Path forward on immigration includes deportations (12-02-2025--Hour1)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. I want to welcome back to the program Andrew Dunn. He is a contributing columnist at the Charlotte Observer and also the publisher of long Leaf Politics. You can read that work at long leafpo l dot com and subscribe to the newsletter there. Andrew, how are you, sir? I'm well, good to be back with you. Thanksgiving. I did I did not quite the four generations that you wrote about at long Leave Politics, but so that was that was good? And so yeah, what was your because you did write a piece this I thought it was very good. I enjoyed it. So what was the sort of the lesson that you took away from you know, the ability to have what was it you said? Four generations? So what your grandfather or great grandfather, who all was there. Yeah, it was just a wonderful time. We had everybody from my seven month old niece I'm now an uncle, which is fantastic, and then we had my ninety one year old grandma. So wait quite the range. But you know, really it was just a great time to kind of unplug for a few days and relax. And you know, I'm sure that all of us had different political thoughts and whatnot, but it just never came up. You know, what we were focused on was being together with family and given thanks. And you know, if everybody could do that more often, I think we'd be in a better place. Yeah. Say, I went down to Atlanta, was with my brother and his wife's extended family. We do that every year, and same thing. I know there are people, you know, in that family that have very different political views than I do. When we never talk politics, it never comes up, and nobody tries to needle each other. But I guess if you've got family members that want to antagonize, I guess it would be a different story. But I didn't have. There's nobody in the family that does that. Yeah, thank goodness. Yeah, so all right, and now we did not. A topic that did not come up, but was all over Charlotte media for the week prior to Thanksgiving was Operation Charlotte's Web. We talked a little about it before Thanksgiving, before last week, and you've written quite a few pieces about this at Long Leave Politics, but also with the Charlotte Observer. You wrote your first newspaper column. You talked about why you were not a fan of the masked agents and the unmarked vans. You wrote about then the case that immigration enforcement, including deportation, is necessary and it's moral as well. And then you have a piece at Long Leave Politics how border patrol raids changed the North Carolina political landscape. So I will ask how so. Yeah, I won't talk politics at Thanksgiving dinner, but I love talking politics with you. Thank you. Yeah, so, how it changed the political landscape? I mean, basically I had three takeaways here. You know. Number one is it really seems to me that the kind of shock and awe smash and grab raids are a political loser. You know, I get that I may be a little skewed in my perception living here in Charlotte, but I do my best to get outside the bubble as much as possible. And it does seem to me that that sort of operation just kind of makes people uncomfortable, especially you know, in unaffiliated voters, the suburban voters that tend to be are the swing voters in our elections. People just don't love to see it. Yeah, no, I'll confirm that for you. People that are not political at all, And even if they want the border closed and they want the criminal aliens deported, what they saw made them feel uneasy, right, And. Some of it is I think the Trump administration likes to play up the drama a little bit, and that certainly doesn't help when you're really leaning into it. You know, President Obama deported a lot more people, but he never went out and did press conferences on it. He just kind of did it, and nobody seemed to care. But that brings me to point number two, which is this is actually a bigger shift than I think a lot of people give it credit for. Is that the conversation has completely changed. You know, six months ago, there was a debate on whether law enforcement should cooperate with ICE at all. You know, we've talked about this all the time, where you know, Sheriff McFadden here in Mecklenburg County kind of campaigned on not cooperating with ICE and not turning people over, and now after Charlotte's Web, it seems like that position is just completely untenable. That even Democrats, even the left side of the aisle, is now saying, all right, well, we're okay with deporting criminals, We're okay with handing them over. So, you know, I think that's an opportunity for the General Assembly in North Carolina to really push on that expand the list of crimes that make people eligible for deportation. And it seems kind of obvious, but I think anytime somebody is brought to the jail there should be a determination of their legal status in this country. I don't know why you would limit that, you know, to certain classes of folks. Yeah, well, hang on, you know why. Well, okay, I do know why. But it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, well it does if you don't want to anger an activist base, right sure, And that's what the I mean, that's what guys like Gary mcfaden ran on in twenty eighteen. It was an explicit promise to get rid of the two eighty seven g program. So they would not know who's coming into the jail, so they would and not be able to cooperate with ICE. That was explicit, and all of his actions since then have been in line with that campaign promise. So credit where it's due. He is, you know, he is fulfilling his campaign promise. Well, I guess you got to give him credit for that. But yeah, I mean, now is the time to really put pressure on that because I don't think anybody can be front and center saying they're not going to cooperate with ICE for people arrested and brought to the jail. That's a non starter now. Yeah, all right, And then also the third component here the businesses e verified specifically, I was surprised that you found only five e verify enforcement actions since twenty seventeen, and that's in North Carolina. Alone, exactly. Yeah, So the North Carolina Department of Labor is responsible for enforcing the e verify law, and North Carolina has a really weak everify law. You know, some states have started to go in to requiring all employers to use it, but North Carolina still only requires, you know, employers of twenty five or more to use everify, and that makes it incredibly easy to work around it. You know, if you're a contractor, you use subcontractors and everybody falls under the twenty five employee threshold, so nobody is checking it. But I have to believe that there are some businesses that are violating this law, you know, just driving around the state. You know, it seems to be quite clear, but I don't know what the exact issue is. My guess is that the Department of Labor just doesn't have the resources to actually enforce this, and I think that's probably by design. I mean, I think there's a lot of folks who give money to the General Assembly who do not want tight enforcement of this law. Absolutely yeah. I mean that's always been going back, you know, twenty five years when immigration sort of exploded as a national issue the first time, with the path the citizenship and all of that. Right, there was this alliance between people who wanted you know, open borders for I guess what they thought were, you know, the potential for new voters for Democrats, but also the cheap labor for the chamber and the business crowd. And that's been that alliance, and like to your point, I don't know if that's a tenable position any longer, especially in economic heart hard times, right, people are now looking at anybody coming across the border illegally as now somebody that's taking a job that they want to hold themselves, and so it's a harder sell. I think at this point. Now I did think your piece at the Charlotte Observer, I think this is actually the winning argument on open borders versus enforcement. And you start off the piece by saying there is nothing compassionate about open borders, and I think when you go through as you did in your piece, and you talk about the horrors that people go through to come across the border, and then once they are here, they are basically indentured servants, and they are and they're employed by the cartels as sort of the logistical support for whatever cartel operations are functioning in various cities. Like these people have no option but to stay and work illegally and have their money siphoned away from them and not be able to report abuses or crimes and that sort of stuff, because if they do so, the cartels will kill them, They'll kill their families back home. And so like, this is this open border idea, and let everybody in that that's not the morally superior position. It's not the compassionate position. No, not at all. And we've known this for decades. I mean it's almost twenty years ago now. The Charlotte Observer, I believe, was a Pulitzer finalists for their piece called the Cruelest Cuts looking at the conditions, labor conditions and some of the Piedmont North Carolina poultry plants. And you know, that's exactly what you get if you have kind of a wink in a nod and greation enforcement and you know, leave the borders open and encourage people to come put their life at risk. And there's just no, there's no good argument for the arrangement that we have today. And I think you know at the conservative position is the truly humanitarian one. Yeah, And like you mentioned, I've talked about this with people from like particularly the construction industry when we were talking about Charlotte's Web and they say, look, our job sites are empty. You know, Americans won't do these jobs. And I said, well, then create like a like the farm worker program, what do you call it, the Brasero's program, right, where like you can create something to fill these jobs. But the key is that you've got to have a legal way to do it, and you can't be undercutting American workers. So then employers are incentivized to go with the illegal labor and keep this sort of underground economy going. Exactly. I mean, I think I don't think it's true that Americans don't want to do those jobs. Maybe it's true they don't want to do the jobs for the wages you're trying to pay. And that's why I think one of the best ideas that the Trump administration has had this year is increasing the fee for employers to use the H one B visa program. I can't remember what the number was they landed on, but increasing the cost of doing that so it's not a it's truly getting workers that you can't hire in the United States, rather than a cost saving measure. And I think we should bring that approach all up and down to all all levels of visas. Yeah. I saw there's a some Twitter account that was posting all of these different ads for the H one B jobs, and I mean, it's obviously rife with fraud that companies are bringing people in and they're doing it in order to undercut and pay undercut American workers and pay lower salaries and they're abusing the system. But that being said, there there, you know, there can be a way to bring in labor if we're not filling the jobs with Americans. So yeah, I think that's the I think that's the sane and rational position. And I even saw people in the comment section that we're giving you kudos, saying and they never agree with conservatives on anything, but on this one, they tend to agree with you. So I think this is the winning argument. Yeah. I'll tell you if the Observer comments section agrees with me, maybe maybe I'm on something or maybe I'm just way off base. That's right, Hey, Andrew, I always appreciate it. Thank you, sir. We'll talk with you next week. Thank you. All right. That's Andrew Dunn. You can read his work at the Charlotte Observer. He's a contributing columnist. You can also get his substack newsletter at longleafpol dot com Longleaf Politics. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valvaluable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. All right, so excuse me. Andrew Dunn's piece over at the Charlotte Observer Border patrol leaves Charlotte, but hardly sorry, but hard reality remains. We need deportations. That was the headline and wrote in this piece. When we refuse to enforce our laws, we haven't chosen mercy We've chosen a system that leaves people to die in the desert, drown in rivers, be assaulted by cartels, and then live in a permanent shadow class here in the United States. There is no honest path forward on immigration that does not include enforcing the law, and that includes deportations. That's what I said during the operation. You know, if you don't like the law, then you change the law. You don't get to nullify a law that you don't like. That's not how this system is supposed to work. It's not. And if you know, if you're allowed to nullify laws that you don't like, well you know, I've got some laws that I'd like to nullify as well. So who's to say just because you don't like the way it looks, you don't like Custom and Border Patrol agents coming to town and rounding up three hundred and seventy plus people, you don't like the way it looks, it makes you feel sad or something, then change the law. You don't get to say don't enforce it. But I understand like, and this is what Andrew was saying. Also about the optics. I get that I've heard it. It makes people feel uncomfortable. It makes them feel sad because you see the crying mom. You see the kid no mommy or daddy, you know, crying that their parent is being taken away. Which, by the way that scene plays out, whenever police arrest somebody for breaking the law and a child is present like that, is that that sort of thing happens all the time. Families are broken up whenever there is an arrest of one of the family members. That's what happens there. It's just now you're seeing it because people are videotaping it. They're employing the the you know, Hamas playbook. Democrats once again employing the Hamas playbook, which is to force the focus of attention onto the ramifications of the decision to break the law, to do something bad on the front end, pay no attention to that, and flip the the oppressor oppressed narrative. And now, or if I want to go all Darvo on you, it's the reverse victim and offender. The offender is the people who the offenders of the people who came into the country illegally. That's the initial offense. When they are caught and sent home, that doesn't make them the victim. They are still the offender. They are suffering the repercussions, the penalties of their offense. That's how that works, he said. The progressive left often treats loose borders as an act of compassion, but in reality they produce something close to law ballless cruelty. And I went over this about a week ago, week and a half ago, going through the way that the cartels use these illegal immigrants that they have smuggled into the country. They keep them indentured, they threaten them, they threaten their families, and then they use those people to aid the cartel operations. And those people have no choice but to continue working here, staying here, sending money back to the cartels, providing logistical support or whatever lookout you know, support, doing whatever the cartel demands of them. They can't go home, they can't quit, they can't run away. So what do you do? Well, if we deport them, that's not really their fault, then, is it. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Asheville. Is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get fan only and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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Stopping it and repairing the damage are not going to look pleasant. People better come to understand that this is the result of someone else's actions that weren't broadcast to the masses. Many of the masses still don't know that they opened the borders wide open, nor do they know why. Also, Obama counted turnarounds at the border. Yeah, I've talked about that that data point as well. Obama deported quote unquote deported three million people. They called him the deporter in chief. A lot of the lefty activists were mad at him for that, But those were not deportations from the interior. They were people coming across and then being sent right back, and those counted as deportations. So that's why he got the numbers up, you know. And also Donald Trump, you know, when you lock down the border, you're not going to have as many deportations because you're not catching people at the border anymore because they're not coming across the border, right, So that allows them to focus on the interior enforcement, and what we saw in Charlotte is what that looks like, and that makes people feel uneasy and uncomfortable. And that's why I've been saying this for the last three weeks, right, which is I said it yesterday with the sheriff Gary not my fault McFadden's press release, where it's like, you know, we didn't create this confusion and chaos and fear, and oh no, you did. You absolutely did. The Democrat Party under the Biden administration opened the borders. We got ten to fifteen million people that came across the border in four years. And this is what it looks like to try to find them and get them out. And when you've got a guy like McFadden as sheriff that doesn't even want to identify somebody as a legal or illegal alien in the jail and refuses to cooperate with ICE and just releases the person back out onto the street, then yes, this is what it looks like. And yes, you're responsible for creating the fear and confusion and chaos that the operation looks like because you did it. You forced this operation to occur, right, You let inten to fifteen million people within four years, and it creates a backlog of any quote unquote due process proceedings. And so the left is using this narrative, this argument that, oh, we have to have due process, this due process that meanwhile, like most of the people that they've caught already had deportation orders against them. They were not here, they were not supposed to be here. They were told to go home and they didn't, or they came back after they did. And so what the argument is about due process is to slow the process down. Get you a bunch of court court hearings, make a bunch of asylum claims, like, do all of these procedural things that you can do in order to slow everything down, so you can run out the clock on Donald Trump's term and hope that a Democrat gets in and gives you amnesty or gives you a path to citizenship which is amnesty right, or goes back to the status quo where you know, don't ask, don't tell. Basically, we're not going to enforce immigration law. Let me see. And there's another message here from Cohen who says, before I retired from OSHA, every time we went to a construction site, when we parked our vehicles and got out and put on our NCOSH safety vests and hard hats. Hispanic workers would actually take off running away. We would yell at them that the were nots come back, but they never did until we would leave when we did a little bit of the inspection with very few workers, and then we would leave the site. They would eventually come back and get back to work. And this was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, you heard the story during Operation Charlotte's Web about Miguel Martinez. This was the US citizen who was arrested after documenting border patrol in Charlotte. Well, why would you be arrested for simply documenting border patrol? Well, there may have been a little bit of a van that he was driving, jumping the median, running red lights, driving the wrong way in traffic as he tried to evade a traffic stop. Remember in the video went viral, he was in like a large van tearing through an intersection. Yeah, that was also him. Well, a federal judge last week partially dismissed charges, so some of the charges remain, some of them do not. I saw people reporting this on social media that they dropped all the charges against him, but that did not happen. The judge in the case did not drop all the charges, but he did drop some. The federal government brought charges against this guy, Martinez, twenty four years old, who was taking photos of agents at several locations. This was on November sixteenth. That was the second day that CPB quote roamed the city. This is from the Charlotte observer. Roamed the city in paramilitary gear. How dare they be kitted up? How dare they? And they were questioning and stopping people in public places. Border patroll tried to get Martinez to engage in a voluntary stop, that's in quotes, a voluntary stop, but he fled after circling agents in a parking lot. This is all according to court documents that the observer is apparently quoting but did not link up. So I cannot independently verify if this is in fact true, but we'll have to take their word for it. They've earned our trust. Is kidding now, That's why I when looking for the link. So when he refuses to stop, they follow him and that prompts the chase. Oh, by the way, Martinez has a previous conviction of resisting an officer, which might be relevant. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News, as they make the media landscape more transparent from the Charlotte Observer story by Julia Coyn talking about the arrest of Miguel Martinez. It occurred back on the number sixteenth, Some of it captured on video by passers by while they were actually stopped in traffic and Martinez was zooming past them with Border patrol in tow. The chase was previously sorry. The chase followed after he refused to stop. He was previously convicted of resisting an officer. He was charged with felony assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating, or interfering with federal officers. That federal charge was enhanced when the government claimed that he used a deadly or dangerous weapon in the alleged crime, that weapon being his vehicle. But video played during his three hour preliminary hearing more on that moment in the US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina showed footage from inside a car carrying four ICE agents who said they planned to smash into Martinez. At one point, an agent said he's going to get shot now. Again. I did not get to see the video. I've not seen the transcripts of the proceeding, so I cannot verify any of this. But it sounds to me not like the officers are saying like, Ooh, we hope he gets shot. It's not like they're saying it that way, but it sounded like in the transcript that was excerpted in the article later on, seems like they're saying that the guy's behaving in a way that's going to get him shot because he's acting erratically. He's gone crazy, he's zooming around traffic, he's hoppin' medians. After nearly a week of deliberating alone, US Magistrate Judge David Keisler issued an order dismissing the enhancement charge. So it's just the enhancement charge using a deadly or dangerous weapon his vehicle. That's the charge that was dismissed. He found there was probable cause to believe that Martinez forcibly interfered with the agents, so that remains. Those charges remain. Martinez. His federal public defender argued that Martinez had every right to flee, which is an interesting argument. When agents tried to stop Martinez, he says they were infringing on his First Amendment rights to engage in citizen journalism and document agents in public spaces. Okay, as a former reporter aka journalist, went to school for it, was trained in it. There is no such thing as a citizen journalist. All journalists, unless you are working for like Stars and Stripes and you are employed by the government, by the military, every journalist is a citizen journalist. Oh, I guess, unless you're an illegal alien journalist, then you're not a citizen. But even then you'd be a citizen of whatever country you're a citizen of. So, like a journal n lists does not enjoy extra protections. This is one of the things why I always oppose these shield laws that the journalism in crowd always wants to put in place, Like I should be able to have these special privileges. No, you shouldn't. You're just a regular person, just like I was. And what I was told many times over the years. When you go to a police scene, when you go someplace in law enforcement has for example, set up the crime tape and they're telling people stay out of an area. If they're telling every citizen to stay out of the area, that includes you, Okay, you don't get Now. They may be nice and set up a media staging area, say hey, media, come over, here. We'll do press conferences right here, but regular citizens can come in there too. Non journalists can also stand in there. Right you're out on the street, some crime has occurred, media shows up, and the cops are like, stay back behind this line. If you cross over into that line saying First Amendment, First Amendment, you're gonna get arrested, and then you're not gonna get the story and your boss is not gonna be happy. So you can claim First Amendment protections, but the time to fight that out is going to be in court, okay. And if cops, if law enforcement of any kind, if they're like, you need to get out of this area because we're conducting an operation, and you choose not to do so, that is your choice. But if you end up arrested, right then you're gonna have to make that argument at some other point. But it's not gonna stop you from getting arrested. That's what we were taught. Maybe the rules of journalisming have changed, but that was always what we were told. The assistant US Attorney Karen Finley in court said it's lucky that nobody got hurt. She's exactly right, and she pointed out that the guy could have just stopped. He could have just talked to the cops. He's a US citizen. He could have just said, yeah, I'm out here shooting video. I'm taking your pictures. I'm posting them up onto Instagram. So I'm trying to get everybody to know where you are. So they can avoid being deported. They can they can avoid being held responsible for the consequences of their actions. Right, he could have said that. They could have They could have said, well, you're we're gonna we're going to arrest you now for interfering with the operation. Or maybe they could have said stop it, go away. But he could have voluntarily engaged in the conversation with CBP. He was at no risk of being deported. He chose this course of action. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone,