- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks,
- and I'm honored to serve as your president this year. Please silence your electronic devices. On this
- day in history, March 10th, 1971, the US Senate voted 94 to 0 to lower the minimum voting age from 21 to 18.
- Dave Meyer will deliver today's reflection. Thank you, President Steve. Today, I'd like to reflect the
- title of my reflection is energy making a difference for today and tomorrow.
- I'm sure many of you noticed or heard about that yesterday the price of oil soared to $130 a barrel
- before retreating. I have no idea what it is today. Who knows what it will be today? Who knows what
- it will be tomorrow? Who knows what it will be in a year's time? Well, America is unique in oil. It
- is number one in world consumption of oil.
- Part of that is driven by the fact that we're also number one in the number of internal combustion vehicles
- in the world. So I'm here to reflect on changing this. So electric vehicles or EVs can make an enormous
- difference in changing our oil addiction and in reducing our economic volatility. Obviously, they're
- major environmental considerations as well.
- Let me start with my own experience. Cindy and I are now a two EV family. We bought our first EV as
- a secondary car eight years ago. We replaced our primary car with a used EV two years ago. That was
- the last time that we went to a gas station.
- had an oil change, had a tune-up, had a break job. We would never go back to a gasoline car. You might
- say, why not just buy a hybrid vehicle? You can save gas and not have to worry about the range of an
- EV battery. A lot of people agree with that, and the sale of hybrid vehicles is soaring across the US.
- But a gasoline car has more than 2000 moving parts to maintain and break down, while an EV has 20 moving
- parts, 2000 to 20. A hybrid has both a gasoline engine and an EV motor and battery components. So it
- has even more parts
- to wear and break down than a gasoline car. Let's talk about fuel. Assuming that gas costs $3 per gallon,
- and your fuel economy is, say, 28 miles per gallon, and you live in an area with average electricity
- costs, average electricity rates,
- A gas car requires about 12 cents per mile in fuel costs, while an EV operates each mile for less than
- a nickel. That's 12 cents to less than five cents per mile in fuel costs. Our primary car goes 270 miles
- on a full battery charge.
- It recharges in about 15 minutes on the highway at a high-speed charger, like the chargers we have on
- both the East Tesla chargers that we have both on the East side and the West side of Bloomington. We
- find that there are high-speed chargers available about every 50 miles on interstates. Now, we're all
- Rotarians, plus a few guests.
- and we try to follow the rotary four-way test to the best of our ability. For us, one way that we try
- to follow the third item, is it beneficial to all concerned, is by driving electric vehicles.
- Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Eric Coyne will introduce our guests today.
- Thanks, Steve. Dave said he'll be giving everybody who needs a ride home later a ride in his new car.
- So it's my pleasure to introduce Bob Heatherington, a guest of Jeff. Where's Bob? Where's Bob?
- Pete Linson. Pete, there's Pete. Guest of Tam, thanks. And Tina Zmick, my guest.
- And it also today, Tina works with me at Ivy Tech and today is Tina's birthday, so. Are there any guests
- online? We have someone maybe not so familiar to the club, Kay Johnson, who is the chief communications
- and grants officer at Health Net with Cindy and she is a member
- as a business member. HealthNode is a business member, but you know, I think it'd be nice to also welcome
- her. Well, is Kay here or online? She's online. Online. Welcome, Kay. And I don't think anybody else
- online is a guess. Okay, I'm not seeing anything. Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
- Thank you, Eric, and Tina, that piece of cake in front of you is birthday cake. We're on the subject
- of birthdays. We have a couple of birthdays to observe. First of all, Rex Hillary has a birthday on
- the 13th, and Scott Shackelford has a birthday on the 16th. Anniversaries, Jim Capshaw on the 13th,
- eight years. Announcements.
- Sorry about another bad parking day. Remember, we have passes that we can give club members to park
- at Atwater or Henderson free of charge. We've created a sheet on how to use the parking at Henderson.
- It's a little bit tricky getting out of Henderson. So if you have any interest in that, see me or see
- Mandy. Rotary District Conference, May 8th and 9th at the Galt House in Louisville.
- Lots of fun things to do Friday evening. Saturday will be lots of interesting programs. So if you haven't
- done so already, please sign up. See me if you're interested in more information. And you can go online
- and register at rotaryallstars.com. Chamber of Commerce, their business after hours this month will
- be 530 to 730 on March 25th at One World Catering. See Chris M.G. or see me if you'd like more information.
- The 13th of March is the Rotorack anniversary. And the Rotorack is the rotary option for college students.
- We have a very active IU Rotorack club. Alan Barker is the advisor. But those Rotoractors at IU, they're
- out doing some volunteer activity or another almost every weekend. So anyway, we observe the Rotoractors today.
- tables, you'll see district grant handouts. Once again, we're at the front end of the next district
- grant process, which means that not-for-profits that have a project in mind, a ballpark $6,000, will
- apply for the district grant. So please take a handout home if you're interested. If you have any questions,
- Sarah Laughlin is the club member who is running the district grant process this year.
- Um, Tyler, we ready for the. I'm going to start by saying happy dollar proceeds in March and April will
- be given to the Bloomington Rotary Foundation. And we'll move on to membership. So our club has a healthy
- mix of new members and members who have been part of the club for decades. Here's a picture that was
- taken this summer when our district governor Carrie Aiken came to visit.
- And you can see all the club members who are in attendance that day. But our quiz today is, which of
- these Rotarians has been a member of the Bloomington Rotary Club for the fewest years? And the choices
- are Helen Stroman, Peggy Frisbee, Wendell St. John, and Fred Dunn.
- And so here's Ellen on the left and then she's sitting in the front table. Put up your hand, Ellen.
- Okay. And then next to her is Peggy Frisbee. So these are our first two choices. Peggy is our Zoom host
- today. And then the other choices are Wendell St. John and Fred Dunn. Wendell St. John standing right
- there or sitting right there with his hand up. He's in this picture on the left. He is the taller of
- the two. I think this picture was taken on his birthday here.
- about a few months ago, and then Fred Dunn on the right. So if you think Ellen Strohman is the club
- member of these four with the fewest years of service, put up your hand. Okay, we have a few.
- And do the same, put up your hand online. Okay, Peggy Frisbee here on the right. If you think Peggy
- is the club member with the fewest years of service,
- Put up your hand. Oh, Peggy's not getting any votes. Wendell St. John, sitting here on the second table.
- If you think Wendell is the club member with the fewest years of service in this group. OK, Wendell,
- I see three votes in the room, including your own. Oh, four now.
- And then on the right, Fred Dunn. If you think Fred Dunn is the club member with the fewest years of
- service, put up your hand. OK, Fred often attends online. I don't know if he's with us today. And the
- answer is Ellen Strohman. So Ellen.
- Ellen was a Rotarian in Wisconsin for many years. She and her husband both are very active in their
- club. And then Ellen joined our club here last year. If you voted for Peggy, I'm afraid you're incorrect,
- but nobody voted for Peggy, so we're good there. Peggy's been a club member for 28 years. She is active
- in the Rotary Foundation Committee. She is active, especially active,
- in youth services when we have an exchange student. And once again, she's this year for the first time.
- This is her second time. She's volunteering as a Zoom host. So Peggy does a lot for the club.
- Wendell St. John, for the three or four of you who voted for Wendell, I'm afraid you're incorrect. Wendell
- is relatively new. He joined the club in 2019. So the picture here is Wendell and her sponsor, Tim Jessen.
- Wendell's really interesting. He spent a good chunk of his career teaching in Japan and he has really
- interesting stories about that. And if you voted for Fred Dunn and none of you did so, you would have
- been way wrong because Fred has been a club member since 1973. So he'll be celebrating his 53rd anniversary
- this year. The Dunn family has been in Bloomington for years and years and years.
- If I have this correct, Fred told me a story. One of my early meetings as a club member, and he talked
- about he grew up in a house that now the Kelly School of Business sits on that property. And of course,
- you recognize the Dunn name, Dunn Meadow, right outside the union here. So what do we conclude from
- all of this? There is no right time to join Rotary. Whether you're 25 or 95, it's a good time to join Rotary.
- And hopefully if you join when you're 25 in 53 years, they'll be putting your name up on your picture
- up on a screen somewhere So Tyler Well get ready for a video seven areas of focus and March is water
- sanitation and hygiene month and we have a short video from Rotary International
- Rotary knows that providing access to clean water around the world is about more than digging wells.
- That's why Rotary brings together community leaders, governments and agencies to plan policies and funding
- that ensure permanent access to water. Be part of the solution. Learn more.
- So water was the subject of Bill Brown's reflection last week, and we'll be hearing about water all
- month. We have a few minutes for happy dollars. So is anyone happy today? I am happy because my son
- and granddaughter who live in Texas are visiting tomorrow for a few days.
- I have a banker today. Hi there. I'm happy because I planted pansies on Sunday and my daffodils are
- in bloom. Hi. Five happy dollars that I made it back from Houston. Did you remember that there's a government
- shutdown? TSA workers didn't show up at Hobby Airport Sunday morning. I had an 11 AM flight. Oops, got
- back last night. So I'm happy.
- Oh, okay. I am happy. I want to report, you know, kind of the end of a story. Many of you followed the
- plight of the Mohammadi family and their newest member of their family, Jawad, who's married to Aminah
- Mohammadi.
- He was apprehended by ICE. And the club helped raise money to challenge his illegal detention. And that
- was one. And thanks to everybody that contributed to that. And I just wanted to end it by saying that
- he was released in January, I think on the 16th of January. It was two days before Cindy and I went
- for extended vacation in Mexico. And Chawid is our primary house and cat sitter. And so we were really
- thrilled for that reason that he got out. But he is, without a doubt, the most expensive cat sitter
- we've ever employed. So thank you all for contributing to our cat sitter.
- Hello, I'm happy to report that my daughter is now have chickens. She has five Wyandotte and they're
- going to be beautiful when they get bigger and somebody played a trick on her and put an already egg
- in them thing for her. But it wasn't even April Fool's. That was kind of funny.
- Good to see everybody. And then also just really excited for spring. Going to go catch an IU baseball
- game this afternoon. So just thinking spring, hopefully it's not the fall spring that we're all used
- to. And then do we have one online? Yes, I'm right. After last week, a Tuesday meeting while I'm sitting
- in my living room reading my book,
- I lift up my eye, and suddenly, surprised and stunned by my daughter's appearance from Boston, came
- to wish me happy birthday. For that, I gave $5. I think we might have one more.
- Alan, why don't you tell me what it is and then I'll repeat it for the group. Thanks, Sandy. Yes,
- I have one. Hello, everybody. Our dinner theater event is scheduled for April 10th and 11th at the Country Club.
- featuring VIP women in our community doing a reading theater of a Maya Angelou poem entitled A Letter
- to My Daughter. And it is going to be read by VIP women in our community, including our
- Fabulous Joy Harger and Sylvia McNair. Tickets are $85, and this will help significantly with our relocation
- fund. We are doing this in partnership with our friends at the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra and our
- local Girl Scouts. So that should finally be posted after a glitch on our website today, and we'd be
- so thrilled for all of you to be there. Thanks.
- As you know, I'm Ellen Stroman, and I want to, first of all, I'm so happy that I was able to join Rotary
- here. I belonged to Rotariums a number of times in different areas. And so I was so excited when you
- had the discussion on water, because I had taken over
- our business after my husband's death, and no one knew of a woman and a colleague in water. So that
- meant learning the testing, and I had just such a great time, especially in the schools.
- didn't know much about the water situation. So thank you so much for allowing me to be one
- of your representatives. Thank you, Ellen. For those who might not have been able to hear her, she talked
- about in Wisconsin after her husband died, she took over the family Culligan water business and she
- was a water pioneer in the state of Wisconsin.
- Michael Shermas will introduce our speaker today. Good afternoon. At Rotary, we value the exchange of
- diverse ideas and the exploration of challenging topics. On occasion, we tackle a tougher topic in an
- effort to explore the complexities and gain insights. Today, we are joined by Christy Popp, an immigration
- attorney at
- Pop Bowman, Attorneys at Law in Bloomington, Indiana. And I'll briefly tell you her qualifications in
- a second, but she will be sharing her analysis of the current state of immigration in the US, a subject
- that continues to shape our current landscape. In the spirit of academic professional curiosity, we
- welcome a range of viewpoints during the question and answer session, provided they're shared with mutual respect.
- Christie handles humanitarian, e.g. asylum, and family-based immigration cases, student visa cases,
- and naturalizations, as well as detention and removal deportation defense. In addition, Christie periodically
- teaches asylum law as an adjunct at Indiana University's Morrill School of Law in Bloomington.
- Before starting her own legal practice in 2012, Christie worked as a director and staff attorney at
- the Immigrants and Language Rights Center at
- Indiana Legal Services and as a legal consultant for the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. Christy
- currently serves on the board of Exodus Refugee and she serves on the Asylum and Refugee Publications
- Committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Outside of her work, Christy is a mother
- of three kids and a lover of all things outside, especially running, hiking, camping, and gardening.
- She graduated with her JD in 2005 from Vermont Law School and her BA in 2001 from Indiana University
- Bloomington. And I've known her for about 10 years or so because I asked her to come speak to the Domestic
- Violence Coalition back then when I used to run that. And she was great then. I'm sure she'll be now.
- Without further ado, welcome Christy. Hey, everyone.
- slides. Once those get up, I'll get going. So this is a huge topic in a very, very small amount of time.
- And I have many, many slides that I know that I'm not going to get to. So if anybody wants the slides,
- they will be available if you just want information.
- Because it's not enough time to really get into the nitty gritty of immigration and the changes, I thought
- I would focus more broadly on what we're seeing on the ground with a lot of statistics. I wanted to
- talk about whether the goal that was professed as the goal for deporting many people and getting our
- immigration system under control has worked and what we're really seeing.
- To that end, I'm gonna get started here. So first, I'm just gonna say I'm not a statistician. I'm not
- a researcher. I analyze the law. So all of the stats that I gave you, I didn't make up. I got them from
- reputable places. And these are some of the places that I got those statistics from. The professed goal of
- the new administration when they came in was to fix the immigration system by deporting what they call
- the illegal immigrants. I don't use the term illegal immigrants for many reasons that I don't wanna
- spend time talking about. I tend to use the word undocumented. And there is around 10 million undocumented
- people. What I mean by undocumented, I mean people who entered the country on visas,
- and overstayed and kind of went under the radar. Or people who crossed the border, what we call, entered
- without inspection and were never detected and are kind of living under the radar. That is what immigration,
- what we define as undocumented. But the administration has kind of expanded what they call undocumented
- or illegal immigrants to include people who came in the right way
- who applied for asylum and who are going through all of the right processes. So there's a sort
- of criminalization, so to speak, of people who are doing the right thing. And I say criminalization,
- so to speak, because immigration is civil. They're not crime. So if you come in and you overstay your
- visa, you didn't commit a crime. If you entered with crossing the border and applied for asylum and
- turned yourself in,
- you're doing what the law says you're supposed to do. So I wanna make that clear. Those are the facts.
- Trump says that he wanted to fix our immigration system, but I think it's important to look at the terms
- that he has used when talking about immigration. He said that immigrants are poisoning the blood of
- the United States. He's called Mexicans rapists, Somalis garbage,
- immigrants are animals and they're invading our country, and Haitian immigrants are eating the pets.
- This is the rhetoric that we're hearing on immigration from the president himself. And though those
- were his own words, we actually are seeing that rhetoric turned into policy throughout the government.
- So these are screenshots from social media sites.
- This is the Department of Homeland Securities. They were recruiting ICE officers with the We'll Have
- Our Home Again. According to the New York Times, that is actually the title of a song written by white
- supremacists and embraced by Proud Boys, and the song was included on the original social media feed.
- The Department of Labor, Trust the Plan, Trust Trump. Trust the Plan is the central
- This is from the White House's Twitter feed. Remigration. Remigration is a European concept centered
- on the expulsion of non-white people and immigrants deemed unassimilated.
- One homeland, one people, one heritage. This is the Department of Labor. That phrase is similar to the
- German slogan, ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer, or one people, one realm, one leader. Now
- taken individually, maybe these wouldn't mean much. But when you take them as a whole together, it seems
- like it's government policy implemented in this way.
- So is the goal to make our country secure and safe from non-criminals, people who haven't violated the
- law, or is it something else? So how has this been implemented? Well, these are, again, I didn't make
- up these statistics. I got these all from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which compiled
- them all. So this is how we're starting to see
- This rhetoric on immigration be implemented into policy. Last summer, Congress approved a $170 billion
- immigration enforcement package. That funding is more than all 50 states combined spend on their policing
- every year. And the budget for ICE alone exceeds the budget for all non-immigration federal law enforcement
- put together.
- So that's the FBI, the ATF, all of these other organizations. ICE's budget exceeds that. That's important
- because remember, ICE is enforcing immigration, which is not criminal, right? These are civil violations.
- Less than 8% of the $170 billion is for immigration courts.
- So what we're seeing on the ground are more detentions and more deportation cases, but very little money
- given to the immigration courts. And that has resulted in a huge due process crisis in the immigration
- courts. So here's some numbers on what we're seeing with detentions. In February,
- February of this year, 68,000 people were currently in ICE detention. That doesn't include people necessarily
- in local jails waiting for ICE to pick them up. So that's up 75% from the year before. But only 14%
- of those people have criminal records. 14% of the 400,000 detained last year. So is the goal security?
- I don't know. I'm going to leave that for you to decide. But what's going on is that we're putting people
- into seriously unsafe detention facilities, many of which are private prisons. And these private prisons
- have investors in the White House itself. Stephen Miller, who has
- been the architect of the immigration plan, has invested a lot of money in the private prison industry.
- And that's very important. These private prisons have horrible conditions. There are conditions in which
- people are treated like animals. They're not given good food. They're not given medical care. And as
- a consequence, 40 immigrants died in custody. 32 last year and then total this year has been about seven
- in January alone.
- And at least one of those deaths was a homicide. Of course, we don't know what's going on in these detention
- facilities, so there could be more. This could be an undercount, and there could be more homicides that
- we don't know about. But we also know that in the last year, three US citizens have been killed. Alex
- Preti and Renee Goode. Sorry, it says Preti. That was autocorrect. It's supposed to be P-R-E-T-T-I.
- I just noticed that, sorry. Alex Preti.
- Renee Good, and then Ray Martinez, who was killed in Texas. This has just come out recently about his
- murder because it was framed that he had been trying to do something. Unfortunately, the only witness
- that was on the side of Mr. Martinez, he also recently died. So I'm not sure what's gonna happen there.
- Now you might hear, well,
- The people who are protesting are making it more dangerous for ICE agents. So they have to have these
- aggressive tactics. They have to go in cities and be masked. They have to go in cities with tear gas
- and they have to be armed. But is it dangerous to be an ICE agent? I want you to know that it's not,
- okay? There's been one homicide ever.
- of a deportation officer, and that was in 1949, and the man was giving breakfast to a detainee when
- he was murdered. It is more dangerous to be a child in America's schools than to be an ICE agent. So
- I hope when you hear that these ICE agents have to have these aggressive tactics against American citizens
- protesting, that you know that it is not true. Now, continuing with some numbers,
- In addition to the $170 billion that we set aside for immigration enforcement, $40 million has been
- spent to pay foreign countries to take our deportees. And these deportees were people who were offered
- protection in the United States. These were people who won protection here from persecution in their
- home country, and the Trump administration did not want them to be here anymore, so they deported them.
- but not to their home country, because that would have violated international law. Instead, we paid
- $40 million for other countries to take 300 deportees. And one of the more famous cases was a man from
- Jamaica who was sent to a small country in Africa that I think is called Eswatini. I'm not entirely
- sure how to pronounce it correctly. But we've also paid Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan,
- Uganda, Ecuador, El Salvador, to take deportees who should never have been deported. The Trump administration
- has also stripped over 1.6 million immigrants of their legal status so that they could be called illegal
- immigrants and so that they could be put into deportation proceedings. Now, the courts are not happy
- with this.
- a lot of the detentions that we're seeing, so people are stripped of their legal status, they're arrested,
- they're put into detention, or they're doing everything right. They're going to their immigration hearing
- and they're detained at their immigration hearing. Or maybe they're just a little five-year-old boy
- who is coming home from school and who's picked up by an ICE officer. All of these detentions are unlawful
- and the courts have been flooded
- with what are called petitions for the writ of habeas corpus. It's a special request saying that a detention
- is unlawful. There have been over 20,000 of these filed in federal courts. So far, 4,000 rulings have
- found that Trump detained those immigrants unlawfully. And I wanted to quote that there are lots of
- cases right now pending. And I wanted to quote from a couple of them.
- One of the things that the Trump administration did in Minnesota was they detained refugees, particularly
- Somali refugees who came here as refugees. They were lawfully present here. They spent years abroad
- going through background checks before they were allowed into the country. And the Trump administration
- detained them and flew them to Texas. And this judge was very upset.
- And he said that he will not allow federal authorities to use a new and erroneous interpretation to
- terrorize refugees who would be welcomed. The court will not allow those who relied on this nation's
- promise of safety to be met with handcuffs. The Constitution requires steadiness, fidelity to statute,
- and respect for promises made. The rule of law demands less.
- I wanna highlight the rule of law because that is what we're being told is the reason for all of these
- detentions, that this is about the rule of law. And yet we're seeing detentions that are unlawful. The
- famous case of Liam Conejo, the little five-year-old with the rabbit ear hat and the Spider-Man backpack,
- he was detained with his father and the judge who freed him was not happy. And I would encourage you
- to read the entire decision. It's only about three pages. It's a beauty. But here are some of the quotes.
- Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration
- of Independence. The judge then goes on to explain why that's applicable, but I didn't copy the whole
- thing here. Civics lesson to the government. Administrative warrants do not pass probable cause muster.
- The ICE, when they arrest an immigrant, they use an administrative warrant. That is an ICE officer who
- says, I think this person may be removable. Supervisor, can you sign this? There's no judge that reviews
- this. So the court says that he's going to free Liam. And he says, observing human behavior confirms
- that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest
- know no bounds and are bereft of human decency, and the rule of law be damned. You'll see this over
- and over in these judicial opinions, judges pointing out that the rule of law demands more than what
- the Trump administration is doing in these immigration cases, over 4,400 of them. And yet the Trump
- administration continues to violate these court orders.
- In one month alone, they violated 96 of these judicial orders to free unlawfully detained immigrants.
- And the chief federal judge in Minneapolis said that ICE may have broken more court orders in that one
- month than agencies do in their entire history. And we have 24 documented cases, there are probably
- more, in which the administration misrepresented facts to the judges. So,
- From my perspective, from a humanitarian side, this is terrible. But let's talk about it from an economic
- side. People are scared to come to the United States. They're not coming anymore. I have noticed a huge
- part of my work for years was representing students in asylum cases. I've had zero this year, zero.
- And that was a huge part of my legal practice. Why?
- Because students aren't coming. And the only ones coming are really wealthy ones who can go back to
- their countries, right? Who aren't afraid. The same with tourists. Tourists aren't coming. People are
- scared. And undocumented immigrants are leaving. They're not coming either. And they have been working
- in our hospitality, our construction industries. So 98,000 fewer employed hospitality workers
- In one year, a $1.2 billion decline in tourism revenue in one year. International visitors to the US
- declined by 2.5 million in 2025, even as tourism was rising around the world. In Minneapolis alone,
- The small businesses there in Minneapolis lost $81 million in revenue in January of 2026 due to a 15%
- decline in overall international air travel. Although I don't know who wants to go to Minneapolis in
- January. They must have a lot of people there. It wouldn't have been me. But Las Vegas, where a lot
- of people go, saw a 7.5% decline. And we're seeing slowing job growth in many industries, construction,
- manufacturing,
- I think we're gonna see it really this year in farming too and agriculture. It's gonna be a big one,
- right? So the rest of my slides focus on getting into the nitty gritty of what has changed, but it goes
- deep and I could speak for hours on that and I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna let people ask questions,
- but I just wanna tell you in terms of immigration,
- In the last year, we have seen about 650 policy changes in immigration. And around 125 of them are wrapped
- up in litigation. So that's been a lot, 650 policy changes. Those are regulatory changes, legal decisions.
- It's overwhelming. But the majority of what has changed has been
- really to the detriment of immigrants. The laws have been changed to make it harder to immigrate here,
- harder to get legal status here, harder to fight a deportation. And we can argue about whether that's
- right or wrong. That's an opinion. But we can't really argue about the facts, right? Everyone's entitled
- to their own opinion on this situation, but not the facts. And the fact is that we're seeing humans,
- immigrants,
- being detained at massive numbers, being stripped of their legal status, and having their constitutional
- rights violated. So I'm going to leave it there and take questions for the next 15 or so minutes. Christie,
- thank you for an excellent presentation. I have a question.
- very few people understand the notion of a writ of habeas corpus and unlawful detention. Can you explain
- how that kind of works in our legal framework and kind of where that comes from and what the meaning
- is behind that? So I'm not a scholar of legal traditions. I can't speak. I know it is an ancient, at
- least in common law, it comes from England.
- In terms of what it means for immigration law, if immigration or any law enforcement agency detained
- somebody unlawfully, meaning that they didn't have probable cause that the person had committed a crime,
- there was no warrant, if any aspect of that detention violated the Fourth Amendment, then the individual detained
- could go into federal court and ask the federal judge to order them released. In the immigration context,
- if the person, in some circumstances, the judges will order a bond hearing. So if somebody is undocumented
- and they're detained and there's something unlawful about it, often the federal judges will say immigration
- judges have to hold a bond hearing. Now that's one aspect where we've seen
- a lot of violations of the law. In fact, a court in California in a class action said that the immigration
- courts could no longer detain a certain group of people, which would be people who entered the country
- without inspection. The Trump administration was holding them without bond hearings based on an erroneous
- interpretation of the statute. A federal district court said, you can't do that.
- the Department of Justice issued a memo to all of their attorneys and judges and said, ignore the court
- order. We're going to continue. So this is where we're seeing kind of the federal courts order something
- and then the immigration judges are supposed to grant bond hearings and they're not doing that. Christie,
- you mentioned the rise in detentions and, um,
- The backlog is increasing. There's been a precipitous drop in the number of immigration judges, particularly
- in the asylum field. Could you talk about the rationale why these judges, many times with decades of
- experience, are being let go and the impact on the total system? There has been a purge of over 100
- immigration judges over the last year. Most of them were fired.
- Many of them were fired on the bench. They were literally sitting on the bench when they got the email.
- Immigration judges are employees of the Department of Justice. So when we think of our three branches
- of government and we think about how we have the executive, the legislature, and the judicial Article
- III, immigration courts are actually under the executive branch. So they're employees and can be fired
- seemingly at will, although that's being challenged.
- So the Trump administration has fired 100 judges at a time when the numbers of deportations are increasing.
- And most of those judges had high asylum grant rates. That was the basis for their firing. Anyone who
- had an asylum grant rate over 50% was fired. So we're left with immigration judges that have lower grant
- rates, usually in the 20 to 30%.
- And on top of that, we're getting temporary judges who are primarily JAG attorneys. So part of the army,
- army attorneys. That means that they are beholden to their commander in chief, not necessarily to the
- Department of Justice. In their training, a whistleblower said that they have specifically been told
- not to grant asylum. So we already have a couple of JAG attorneys in our Indianapolis immigration court.
- Like I said before, a lot of the laws have been changed specifically to make it harder for people to
- get status. So firing judges and then hiring temporary judges and telling them not to grant asylum,
- that is one of those changes. Thank you for your presentation. You mentioned in response to one of the
- earlier questions that basically the
- judges have been instructed, various officials, to ignore the court orders. And I'm just wondering what
- the strategy is. I mean, I know there's a strategy, I'm sure, at the congressional level to try to change
- the law and to make changes. But practically speaking, what does this do for you as an attorney,
- day to day? How do you navigate through this, let's call it challenging times, when you have basically
- people being told to ignore court orders?
- Well, but honestly, it's really hard. I can speak broadly about the immigration bar, that there's a
- lot of burnout, and a lot of people are quitting immigration attorneys. It's really hard. I mean, how
- do you navigate that? All you can do is keep arguing, and we prepare our cases for the federal court
- of appeals. We don't prepare them for the immigration judges. We know we're going to lose at the immigration judge,
- we know we're gonna lose at the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is the administrative appellate,
- we prepare our cases for the federal courts. And that's all we can do is like, of course, you know,
- I'm a private attorney, my clients have to pay, that makes it really hard as well, because they might
- not have money. So a lot of people are leaving the country, or they're really, really afraid. It's a
- really hard situation.
- I've heard discussion from the current administration about reaching back and removing people's citizenship
- back to their immigrant parents. And the current citizen is only a citizen because they were born here.
- Their parents were immigrants. We're going to make them no longer legal residents or no longer citizens.
- Are there any safeguards in place to protect us from that behavior?
- in the law? Yeah, so there's one, the Supreme Court. And the case is actually going to be heard in April.
- So the 14th Amendment says anybody born on US soil except for people born with parents who have diplomatic
- visas are US citizens. The Trump administration created an executive order last year that said that
- if your parents were undocumented or were here on a temporary visa, like a student visa,
- then your children were not going to be citizens. You had to be here as a permanent resident or citizen.
- So that was challenged. It's lost every level. I think it will lose in the Supreme Court too. I think
- the 14th Amendment is clear, but. Thank you again for your comments today. Two quick questions.
- Number one is, is being in the country without inspection a crime, illegal? And then,
- What advice would you give? We all have family and friends that are here legally. What advice would
- you give to them to have on the ready if and when something they were to encounter something?
- Thank you. Sure. That's a great question. So coming on a visa and overstaying is definitely not a crime.
- Crossing the border without a visa is a misdemeanor. So if you're caught crossing a border, you could
- be subject to up to six months in jail. It's a very minor misdemeanor.
- but it's not one that carries forever. So if I go and I drive 100 miles an hour on I-65, I have engaged
- in reckless driving. But if I don't get caught and no one has seen it, then in six months, the police
- can't come and say, well, we suspect that you were driving 100 miles an hour. We're going to charge
- you with a misdemeanor of reckless driving. It's like it's happened. No one was caught. No one saw it.
- It's not going to be charged.
- And that's how traditionally this misdemeanor illegal entry was dealt with. Like if nobody saw you crossing,
- you weren't charged with it. Because it's kind of like, did it happen at that moment kind of misdemeanor?
- Does that make sense? What advice would I give to people? I mean, it's really a very hard situation
- right now. Everybody is scared. My naturalized citizen clients are scared they're going to be denaturalized.
- My permanent resident clients are scared.
- that they're going to be deported even though there's really no reason for that. My naturalized citizen
- clients are carrying their passports with them because they're afraid that if ICE finds them that they're
- going to be arrested even though they're US citizens and they shouldn't have to carry that identification.
- I just advise people to continue to exercise their rights in any situation. You don't have to speak
- to an ICE officer.
- You have the right to remain silent. You don't have to let them into your house. They have to have a
- warrant. So as long as people continue to demand that the constitution is upheld, I think that's the
- best that we can do really. Thanks Christy. Thank you for being on my little podcast recently. And we
- had a good response to what you shared there. You and I were talking before lunch today,
- about a recent episode of the podcast, This American Life. And it dawned on me, a question came up there
- that I hadn't thought to ask you. And one of the attorneys who had worked for DHS and then was shocked
- when he was training ICE agents by the way the law was being just ignored, was also asked about
- the loss of relationships, friends and family and others. And I thought, I should have asked Christy
- about that. In your work, do you find yourself in awkward places or in challenging situations where
- normally there would just be friendships? Oh, you mean with like family members and friends? With people
- in the community, with other attorneys, with, you know. Yeah. Well,
- I guess when people find out I'm an immigration lawyer, I can always tell where they stand on immigration
- by their response to me. So usually the response is either engaging me in conversation, in which case
- they usually are either interested or maybe care about it, or they say nothing. And if they say nothing,
- I know that they hate the work that I do and I just don't talk about it. With my own family, I mean,
- I have family at the whole spectrum and if they wanna talk to me,
- I will talk to them, but I don't provoke that conversation. I haven't lost any family or friends because
- of the work that I do, though I have very strong opinions about my work. But like I said, we are all
- entitled to our own opinions, and I respect the opinions of everybody. I think everyone has the right
- to say their opinions. But as long as when I talk to people, I make sure that they know
- but whether their facts are correct or not, because we all have to start on the same page before we
- can engage in dialogue. So speaking of challenges as being an immigration attorney, how can communities
- or citizens of immigration attorneys be helped by people who live and work around you? How can we help
- you? Well, I think
- In Monroe County, I feel like there's a lot of support for the immigrant community. I would say I personally
- don't need help. The burnout that immigration attorneys are feeling I think is just in the system and
- there's nothing that can be done about it. But I think helping others not feel that intense pressure,
- helping immigrants feel safe is really the most important thing because that's the hardest part of my job.
- the constant calls of people who are worried about what's happening. And so if people feel like they're
- in a safe place, then we can help them more legally, if that makes sense. Peggy, go ahead. Yes. Thank
- you for recognizing me. OK.
- I have two things. One is a comment. I have a niece and a nephew adopted, one from Honduras and one
- from Guatemala, and this has created a situation where they have to have their, quote unquote, papers
- with them when they go anywhere because, of course, they both look Hispanic, particularly my nephew.
- And so, I mean, just the situation that's been created is affecting so many people and is just intolerable.
- I do have a question though, Christine, which is what's your take on Indiana as the state in terms of
- what's going on here, both positive and negative?
- Do I have enough time to respond to this? Okay. SB 76 is a recent law that was passed and signed into
- law I think last week or the week before by Governor Braun. I think it's a really dangerous law. I don't
- think that the GOP in Indiana really understood immigration law when they wrote it. It's very vague
- if we're talking about immigration terms, but in effect what it's going to do
- is force government and post-secondary institutions to cooperate with ICE, which basically means let
- them enter their property without a warrant. That's all it means is that if you're a police officer,
- you're gonna have to have a warrant to enter. If you're an ICE officer getting somebody who hasn't even
- committed a crime, no warrant necessary. So that's what the law has done. And they're trying to force
- jails to honor detainers. I can give you a whole presentation on detainers that is like an hour long.
- We don't have time for that,
- suffice to say that the Indiana Court of Appeals has already found these detainers to be violations
- of the Fourth Amendment. The General Assembly has now passed a law requiring jails to honor these detainers,
- and they created a provision in SB 76 that says that the Attorney General will represent people who
- are sued under this law. And why will the Attorney General cover the costs and representation? It's because
- all of these laws are going, they violate other laws. So in effect, Indiana General Assembly has passed
- a law that they know is going to result in lawsuits because it's illegal. So that's what's going on
- now. Thank you. Christy, thank you very much. I could listen to you for another hour for sure.
- In honor of your talk, a donation will be made this quarter to Amethyst House. I'd like to thank today's
- volunteers, Hoshi Wang, Eric Coyne, Michael Shermas, Peggy Frisbee, Dave Meyer, Ashley Wesley,
- Heidi Schultz, Jeff Richardson. Our next meeting will be on March 17th. We'll be back upstairs in the
- Georgian room, and I'll be leading our quarterly club assembly, an annual meeting. Tyler, if you'd share
- the graphic for the four-way test.
- And please stand if you're able. Of the things we think, say, or do, first, is it the truth? Second,
- is it fair to all concern? Third, will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be
- beneficial to all concerned? And fifth, is it fun?