, david, with all due respect, i think you're very thoughtful conservative. and i know you're an immigration skeptic in part. and you cite the economic issues, but i think in this election, without mentioning race and demographic change as a big factor, we're missing a huge part of what's happening in the right wing of the republican party, or at least the populist wing. and the fact is, is that, you know, this debate has become extremely polarized and extremely racialized. and i think that, you know, the real question is, you know, what is going to happen in the republican side of the aisle? look, we look at every public opinion poll that's done on this issue. the fact is just in the past two weeks there's been three polls, independent. gallup had a poll saying 84% of the american people support a path to citizenship as a part of reform. washington post/abc poll just out, 78%. cnn just had a poll last week, 88%. now, so the american people generally are more than ready for reform that legalizes undoumd immigrants as part of an overall reform that also improves enforcement and modernizes our legal immigration system. but, you know, the fact is, is that where the debate is on the republican side of the aisle. there's a tenacious, highly aggressive, very mobilized, anti-immigrant wing, nativist wing of the republican party. there are certain groups we all know, but there's also the conservative infotainment, laura inc. gram, rush limbaugh, that are using this to increase ratings and anger their listeners and that's a formidable force. in the past three rounds of immigration reform, that i've been a part of, each time the populist right has outduelled the pro-immigrant reformist republican right. and, you know, that's -- that is going to have to change. so, you know, when people say is reform going to happen next year? it depends. it depends if the modernizers in the republican party can outduel the populist. so far they don't have a very good forecast record but maybe that will change. in the meantime, i think with public opinion, the strength of the immigrants' rights movement getting stronger every day, that there's going to be lots of advances even if they don't have legislatively. federally i think you'll see lots of advances. i think states you'll see a lot of advances. cities as well. look at california today. driver's licenses, in-state tuition, funding for in-state tuition, access to the medical program for kids up to age 19. more and more cities are doing i.d. cards. you have a situation where undocumented immigrants live a fairly normal existence, the trust act, which says normal existence. trust act which says police shouldn't be turning over people unless they have committed serious crimes. that i think california is exceptional in many ways. i do think you're going to see more and more states adopting policies say -- and this is where i agree again -- i don't think there's been a collapse in enforcement. i think there's recognition when barack obama became deporter in chief, deporting 400,000 a year, the president that deported more immigrants than ever, he did it for one reason, he wanted to show republicans that he was serious about enforcement so they should be serious about voting for reform. it didn't work. they wouldn't trust him. they didn't vote for reform. it didn't happen. he finally decided why are we deporting people who 88% of american people think should be here legally. maybe focus on bad actors, have a situation where undocumented immigrants have a reasonable life until we can return to a reasonable setup. i'll stop there. >> well, let's talk about this a little bit. this issue of as you put it, frank, anti-immigrant force among republicans on that side of the spectrum as compared with the way you talked about it as immigration having lost its way, having lost any sense of real purpose. and basically the contenders being american citizens and america's interest vis-a-vis the interest of immigrants. that assumes those are different and in opposition to each other. and frank is talking about something that is far more political and basically driven by a smaller kpxenophobic part the population that, of course, has been there throughout. but that is reflected in broad public opinion when you look at the polling for many, many years. let's just have comments on that, talk about that, anybody who would like to talk about it. >> let me say this taxonomy about the republican party. imgrace is so consensual, such a matter of consensus among leet. immigration, a redistributionist program. probably everyone in the room is a net beneficiary, quite a big net beneficiary of this program. the people who pay for the program aren't here. in the republican world if you say i share this elite consensus on immigration. on health care my view is nothing. i want to take away health care from 23 million. mode modernizer, centrist. one of the things i have with republican party that's upside down. what the future of republican modernization means not saying let's have ever accelerating numbers of immigrants in an ever shrinking social insurance network, it's the other way around. it is on health care where republicans need to modernize, keep faith with their voters. and once you go through that doppler shift somebody like paul ryan stops looking like a moderate and looks like representative of some pretty narrow economic interests. meanwhile the people who are putting sadly misused faith in donald trump, your fellow citizens that have real problems that are not being addressed at all by responsive elites but demagogues and irresponsible people that offer no constructive solutions. one of the things i beseech everybody in the room, what's to come, where the democratic party has gone on immigration, that famous scene in godfather part 2 where michael corleone offers what his offer is and it's zero. no enforcement new york city heading off of this new surge of immigration from central america that guess bigger every summer. there is no plans for any -- it is smocking and unacceptable to remove, not just people who have been here for 10 years or 12 but people who have been here 10 months or 12 months. and there's no discussion about what is the right overall number. one of the places i would -- the first question about immigration, first question, we would not build dams with as little cost benefit analysis as immigration. how many immigrants would the united states take in a year, what is the number. what impact does that have on wages. immigration -- labor is not an exception to the laws of supply and demand. how are we doing with upward mobility with immigrants? are we choosing the right immigrants? it's not more or less, different countries take different streams. united states and sweden skew heavily to low skilled not doing well with upper mobility. others take as many immigrants as united states more legal immigrants relative to population of the united statesv immigration policies that skew upward, higher level of skills. canada and australia also redistributionist policy, but it redistributes down. in the united states it redistributes up. >> i just wanted to mention that if the dialogue on immigration policy were taking place in the kind of calm and, you know, learned discussion about costs and benefits, i think we would all be feeling a little bit different about what is going on in our nation right now and what has gone on in the past. but that is not how the discussion emerges whenever you have these periods of extremely inflammatory rhetoric. because what happens is the dialogue becomes one that is extremely disrespectful to immigrants, extremely disrespectful to latinos. as i mentioned in california during the time for the campaign for prop 187, you had these ads. you can just look at donald trump's comments about who mexico is sending to the united states. these are not reasoned discussions. these are inflammatory and divisive comments, attempts to reach people at the worst places that they are at. and this is the reason that the community responds, because there's a level of disrespect to immigrants and their contributions to this country when this issue becomes red hot. >> go ahead. >> i do think one point that david brought up that we moved past pretty quickly that might be worth revisiting is the security component of it. you know, i grew up in south texas. and i remember being sort of mystified back during prop 187 because there was no kind of sentiment like that at all in texas. immigration had been such a part of the fabric of life. that was in part because the network of social services in tech, california it was a lot about, as you said, redistribution of public resourc resources. but now i go home and it is very different. i think in part, large part, it is the security question that in the mid 2000s as the mexican government and the drug gangs started going to war with each other, you know, and it was beginning to spill across the border, again, not in the overall numbers but enough hair-raising incidents. when i was growing up, the same ranchers who used to set out blankets and food on their ranches so that people coming through on foot would have provisions. suddenly we're just absolutely terrified. so i do think there needs to be sort of -- i think that's also a big part of what you've seen in places like arizona and new mexico. and so there does need to be that conversation as well. especially in the post 9/11 world. >> i'll come to you, frank, but i just want to comment on this for a minute. it's so interesting when you raised the point about security and our first speaker, deputy secretary raised the point about security. typically when we talk about security, we're talking about national security terrorists who comes into the country in ways that might create like a san bernardino, not the southwest border and the people coming across it that are basically crime and drug, which has been there for a very long time. of course, it's become much more intense with the cartels in the central america. do you think of those as synonymous? the southwest border security and drugs and crime as sib on must the way in which we talk about national security in a post 9/11? >> i know people in that part of the country talk about it a lot. and that is why, again, going back to texas, you know, they used to as part of the republican party platform in texas, they used to have what they called the texas solution on immigration, which was a pretty kind of liberalized approach to it. rick perry got in trouble for in-state tuition. but i do think -- i mean, in the last 2014, the texas republican party repealed a part of their own platform that a lot of republicans had been very, very proud of. again, there are a lot of reasons for it. but i do think it was definitely much more security related and a sense of danger whether it was, again, the overall numbers bore it out, i don't know. but there was a definite sense this is, you know, there is this chaos and danger that is coming over the border not just, you know, from al qaeda agents but also from, you know, mexico's own security problems. look at fast and fur yious 2. this seeped into people's conscience. >> the fear is greater than it's been in all this time we've watched. >> frank. >> i'd like to commit a little policy here. the debate is so easily caricature as open border, xenophobe, people who only care about immigrants, people who care about americans. let's be clear when we talk about what's referred to as comprehensive immigration reform what we're talking about. we're talking about increased border security. did anyone see the 2013 bill, record increase in border security that just wasn't enough for two-thirds of the republicans in the senate even though they said we've got to secure the border first. employer sanctions. for some reason everyone is focused on walls and fencing and borders, the border -- u.s.-mexico border when the key to reducing illegal immigration is a functioning employment verification system. to do that with 8 million in the labor force will upset status quo, disfavor honest employers in favor -- et cetera. have employer sanctions become a new labor market norm that is effective, have effective border enforce men. to have not just how do we ramp up enforcement but how do we modulate legal immigration levels at the high end, low end. family-based, employment-based, i'm happy to put it all up for question if the question is what's in the interest of american economic growth. but at least we'll have two levers to deal with rather than just enforcement. when we ramp up enforce men as we've done in the last years without any corresponding change in the system or growing number of immigrants now leveled off at 11 million, what we do is we repress immigration stupidly other than regulating it intelligently. to me the idea that comprehensive immigration reform has been somehow dinged as some left wing fantasy only in the interest of immigrants when it would have caps, more effective enforcement, it would make immigration more legal, make hiring more legal and would make it more acceptable to go after people violates those norms. what's not to like. that is a centrist bipartisan approach. it's why ted kennedy and john mccain worked on it. it's why george w. bush was in favor of it. but the republican party has gone to the right not on policy grounds for the most part, it's because there are too many of those people. i think if we don't be honest about the fact we are dealing with a racial backlash not from all the people who oppose immigration reform certainly, not thoughtful critics who say it's skewed in the wrong direction, let's have those debates, but the idea that the best way to enforce our immigration laws is to have increasing repression, as if that's going to work, has been proven wrong on its face for 30 years. so in this room at least we can talk policy. in this room we don't have to believe the talk radio guys that the border is getting more out of control and all those al qaeda agents are coming across. there's no evidence of that at all. should we have vetting and screening? yes. would we have more people screened and vetted if we had immigration reform? yes. should all the central americans fleeing violence come to the united states? no. should all the central americans fleeing violence get some sort of protection preferably in the region? yes. this is just a sensible, modern immigration and refugee policy that increases lawfulness and orderliness, that increases vetting and security, that increases legality and decreases disorder. so i just want to set the record straight if you want open border i'm sure republican opposition will create more and more incentives on the left to get more open borders. what's now on the table is something clearly in national interest, clearly in the interest of law and order, clearly in the interest of economic growth. just had to get that off my chest. >> there are many definitions of -- [ applause ] >> many ways of looking at what's in the national interest. it's very easy to say what's in the national interest, but what's in the national interest is often in the eye of the beholder. so the real difficulty we're facing it seems just illustrated by this panel and the comments that have been made, is how do you even have the conversation? obviously we're not having a productive conversation in this election campaign. but the issue is right there squarely in the middle of it. it's not going to be done. it will carry over after the election because of the way it's been highlighted in the election. and i am very struck by what's been said along the way here that what should our immigration policy be for and whose interest should it be? what is the national interest. you can see it ought to be as trump says for american citizens and in the best interest of the country, well, you look at immigrants and immigrant families and immigrant communities, they are totally fused. there is not a we and they where immigrants and american citizens are concerned. it's a mixture and the they is us. we have to be clear about who it is that we're talking about. but at the same time the idea that immigration policy has lost its way is an absolutely fair and valid critique it seems to me. you listen to what the deputy secretary said earlier today and gave some examples of the lack of cohesion and lack of coherence in what our overall immigration system does and calls for today, and it is no question problematic. so before we open the mics, which i will do in just a moment, i would like to know whether anybody would have a final observation or would want to make an observation on how actually to have that conversation. i mean structurally, mechanicistically. do we just go past this election if one does assume a democratic victory and go right back into the partisanship that has characterized the congress in the past or is there a way to step back? is there a way to have that more fundamental conversation over the questions that you raised, david? what do you think? >> i think it's going to be worse. i think what will happen -- what is fog to happen after the election, let's go with the consensus that it's probably a democratic president, possibly a democratic senate, probably not a democratic house. i'm not so sure about the senate. hillary clinton comes to office with a much stronger commitment with the platform than barack obama came with in 2008. been more central to her reinvention of herself as a left democrat from a center democrat. she also has much less optimism about the political process than president obama. president obama thought he could work with people and persuade people. hillary clinton less ideological but more partisan figure than president obama and she will use the power of the presidency and try to drive things through administratively. that will make that vacant supreme court seat an absolute red hot button and she will lose a lot of republicans who might be inclined -- probably most republican senators agree with her and with frank on the merits of immigration reform. most republican members of the house, most surviving members of the house won't. but where we'll unite the republican party is as it realizes we're not the party of the presidency anymore, there will be much more nervous about high-handed executive actions and supreme court seat. there's going to be tremendous rancor over that. meanwhile republican party assuming they lose the president, it's going to be ripping it's self to pieces with recriminations over whose fault was this and future identity. should it be led by its traditional business elite, which has had a very scornful attitude toward economic interest of rank and file republicans. immigration is the thing we're focused on here. on other issues, wages and jobs, the party of paul ryan has been a party that has been very focused on the economic interest of comparatively small number of republicans, never mind a small number of americans. other republicans, there hasn't been leadership for this. that's why this space was waiting for a cynical person like donald trump to seize it. but there will be better contenders. now that trump has identified this discontent in the republican party, there will be more responsible contenders to take the space that he explored. so it will be a party that will have great difficulty dealing with it's self. never have the trust from democratic left president obama had. she'll have to constantly try to prove herself harder and will be subject to more criticism and just character logically because of the her nature -- her view of the way american politics works, she's not going to be a dealmaker. >> a final comment before we go to the floor? >> i do agree the supreme court fight is going to be a big, big part of this. also the internal battles of the republican party. i mean, ted cruz is tanned, rested, and ready. [ laughter ] >> it is really hard to look at next year and see not just on this issue but any other number of issues. one you might throw in there is trade. it just looks grim. >> all right. on that very, very hopeful note, let's go to the younger generation. question. >> thanks very much. amanda from national skills coalition. my question really has to do with which aspects of immigration policy capture the public imagination. over the past few years tens of millions of dollars have gone to commune colleges to help train american workers and those grants come from fees paid by immigrants. typically for h 1 b visas but also others. yet those kind of training programs and the fact that we are using immigration policy to help strengthen american workers skills is something that is just never discussed. it's not part of the enforcement discussions. it's not part of the who should we let in, it's not part of the points system debates about australia and canada. i'm just curious for any of the panelists if you have thought about why some of these issues capture american imagination and why others have remained in the realm of immigration policy wonks and haven't gotten out. >> i think you're absolutely right. we don't just need a policy on immigration that looks at enforcement and looks at modernization of the system in terms of deciding who comes into the country, we need an immigrant integration policy. that has to be part and parcel, inextricably linked to whatever we do to modernize the immigration system. if, indeed, we want communities to feel that immigrants are bringing their talents and skills to the table, which they are, then ab investment in integration, whether it's in job skills, whether it's english language instruction, whether it's in workforce development, that has to be a critical component of modernizing our immigration policy. it should not just be a policy about immigrants but about immigrant integration. immigrants are integrating. we're seeing they are greater economic mobility, greater acquisition of english language. but we need to be doing more of that. and we're hoping that this is something that everybody can agree upon no matter what they may be thinking about enforcement issues or issues about modernization in terms of who comes to the country. >> people are so cynicle of any kind of government program actually getting anything right and certainly workforce training programs are not exactly a model of either efficiency or success. what grabs the public imagination? the khan family grabs the public imagination. >> let me just -- the idea of immigration as one factor within a national human capital development strategy, that is exactly the wavelength i'm on. if you were doing that, however, that's how you would run your immigration policy in the first place. the american policy is quite different. let's have the immigrants basically select themselves without regard to human capital at all. then once they have immigrated, come to the country, an immigration population substantially lower on skills then try to fix it on the back end at enormous cost. if we're serious about human capital as consideration in immigration policy, that's where your screen should be. that's what you do on the front end. the question is not who goes to community college but who is bringing most advanced skills. one rein from canada, i spent a lot of time there, one reason immigration in canada, takes a higher proportion of the united states, so much less controversial because where do you encounter immigrants in canada? at the hospital. at all levels, not just levels of clerical workers, people cleaning the place but doctors, especially the nurses. especially if you're in a smaller center in canada. you realize you would not get this surgery but for the immigrant doctors that perform it. and you wouldn't get the blanket and meal but the more likely immigrant nurse who is bringing it. people get that. in the united states it's done exactly opposite way. skills are done afterwards. it's very much pattern you see in american life. the later the phase of education system more superior it is. greatest graduation program on the planet by far. universities, pretty good. competitive with some others. after that it just deteriorates compared to the rest of the world. that seems backwards, doesn't it? >> so we have just a few minutes left. i'm going to ask the people at the mics to very quickly, you, you, and you state your question and then i'll give the panelists selective opportunity to answer. question. >> my question is directed primarily to mr. frum. i think mr. scharry made the very good point obama has deported more immigrants as a number than any president has ever. the deporter in chief. i looked at the numbers. i think he's deported so far 23% more people than second bush, george bush has. made a big claim saying that in general the democrats have moved far to the left when it comes to immigration and enforcement of immigration laws. i would like you to clarify how you reconcile you saying that and claiming that with the fact that obama has, indeed, deported more immigrants. >> because the total -- >> wait, wait, wait. >> statistical artifact counting removes at the border with deportation number, it is a totally fake number. >> here. >> so my question mostly about changes you see with both parties. with the republican party you saw donald trump had a huge effect on the way the candidates presented the platform, saying more things to get more media coverage, because of the media coverage donald trump was able to get. for the democratic party like bernie sanders being able to mobilize so many young voters bringing up so many issues they feel have been ignored for them in terms of what's going to happen in the future with us and things that we may be more concerned about than maybe an older generation might not be as much. >> yes. my question is about the way we're discussing immigration. it sounds like it's only something happening particular to us, as if the u.s. has no other interest outside of it. for example, frank mentioned the race and demographic shift in the country and fear the dominant culture. two, someone mentioned, i think you mentioned about the cartels as if the consumption of drugs is not in this country and that's what's leading it. no guns made in mexico and those countries. for the central american migration to assume that people are just coming because they woke up one day and not because of interventionist policies the u.s. has had over the years and continues to have, i think it takes away from the immigration discussion because there is, you know, you break it, you have to buy it. the u.s. has broken many things and many policies. i'm not trying to excuse the governments of origin what they need to do to fix their policies. to the extent the u.s. has played a role should share that responsibility. i would like the panel to discuss it in that context not just u.s. nativist context. >> these are all -- [ applause ] >> these are all important points and this is a good indication of how one just -- there's so many directions one can take a conversation like this. we're not going to be able to take it any further. i would invite those of you who want to talk with panelists up to the front while we have a break here. we will break until 11:00. please be back at 11:00 for our next panel but please join me in thanking this very, very lively group. [ applause ] we have more road to the white house coverage coming up this afternoon. donald trump is holding a rally in pueblo, colorado. c-span will be live there. some polls show secretary clinton a small lead, others give donald trump a slight edge. hillary clinton holding a rally in akron, ohio, live coverage 5:45 eastern object c-span2. september polls show donald trump leading between 1 and 5%. >> ahead of tuesday's vice presidential debate we'll take a look back at the candidates, video senator tim kaine and indiana governor mike pence using c-span video library. >> i've seen this story before. i've turned on the television and seen the bad news of a shooting or weather emergency, famine. i've seen these stories and there will be more stories, but there was something in the story yesterday that was different and it was you. your spirit of even in a dark day of optimism and community and hope. >> the presidency is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the american government. more often than not for good or for ill it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people. its powers are vast and consequentialal. its requirement by the outset and by definition impossible for mortals to fulfill without humility and insistent attention to its purposes as set for in the constitution of the united states. >> a look at tim kaine and mike pence ahead of the vice presidential debate tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. watch any time on c-span.org and listen at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span radio app. >> more now from this immigration conference, immigration and customs enforcement officials and immigration attorneys on family detention and homeland security department deportation policies. good morning and welcome back. i've been told we have to get going here. i'm charles wheeler with clinic. i want to welcome you to what is probably going to be another lively performance. we're going to talk about two related issues, immigration enforcement and immigrant attention, a complex, controversial, politically charged, et cetera. before i do that, before i introduce our panelist and open it up for questions up to that, i wanted to give a short background. i started out in the late 70s when immigration enforcement was a very low priority both at the border and also internally. immigrant detention was almost miniscule. that changed in the mid-80s 80s, 1986, when enforcement suddenly became an issue coupled, of course, with amnesty. 1990s, doubled down and became more of a big issue with 1997 act. ira, whereby 2001 you had about 200,000 people be detained in a given year for immigration enforcement purposes. that had doubled, more than doubled, by 2013 to where now we are at 440,000 people being held in immigration detention. that is five times the number of people who enter the federal prison system based on criminal issues. complicating this whole issue has been the use of private for profit contractors. geo corporation, corrections corporation of america, two of the big players. you may have read two long in-depth articles in the nation, mother joins this year, very interesting spotlight on a lot of the problems inherent in these issues. department of justice maybe by coincidence, maybe not. department of justice recently announced it's going to cut its ties with the private contracting world, with the bureau of prisons and deputy secretary hinted dhs doing internal review to see if they might be cutting their ties as well. summer of 2014, as we all remember, saw a return to family detention. two facilities opened up, got refurbished in new mexico and texas to handle mostly central american women and children. this notion of family detention was returned to a bush policy that obama originally ended when he took office. currently there are facilities operating in texas as well as pennsylvania but they are also covering mostly central american women and children, but they are subject to pending litigation over compliance with the litigation in california, nationwide action, that's an issue that's going to be working its way out. as far as interior enforcement, obama administration showed a willingness sort of late in the game to curtail controversial programs such as secure communities and has now replaced it with the 2014 memo that secretary jeh johnson wrote on particular enforcement categories as well as a new priority called priority enforcement program. pep in the title to our panel in case you didn't know. dhs made pep voluntary in certain major jurisdictions have not opted in yet. but the hope is up to two-thirds of the major injuries dicks that were not participating in secure communities are going to join that. so with that, i'm privileged to have four panelists that represent both the community, advocacy community as well as the government talk on different aspects of these issues. the first speaker is stephen manning partner of law group and innovation law lab. to his right is tom homan, executive associate director for enforcement removal operations at i.c.e. to his right is elizabeth pereira, senior adviser to director of i.c.e. finally dree collopy co-director of immigration litigation clinic at catholic university school of law so. stephen, let me start with you. i didn't ask specific questions. i decided to have the panelists talk for about 10 minutes on issues they thought was most important. >> thank you, charlie. this is great -- i'm not sure if this is more -- i was telling tom, more intimidating to be before you all or before the court of appeals talking about these things. what seems like a lifetime but actually only been two years i've been a volunteer -- i don't know why when i get in large groups and talk about this issue i still have an emotional reaction. i've been a volunteer lawyer representing women and children detained in family detention center. first mexico, deli, carnes and now burks. along with a lot of others we've developed this cloud source refugee defense model used in the detention centers. right now i'm also involved in creating the centers of excellence. using a similar legal organizing model that focuses on entire adjudication systems and particularly underresourced areas, for example, atlanta and charlotte. we created this technology platform tying all these people together and now pout to deploy next generation of technology that's going to connect border shelters, centers of excellence, detention centers to create a seamless approach to division of legal services, to be able to make sure every meritorious case can win every time, this model we're calling big immigration model. as of yesterday, the project that operates in carnes represented more than 45,000 women and children. that's a little less than two years. i've been involved in the case representation for those 35,000 individuals. i've been all levels of the agency. i've done extensive program act and data analysis on those -- the program and been involved with impact litigation, some of the litigation that charlie was talking about. so i've had this really rather broad, interesting viewpoint across immigration agencies, across cabinet departments, across core injuries dicks, immigration, legal space, political space and detention space. but what the expedited removal program and corollary family detention, how it operates and what does it mean. from that vantage point i'd like to address the question. is expedited removal, has it been a success as a program? expedited removal is a policy choice rooted in the government's prosecutorial discretion to remove, maximizes authority of the government to order detention and insulates nearly all agency action from judicial review. without expedited removal there is no family detention as we know it. family detention as it's implemented today is only possible because of the administration's policy choice to use 235b of the immigration nationality act, expedited removal as detention authority. two years ago the administration flipped the switch on expedited removal against central american population and instantaneously we had artesia and carnes. has expedited removal at least since 2014 has been a success? the answer is maybe. that's the perfect lawyer answer, right? it's maybe because it really depends what is the policy it's really driven to address, right? what is the purpose behind the policy. i'd like to walk through just a couple permutations of possibilities why we have expedited removal. the most positive is to expedite removal. that's the purpose, right, of expedited removal program against central americans through family detention. i think the numbers would show it's fair. of those 35,000 women and children, probably less than .01% have actually been removed. so it's important to know that nearly all of them, there was originally an expedited removal entered but in nearly universally all those expedited removal orders rescinded. from pure perspective if i was administering this program where all being undone, an important metric to understand whether or not it's been successful, if the expedited removal program bolster asylum, separating out order entrants credible claim for those that have asylum and those who don't, i think the numbers don't show it's successful. by chooseing to use expedited removal policy choice allows us to do three asylum. cpd threshold screening, affirmative to do this, extensive kpusive screening then set up for adversarial before immigration jublg. i think that policy choice created system shock within the affirmative asylum program. the vast resources it takes to maintain and stage are legally credible screening system. the affirmative asylum program has pretty much stopped functioning in parts of the country. we wait four years, los angeles five years, miami, new york, three, charlotte, houston, two years, right? those resources that normally would have been available to manage and maintain affirmative program are now diverted because of the expedited removal policy choice. so expedited removal policy choice about border enforcement. i don't think metrics hold up well here either. legally we know we cannot detain folks to deter other central americans to come to the united states. that's unconstitutional we learned that in class action litigation around family detention. even if we could detain to deter, our expedited removal program doesn't have impacts or deterrents. credible field studies measured what our policies here on detention, removal have on people who are leaving central measure migration. from my knowledge of the studies it's not even a close call. as a detention program, i also like think that expedited removal if we look at the numbers again -- if we look through detention lens expedited as policy choice seems not to function. detention is only constitutionally authorized when it's in the furtherance of deportation. here we know at least from these 35,000 women and children come through the program less than .01%, 113, have actually been removed. so we know we can't detain to deter but not detaining to deport either. so the detention through the removal program seems to be a policy in search of a purpose. it also begs another question. with the expedited removal program subjecting children to prolonged detention or to detention or family units to detention, what's happening to those human beings, right? like our empirical knowledge at this point of the effects and impacts on families, family units and children of the effects of detention is still very at an early stage, right? are we causing irreversible damage, stunting childhood development. we know right now we have data showing there are children who are -- young kids who are contemplating suicide. that's really -- they are displaying regressive developmental behaviors. so to fill in this picture we're beginning a more robust analysis of our own data within immigration law project. i'm to figure out some of the long-term impacts. two other things i want to quickly mention. one other perhaps useful metric determining whether or not the expedited removal program has been a success might be whether adhere to the rule of law. it has the implementation of this policy choice been legal. if we look at the state of play in impact litigation every time the merits of the government's policy choice has been judicially scrutinized implementation has been found to violate the law. the only times the government who survived in court is when they use their structural advantage in the statute to include judicial scrutiny, prevent judicial scrutiny. the very final thing i'd like to mention expedited removal through fiscal. i became a lawyer so i wouldn't have to deal with numbers. i'm not a math person but i do a lot of data analysis. here is where the picture becomes more cloudy. is the expedited removal program been a success through fiscal. that's a lot of money. the fiscal impact in this office, eyr, advocates, entire ecosystem, as i call it is weighed down by expedited removed program. we also know some sectors benefited. some positives. "washington post" reportly reported private prison industry benefited normally from expedited policy post. the answer to the question i posed to myself is policy choice to use expedited removal against this population where we have two years worth of data to demonstrate nearly everyone will be released because they all have credible fears for asylum. has that been a success? i would have to say no. thanks. >> i guess i'm up. every time i do one of these things my office prepares talking points but i never use them. i don't know why they keep doing it, i just speak from the top of my head. unlike most people in this room i'm not an attorney, i'm a law enforcement officer for 32 years all immigration enforcement. started as border patroling a. my old boss sitting in the front row here doris misener. you know what hasn't changed since 1980s, i agree with your original statement, immigration is a very divisive, very emotional topic. that's not going to change, because it affects so many people. i've been doing this 32 years. i started as a border patrol agent then became special agent criminal investigator looking at organizations that smuggle people. now ended my career last seven years been in enforcement move operation so i've actually lived entire alien life cycle immigration life cycle from the frontline on the border to now detention and removal phase. i figure when i start i'll talk about a few items and briefly touch on each of them because i know they are hot topics for discussion. first of all, executive actions and our current priorities. in 32 years, i worked over a lot of secretaries, attorney generals for doj or secretaries dhs. secretary johnson i admire this man and respect this man greatly because when we came to the table a few years ago talk about executive actions he actually brought law enforcement to the table. brought me there, head of the border patrol there because he wanted to hear from law enforcement perspective what made sense to us. based on our experience what worked and didn't work. i was actually involved with make of the authoring of these executive actions and the priorities. did all my input make it in there? absolutely not. but i did have some input that made it in there. here is why i think executive actions and priorities make some sense. if you believe the number 12 million illegal aliens in the country, let's say -- we'll just accept that, 12 million. the most aliens i.c.e. ever removed in one year was 409,000 in fy '12, 409,000. do the math. that's less than 3%. so hitting on all cylinders if we can as an agency based on with our budget and resources and so forth can remove 3% of that population in my opinion as law enforcement officers that 3% needs to count. what i mean by that, it should be criminal, noncriminal. it shouldn't be the first 400,000 in the door. it shouldn't be the first 400,000 we find. we they'd to pick and choose that 400 and make sure the biggest impact on border security and public safety. i think the priorities we're currently working under gets us there. you read a lot of editorials every morgue, every morning i come in and read all the press releases, half think we don't do enough, the other half means we do too much which means we probably do about the right thing. i testify on capitol hill many times, i'm not a gifted speaker. i'm a cop that speaks to what i know the facts. here are the fact, priorities not working. 98% of those removed last year, 285,000 fell into a priority, 98%. that's pretty close to perfect. 91% of the people we arrested last year in the interior united states had a criminal conviction. that's pretty close to perfect. last year 59% of everybody removed had a criminal conviction. that was a record for the agency. so those that say i.c.e. isn't paying attention to their priorities, they are not looking at the numbers. the numbers speak for themselves. we all know that moral in my agencies is an issue, a lot think they should enforce like we used to. but my job is sometimes say when i testify my job is to execute a mission within the framework provided me. that framework being policies, resources, budget, whatever. execute the mission. based on the numbers i just told you, the men and women executing the mission pretty close to perfectly. you don't have to like it, but the facts are the facts and there are the numbers. we talk about secure communities and pep program, i support the program and let me tell you why. i've got 8,000 law enforcement officers that for every detainer that's not entered we're new york -- knocking on a door. it's a matter of time when one of my men or women don't come home. we're concentrating on worst of the worst of the aliens. when we knock on that door, we don't know what's behind the door. every detainer not honored, it's an officer safety issue. so the pep program actually did bring back a lot of injuries dicks to the table. are they back to the table in full form that used to be six, seven years ago? no. but even some of the most difficult jurisdictions who only want to work with us on the most significant felons, that's one less door i've got to knock on. the men and women work for me have to knock on. it's not where i think it could be but better than where we were last year or year before that. enforcement program makes sense from officer safety perspective, makes sense from priorities perspective. one thing i'll disagree with stephen on secure communities. biometric to secure communities was the biggest place this agency ever saw. i'll tell you why. again, real life cop example. back in phoenix, arizona we arrested whoever we found. we go to the airport, we looked for people we thought here illegally, had reasonable suspicion. we went to work site. where we found them we arrested them. we didn't care 15 or 20 years, didn't care if they were one year. if they were in the united states we were going to apprehend and put them in did he tinge. meanwhile while i'm doing that, arresting somebody been here 20 years, probably a child in the military, there are child predators walking out of jail across the country because there's no meaningful way to staff facilities, county jails, city jails, precincts, whatever. what secure communities did was give usa virtual presence in those 4,000 facilities. now that child predator doesn't walk out of that jail we don't have staffed. rather than concentrating on whoever that we find, now we can have common sense approach of who we want to put our hands on. who do we want in detention, immigration core. secure communities gave us that presence. where secure communities got sideways with a lot of folks -- for those that don't know secure communities let me explain quickly. any of us in this room gets arrested tonight, you get fingerprinted, those get bounced off databases and you have immigration history we're going to find out about it and we decide whether we want to put a detainer on you or not. again, i think secure communities gave usa tool to have virtual presence in all these communities. where we got sideways, once we get fingerprints back, illegally here, traffic offense. this belief secure communities wrapped up nonpriority persons. we can agree to disagree on that, but that's where the message got sideways. so under the priority enforcement program, we still have the biometric capability but now we pick and choose who falls on priorities before we take action, detainer notification form. it's leap years ahead, a great thing for us to have so we can actually 'n' where a predator or very violent offender is getting release freddie county jail now where we didn't have that before. it actually focuses on the worst of the worst. family detention, it's a tough issue. when rio grande valley out of control, i'm one of the ones that told the secretary i think we need to build family detention. you can hate me or love me for it. bottom line i think we're a sovereign country. we need to decide who comes in and out of this country. for those that want to question the how the family detention operates, under what conditions, you should go down and look at it. i've been to several -- both facilities many times to look at it myself. it is very costly because we have to do an educational program, and we have a very significant health program that we run. we also work with kara, on site facilities with other organizations also. right now average stay of most families in family detention is right around 14, 15 days. in those 14, 15 days we get to find out who they are, do they want to make a claim to asylum. the point we forget before we had this getting release freddie border station back to catch and release, a lot weren't claiming fear. most claim fear when they come in our detention. if they really have a claim to fear, i think more people are getting that opportunity to claim fear now and they will have a due process. for those that say we're detaining people, asylum seek s seekers, i think immigration court is disagreeing with that because they find them to have a valid claim. as a parent, as a father, i do not enjoy detaining families. again, i'm executing the mission, trying to enforce the law. as far as the uac issue, unaccompanied alien children issue that's going on at the same time, my role is very simple in that regards. my job under tvpra, my job is i cannot hold a juvenile for more than 72 hours without turning them to office of refugee resettlement. so my role basically is transportation between the border patrol and orr, whoever they tell us to take the child is where we take them. so i write stories where isis spent millio -- i.c.e. spent alien smugglin. i would remind folks to say that i got 8,000 law enforcement officers that are trying to enforce law and do the right thing. they're doing what the law tells them to do. it's clear what our job is, take them to an orr facility and not to their parents. congress appropriates me to do. there's a line item for the transportation of unaccompanied alien children. the men and women are doing what the law tells them and what they're funded to do. i'm sure obg and obr will come up, border guard and resolve that we did in january and february. again, we come up with an operation, targeted enforcement operation to look for those people who had final removal or appeal's process. they had their due process. they got a final order. one of the things we'll talk about today, due process. people having their right in court. well, we have to remember when they do have their day in court and they do get a final order from an immigration judge or the baa, whoever, my job is to execute that order. again, it's not a matter if or can or should i, it is that is my job to execute that order. for the folks that do process of law and stand by the laws of this country, well, once you have that due process, you get a final order and my job is to execute it, and that's what needs to be done. obg and obr, one thing you do not read in the paper. number one, they're not neighborhood great, which people call them. they're targeting enforcement actions. we know exactly who we're looking for and exactly where we're going. we don't go to schools. we don't go to. you know, community events. we go to an address that we have looking for a specific person that we have an order for. so there's no neighborhood rates. one thing we did read, we walked away from many families where the mother was pregnant or breastfeeding child, you didn't read that in the paper. the men and women did an excellent job in this operation. a lot was shown during that operation which you didn't read about in the paper, but i'll share with you today. many families we located them and we chose not to arrest them from detention because of health issues, breastfeeding a babies or the mother may have been pregnant. is the whole detainer issue is the last thing i'll talk about and throw out there. i think the program makes sense under the retainer issue. we have to show probable cause that this person is removed from the united states and they're a convicted criminal. the nullification forum basically asks the law enforcement agency, do not hold this person one minute longer than you normally would, but let us know before you release them. so that i think gives law enforcement agencies the different option. and as far as the detainer issue altogether, it's being litigated in several places throughout the country and we'll let the courts work that out, but i'll share this with you. what my thoughts are on this. p.e.t. brought a lot of people back to the table. there are jurisdictions who are not backing the table and we'll keep working to bring them back to the table. but at some point, if they don't to want work with us, i think there needs to be some sort of mandate that they work with us. because on one hand, you can't have the department of justice funding staff at the same time not cooperating with the other branch of government that's charged with an enforcement immigration laws. soil leave it at that. i just said -- i'm sure i've got a lot of questions coming. this is my thoughts. i mean i've been doing this a long time and believe me, it's emotional for me as it is for you, anybody that thinks that, you know, i'm sitting in d.c. and i'm the hardest person, it's nothing further from the truth. a lot of decisions are decisions based on fact and what the rule of law is. and it's a tough job. i've got a tough job. and yib that doesn't think so, come and sit with me for a day. that's where i'm at. that's the facts that i present. i'd be more than happy to take any questions or comments. >> thank you, tom. i think this man deserves a job sitting with table of full of lawyers. >> one thing you'll find that he is candid and transparent. and that's why it's an honor to be your colleague. thank you. and join my other colleagues from dhf and i.c.e. here today. all the colleagues of catholic charities and ngo community. as charles said, i am liz, i'm the senior advisor for the director at immigration and customs enforcement. i come from dallas, texas. originally an immigration advocate and previously prior to joining i.c.e. about one year ago, practicing immigration law in dallas, texas, where i was very happy with my family and kids and home and business. the director called me up one day and said i'd like for you to join me in d.c. and help make that a positive contribution at i.c.e. and i thought long and hard about it and the yad of serving the public good was appealing to me. and really quite eye opening from an advocates perspective to see all the nuances that go into the decisions that must be made at this level quite eye opening and it's a tough job that tom talks about, but he does every day with a lot of, i think, strong leadership. so thanks, tom. also good to be back with charles wheeler. you may know from his role and clinic, he's trained quite a number of us. if i ask for a round on one hand, it'd be at least 20. i'm one of those. i call him the steve job's integration law. you may not have known him before, now you do. that was any job here -- >> she's trick med three times this week. special lit vulnerabilitievulne. he might talk a tough game, but he does a heart. and he looks at everything and balances and weighs those people in our custody. so i'm glad to be here to have a useful discussion on how to we take the ball and move forward with all these tough issues before us? as you've already heard tom discuss family detention. i'd like to elaborate on the exercise of discretion, this is an area where i play a direct role. the one thing we're asked about is how do we use p.d. or do we? sometimes we're asked for a road map on tern types of relief. however the truth of the matter is, there is no magic formula, no miracle cure our officers and attorneys exercise this on a case by case basis as you've heard us state often times. and individual matter. and no two cases are the same. but what i am here to say, i do see we're weighing all the factors in these cases and back in dallas, texas, i was known as, you know, among the chief council as wearing them down. always wanting to exercise to the extent that i could knowing how hard it was to get relief before the courts. so i noted, sometimes attorneys don't like the decisions that we make related to their clients. but what i want to do is encourage lawyers and stake holders, accredited representatives, law students who are practicing in this area to work with our local field offices to see if additional information can be presented that may alter the outcome of a case. i often deal with colleagues who ask me to look into the matters and duo, we send it down, ask them to take another look, did they weigh all the factors that go into the secretary's discretion memos? and they do indeed. sometimes the outcome comes back the same, other times it's changed, but the only way to know that is if you have a decision from the field office. because the director really credits her field with being able to handle these cases. and so if there's not a decision made, we ask that you please respect that process and talk to your field, whether it be the field office director or a chief council or the assistant chief council and once the determination is made and you are not in agreement with it, then you can use the system that we have here and headquarters to escalate a process. we do have an e-mail address which is kind of long, but i'll say it anyway, or the oakland mailbox which can be found on our website. tom is honest with our stake holders and in law enforcement in general. speaking of transparency. that's one task asked to handle and oversee top make sure we grow our engagement with our communities and groups. so being active and listening to our stake holders is a major initiative of the director. she asked me to build out our new office of community engagement. we have an office of congressional affairs, office of public affairs and now we have san office of committee engagement. and we have come a long way with it. we're about half way to building a team of -- a team of community relations officers or cros and each one of our field offices. and tom was a big proponent. he said hey, we need two in every office. hold on, we don't have the resources for that, but we are -- he is serious because she wants his officers. he supports i.c.e. chief councils and special agents to have a conduit to the community so the community can be heard and we can deal with issues at the very local level so they don't become giant issues at the headquarter level. we want them to communicate with our communities and to be able to bring back information. and also share information back with the community itself. we're about halfway there as i said, we should have 24 communication offices located in every field office at i.c.e. we the middle of october. do us a favor, reach out and see how you might be able to enlighten them. thanks for your time and attention. i'm happy to address any questions you might have today. >> thanks very much. if. >> so thank you everyone for having me here today pooim honored to be on this panel with these three distinguished individuals. i want to start by first expressing my appreciation for the efforts of both of you to keep our countries safe. i fully understand that governing is hard and not many people will take on that task. but i also to want say that from steven and my perspective, our job, i believe, is equally important in giving a voice to people who otherwise would not have that voice. and so, i hope you'll receive my remarks today from that lens. i also appreciate the adds administration's focus on prioritizing removals of criminals and people who could be a security concern. but i do believe that there is problems in this implementation of that. first of all there seems to be a disconnect oftentimes with what's happening on paper in policy memos with what is actually happening on the ground with the officers who are charges with implementing those policies. and additionally my thought is that one of the innumerated priorities for endorsement is recent entrants and many of these recent entrants are refugees and asylum seekers. i'm an attorney, i have a private practice here in d.c. and i focus my practice on asylum work and like steven, i have volunteered with the probona project and done a lot of work there. for me that is a priority that i think is problematic versus focussing on krms and those that are security concerns. and the result of that priority is that in my view, the criminalization of asylum seekers. so, i'd first like to address the obama administration's enforcement choices as they relate to asylum seekers, particularly those from central america. for me, this is a serious refugee crisis in the northern triangle. and these -- has resulted in women and children fleeing for their lives. when they get here, they are faced with expedited removal, detention and all of these enforcement policies that i think have merit in their idea, but in their implementation maybe have failed. first of all, something that has been quite interesting to me from a policy perspective is the inconsistency in the administration's dealing with this refugee crisis in central america based on where the people are located. it has called for increased refugee assistance and worked with unhcr to develop income to refugee referrals and emergency safety zone in costa rica. we have all of that happening in the region, yet the people that arrive at our border to seek protection, there is a completely different rhetoric and a completely different set of policies that they are facing. so for example of the rhetoric, ironically in june 2014 on world refugee day, the obama administration announced that it would be increasing it's use of detention of asylum-seeking families arriving at the southern border specifically stating to deter others from illegally crossing into the united states. we had secretary johnson stating that our message to this zbroup simple. we will fund you back. and again that rhetoric has implemented into detention of this population, rocket dockets, prioritizing these cases to get them through the system as quickly as possible. and raids on largely central american families, overwhelmingly. and while certainly we can recognize that not every central american who comes here is a refugee. what concerns me most is access. so being able to access our asylum system that we have set up. are we detaining the right people? are we proud of the conditions in which we're detaining them? those were some of the questions that deputy secretary posed earlier. and asked that we use our national identity as a guide post for answering those questions. so i'd like it share a little bit about what i've seen in those facilities and ask that you consider that through the lens of who do we want to be as a country? i've seen inhumane conditions, including inadequate medical care. degrading and abusive treatment by the guards to the women and children. the need of these women to recount stories of the horrific violence they've suffered over and over again. whether it's to cvp officers, to asylum officers, then to pro bona attorneys. most of the time in the detention context in front of their children, some of these problems, of course, have begun to be addressed which is great and we're making progress there, but it is the nature of family detention requires the telling of these stories. for example, i did an intake interview with a woman who described being raped and brutally beaten by her husband while her six-year-old daughter sat next to her coloring. those are some of the scenes that if you volunteer in these facilities that you see and it's not just one person, it's every single person i talk to have suffered horrible violence like this. and then face -- once they get here, seeking protection, this monster of detention and enforcement. detention in these conditions has been proven to compound the trauma that the women and children have suffered in their own countries. social service providers, religious leaders, psychologists have all agreed to that fact. it also has serious due process concerns. access to council and interpreters is, if it weren't for the pro bona project, it would be impossible because the detention centers are far away from any metropolitan area with ngos and other pro bona attorneys for addressing these issues. interpreters, there's huge issues there not only for spanish speakers, but many of the women are indings now, and it's nearly impossible to get an interpreter and use an interpreter in the context of family detention. their access to witnesses and evidence to their family emotional support and mental health health care are also impeded by the detention context. and so, from my view, using detention for asylum seekers is not a policy choice that should ever be made. these women and children are not criminals. they are fleeing to seek from text and to survive to save their lives. i never would be an advocate for open borders, but detention and my view of asylum seekers is simply not the answer. it violates our domestic and international legal obligations not to return refugees back to persecution and torture. and it's not effective as a deterrent mechanism. these women, like i said, are come theerg survive. they're not going to be deterred by needing to be in jail. it's also quite expensive to tax payers. one thing that i couldn't help but think about when i was volunteering in the centers was this is where my tax payer money is going to? to detain this four-year-old child. it costs $159 per day per person in immigration detention, which is up to $5.46 million in any given day. i.c.e. has an annual detention budget of $2 billion. so just thinking about kind of the financial implications of that when there are other alternatives that might be equally effective for enforcement purposes is fairly mind-blowing. and so for me, i see this family detention concept and expedited removal as smothering of due process and a bare dwroer access to -- barrier to access for our asylum system. and i think the answer is is this who we are as country? i think no. >> thank you all, we're going to open up for questions now. so please come to the microphones with any thoughts, comments, questions. i have sort of a follow-up to your last statement. the notion of alternatives to detention. maybe we can get all of you involved in talking about that -- what is out there? what is the alternative to holding people who are now 14 days, longer, i think in other situations. what's been tossed around? what has worked? >> first of all, painting of asylum seekers, again, they can climb asylum, but at the end of the day, less than half of them are getting asylum approved by the immigration courts. once cis finds a positive finding, we work toward release. certainly the facility says we think they have a good case for asylum. you can't needlessly. let me say this first of all. between 3 and 400 persons a year come through our system. i think it's 1 and 12 people for the life cycle. very few of the people detained. but there is alternative to detention, many people that were released, depending on their community ties, depending on do they have a criminal history? depending on a lot of different factors we decide if they can be released on alternative which could go from ankle or bracelet with monitoring down to telephonic recording, to home visits, to office visits. again, the numbers are the numbers. after having due process to execute that final word is difficult many times in the setting. not that we should get away from it. i think alternative detention has a role in what we do. it's an important role. congress has increased our alternative to detention funding each year in the past several years. and we have maxed out that alternative. so certainly an option that we use. and it is successful in some circumstances, not always, but what we find with alternative detention, especially those on higher level, their appearance in court is generally high. but when it comes to final order, those numbers significantly decline. so it's an option. it's an option we use every day. >> so, what i wanted to say that as an officer safety program is intriguing. i never thought of it like that. i think that's a very insightful sort of way to think about it. 336, authority which actually allows for the immigration and i'm more transparent process. totally blaef in due process. processes like my life. just a couple of numbers from the process. so the government would force us to litigate several cases in both there. so we didn't choose, we have the representation, we are represented anybody who was there. we didn't screen out anybody, weak case, strong case, we represented you. we had a 98 pbt grant rate on the merits of asylum. and we have 100% grant rate on the merits. i think those are we're not screening out weak cases, strong cases, we're taking every case the government gives us. and the ways of operation border, border guardian, the more than 100 women or children that were picked up and coming from some of the very dr what i would call hostile jurisdictions. they were taken and we asked where we said we will represent every single one that's here. couldn't we just talk to them? and the administration was forceful about preventing or access. but we were able to invoke some litigation to gain some access. and everyone who gained access to, we didn't screen. you got access, we're representing you. and we -- each one of those cases we have a 100% rate on those cases. they have final orders and we were able to show that there was a fundamental failure in the processing of their cases. to undue those final orders. >> i would like to add, charles, we have a family case management program. and we have special advisor, would you raise your hand? she's here today. and so this program is actually a pilot program. we were at one of five metropolitan regions and it is an al tern tifz to the detention setting where people with special vulnerabilities are assessed. the whole premise is court compliance, and compliance with a removal order that comes into play. we're using a set of tools with the case managers who are trained in this area to have people comply with their obligations to attend court. so we're not dealing with the high extension tlat we have seen historically. >> at one point, the operation, first of all, they were given access and however you have to keep in mind, they have an g 28 on file from their attorney. we they are represented by it attorneys. but we work through that. and i think we got to a good place. as far as 100% success, that's not accurate. it was 100% success on a group of families from el salvador that the va took untimely appeals which is outside what have they usually would be. it certainly surprised us. . surprised a lot of people. aerothey are still being litigated. settled in pennsylvania in favor of the government. so

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