Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
All this comes as even some MAGA judges are starting to reject Trump’s deportation policies in surprising numbers. So it’s time to take stock. Trump and Stephen Miller are escalating deportations in a big way, but trying to do so very quietly. We’re at a real crossroads moment here that will determine how far they can get with their lawless ethnic cleansing campaign. We’re talking about all this with New Republic staff writer Melissa Gira Grant, who has a great piece laying out why people need to care a lot about this shooting. Melissa, good to have you on.
Sargent: And ICE really is hoping that. Let’s start with this shooting. It was around six in the morning. Lorenzo was driving to a construction job with three other guys. He stopped as part of a targeted operation. ICE now claims that he attempted to evade arrest, refused to follow verbal commands, and then weaponized his vehicle against an officer, who then fired in self-defense. It hit Araujo in the stomach, and he died at the hospital. Melissa, can you explain why this account is worthy of skepticism?
So at the time, Araujo, his brother, and two other men—the three of them were part of a construction crew. You know, Araujo has been working in construction for like 35 years in Houston and then the suburbs around there. He was on the way to work.
Sargent: Let’s talk about who Araujo is. He’s 52 years old. He’s been in this country for 35 years. He started his own business. He put several children through college. They’re all now grown up. And Araujo’s son, Ronaldo Salgado, says that the family had actually been preparing for the possibility that he might be picked up.
Grant: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense that he would do anything to endanger himself when he had family support in a plan that ran counter to that. It is very clear from listening to the press conferences and reading some of what his son Ronaldo has posted on social media that this is somebody who had a lot of support, and I don’t think would make a rash decision in the moment.
There doesn’t appear to be any video of the shooting itself. There’s been video of the aftermath, but not the shooting itself. And yet these guys who saw this happen—presumably, we don’t know that they did, but it seems highly plausible that they might have—they might be removed from the country. Melissa, what do you make of that?
Sargent: Absolutely. It does seem like that. By the way, I want to quickly note that in response to my questions about this, ICE put out a statement that entirely dodged the matter. It was just boilerplate repeating what it had said before, and then adding that this is a developing situation. They won’t say any more.
And by the way, one other thing—we should note that Juan Proaño, who represents the families, did say on a conference call today that he does think the three men are illegal. So they may actually be deported, or at least subject to deportation. And it’s possible ICE is trying to deport them to prevent them from sharing their account of what happened, which is just amazing.
The other thing about any kind of investigation—local law enforcement, including the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, they have tried to join the investigation, offer assistance. They have been denied that. And that includes being denied access to key pieces of evidence.
Sargent: Well, it sure looks like there’s a major groundswell for Araujo right now. You had this very good piece about this shooting as well. I want to highlight one thing you wrote—how the government’s cavalier response to this killing really shows that Trump and Stephen Miller and MAGA just don’t regard people like Araujo as fundamentally human. You wrote, “The lives of people who aren’t worthy of citizenship have no value.”
Grant: Sure. That comment, I was trying to capture the Trump administration’s ethos. That is certainly not my belief, that the lives of people who aren’t worthy of citizenship have no value. That is what this administration’s been telling us, I mean, since 2015, right? Since Trump came down the escalator.
And there are two representatives from Congress who’ve also called for a full investigation. There may be others by now, but as of now, one of them is Christian Menefee, who I think has just very recently come to Congress—I think he only showed up in February. And he said something just completely perfect, honestly, at a press conference the family held earlier this week.
Sargent: There’s a big tool that the administration has been using to try to maximize the deportations and maximize the ethnic cleansing. ICE is trying to detain people without bond—even if they’ve been in the country for many years, when they’d ordinarily be afforded bond.
Grant: Sure. So, we’ve had decades of immigration laws that were and weren’t enforced in various ways. Like, I think that’s a good place to start. Every administration kind of comes in and is like, what are going to be our priorities? And even though this law has been sitting on the books for 30 years, it has never been used in this way.
And now we’ve swung all the way to actually every single person—and actually not every single person who crosses the border, but every single person who doesn’t have legal status, or people who we have profiled as not having legal status, is fair game to be detained.
It’s really fascinating. It’s a kind of super simple, super basic principle. Like, you can’t actually just hold somebody for as long as you want without giving them due process. And immigration court is not the same thing as our criminal or civil courts—it’s its own process. People don’t have the same rights to counsel, for example. So what we have seen is this upswell of lawyers and community organizations using the habeas process to get people out, and seeing that in numbers that we’ve never seen before.
And so it’s this cat-and-mouse of, like, the more people you detain, the more habeas petitions we’re going to throw at you, and the busier the courts are going to get, and the more incentivized judges are going to be to let people go. They can’t simply keep up with these numbers. And that’s the story I see behind that number too.
We’re talking about MAGA judges, judges who were picked by Donald Trump, who agree with more liberal judges that this major tool that they’re using—again, this is absolutely central to their entire mass deportation campaign—this major tool that they’re using is too much for a majority of Trump-appointed judges who have considered it.
I do suspect, though, that part of it is the sheer number of cases. None of these judges have been called upon to deal with this kind of volume, this many habeas cases, this many immigrants who have been detained.
And then there’s other people—attorneys are looking at the success that attorneys are having in other circuits, and they’re going for it. It’s sort of a snowball effect at this point. And it only stops if they actually stop detaining people.
Yet on the other flip side of this whole thing, we’re seeing tremendous resistance to what Trump and Stephen Miller are wanting to do. You saw this backlash in Minneapolis. Public polls have shown that solid majorities are rejecting this. They reject the mass deportations as a policy, not just the tactics that we’re seeing in the streets.
So where are we? How far are they going to get? I tend to think that they’re not actually going to get that far towards what they want. What’s your reading of it?
There were some personnel changes—Gregory Bovino, the guy in the greatcoat with the kind of Nazi-appealing haircut—he’s out, we’re bringing in Tom Homan. He’s an old hand. He looks more legitimate, even though arguably he’s in the same exact lane ideologically as the rest of them.
However, we are seeing this huge increase in arrests and detentions. You know, we have double the amount of detentions daily happening in some cases. There were five days in June this year where 10,000 people were arrested by immigration agents. That’s double what would be the normal rate even under this administration.
Sargent: A hundred percent. Couldn’t have said it better. I really agree with that. I really hope people take that to heart. Folks, you saw what happened in Texas. That’s a very good sign that Melissa’s really onto something here. So stay in this, people. Please stay on top of it. Melissa Gira Grant, awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for all this.
Sargent: Folks, a quick announcement. The Daily Blast is taking a short break to recharge. The pod will return in a week, early in the morning on Monday, July 20. See you all then.
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