Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
David Bier: Thanks for having me on. It’s great to finally make it here.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Well then we’ll have to arrest him. Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. A lot of people saying he’s here illegally. We’re going to look at everything.
Bier: The reason why the president is so anti-immigrant, anti–legal immigration [is] because he sees them as a threat to his power. He sees them as political opponents, as future members of the Democratic Party. And so when he looks at them, he thinks, Threat, and I’m going to crack down. I’m going to find a way to get them out of this country. And it doesn’t matter if they’ve committed any crimes, if they’ve done anything in violation of the law, he’s still going to target them. And that’s what we’ve already seen with respect to his agenda with legal immigrants in the United States who are here as noncitizens. Now he’s just expanding those assaults to people who are citizens, who have naturalized. And if you look at what he’s done with legal immigrants already, he’s arresting people who are here legally for their speech and their advocacy, including someone who wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper. So this is what he sees as his power, and he’s willing to use it even against U.S. citizens who express dissent and oppose his agenda.
Bier: Yeah, unfortunately, not as much as I would like to see. Look, I’ve been saying for a long time this issue of free speech, of using immigration as a way to enhance his power is central to his agenda. He wants to limit the people who have rights in the U.S. to as small a circle as possible. With immigration, it’s easier than in some other areas. But with immigration, [he’s] trying to restrict the rights of immigrants and their families to just barely a thread, right? If he can cut it at any time, he will. And that’s why the birthright citizenship case is also relevant here because, again, that’s about taking away citizenship from people who otherwise could assert their rights against the government. And once you get rid of birthright citizenship, that’s another lever that you can press on even for people who were born here.
Bier: Yes and no. It’s not relevant in the sense that he should prevail in any attempt to denaturalize him. But unfortunately, it’s not the situation where you’re just going to get laughed out of court [or] this is not something that you should be concerned with at all because the requirements to naturalize include some very vague language that President Trump is undoubtedly going to latch his attack on these political opponents under. The main one we’re talking about here is the requirement that you demonstrate that you’re attached to the principles of the Constitution and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the U.S. And there’s also a provision for revocation that interprets that language as having membership in the Communist Party or another totalitarian party that is opposed to the principles of the U.S. And so this is where you get that hook of, He’s a communist, he’s not attached to the principles of the Constitution, and he’s opposed to the happiness of the U.S.
Sargent: Well, just to be clear, what he would do is essentially go back and reopen the initial awarding of naturalization to Mamdani, right? He would say in some way or other, OK, he actually was awarded this on false pretenses. Either he faked something involving his application, or he’s not someone who wishes happiness on the U.S., or he’s a communist or something like that. We had a Republican congressman actually say that Mamdani should be deported based on supposed support for terrorism. Karoline Leavitt actually said if that’s true, it should be investigated—so she opened the door here. Is that the basic mechanism: go back into it and recontest the initial awarding of naturalization?
Sargent: So let me ask you this then: When Trump says “some people say Mamdani is here illegally,” that “we’re going to look at everything” as in that video clip that we just played, that he’s got all the levers he needs to stop Mamdani, it’s very plausible that his people might already be exploring denaturalization as an option, right?
He’s hearing we can denaturalize people. He sees a political opponent who’s saying things he doesn’t like. He absolutely will use this new task force that the Justice Department has created to go after people. And even in the memo itself—of course, it spends a lot of time on crime and terrorism, but it also has just a catchall in there that says that they can go after anyone who they think has misrepresented themselves to obtain U.S. citizenship. And obviously, he thinks that some of his political opponents may have done that, and this is an area where we could see a crackdown.
Bier: Yeah, absolutely. [If] you look at everything they say on just immigration in general, they lie about who they’re going after. They say it’s all criminals and terrorists and people who are threats. You saw what they did with the Alien Enemies Act already with deporting hundreds of people based on their tattoos. I have a rose tattoo, therefore I’m a part of a criminal gang—and [you’re] going to incarcerate [me] indefinitely in a foreign prison. And he’s already talked about using that same strategy against U.S.-born citizens: deporting them and sending them to El Salvador. So, again, he’s talking about it enough to the point where this is actually something we need to really take seriously, particularly with his total disrespect for human rights and civil liberties more generally.
Bier: Yeah. They would have to file a complaint in a district court. There’ll be 60 days for a response from the defense, and then you’d have basically arguments about what these provisions mean, what the evidence is. There’d be potentially discovery. It could take months or even longer for that to get sorted out. And then at some point, a judge is going to make a determination. You’re either a citizen or you’re not anymore. And it’s retroactive—so it would be as if saying he was never a citizen all the way back to his naturalization, basically obliterates his record of citizenship forever.
Bier: It’s important to really frame this as an assault on all Americans. That is the central fact about all of these actions that he is taking. If free speech doesn’t apply to noncitizens, then free speech rights are eroded for all people in the U.S. Again, if a government agent sees your social media post and thinks, Oh, he’s opposing the foreign policy of the U.S., comes and knocks on your door and demands citizenship papers from you.… If you have to show your citizenship papers to have free speech in the U.S., free speech in the U.S. is gone. That is the actual situation already in the U.S. because of these arrests of noncitizens. So again, this is a threat to all of us. All of the responses should focus not just on how this is going to mistreat naturalized citizens or immigrants. It’s everyone in the U.S. who is going to be threatened by this unlawful, unconstitutional government.
Bier: It’s explicitly in the statute that he is relying on that this speech was lawful. It was not rioting. It was not vandalism. It’s not all of the things that they promote as what they’re targeting. No, this is for speech that was lawful—constitutionally protected advocacy—that they are targeting. And it’s not just international students. It’s also been legal permanent residents and green card holders who’ve been arrested and incarcerated for this. So again, this comes back to our rights as citizens—all of our rights. Because again, [if] the only way that you have the right to speak freely is if you show your passport, you really no longer have the right to speak freely in this country. We need to get control of this government again and get it back under the constraints of the Constitution.
Bier: Thank you.
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