Media
Book: Open Borders, Inc.
Event Summary
Author and columnist Michelle Malkin discusses her new book, "Open Borders Inc.: Who's Funding America's Destruction?". The event was hosted by SafeBoston on November 22 and was moderated by Jessica Vaughan, the Center's Director of Policy Studies.
Participants
Jessica Vaughan
Director of Policy Studies
Center for Immigration Studies
Michelle Malkin
Columnist
MichelleMalkin.com
JESSICA M. VAUGHAN: Again, thanks for being here. Welcome to “Banned in Boston: Open Borders Inc.”
Michelle, it’s great to see you. Michelle Malkin has been an absolutely essential fixture in the public debate over immigration for almost 20 years now, has been reporting what’s been going on. My organization gave her an award, the Katz Award for Excellence in immigration reporting in 2016, but she’s been at it for a long time –
MICHELLE MALKIN: That’s right. (Laughs.)
MS. VAUGHAN: – on topics – writing about topics that nobody else wanted to write about, and to help educate the public, and examining the impact of our immigration policy on Americans, on American communities, on our labor market, on public safety, and most importantly on our sovereignty. And now this is the latest tome from Michelle, “Open Borders Inc.,” in a series. And I highly recommend her other books as well, “Sold Out” and “Invasion” and a few others before it.
MS. MALKIN: I call it my Star Wars Trilogy of immigration books. (Laughter.) I think we’re at “The Empire Strikes Back” right now. (Laughter.)
MS. VAUGHAN: It did feel that way a little bit. (Laughter.)
MS. MALKIN: Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: But it’s a great read. I highly recommend it.
And so what I’d like to do is just ask Michelle a few questions about some of the topics in the book and then leave as much time as possible for you folks to ask questions as well. I go to a lot of book events, and you know, that way I can – because I don’t have time to read all the books I want to.
MS. MALKIN: (Laughs.) That’s right.
MS. VAUGHAN: But I like it also when people read from the books –
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: – which I would like to do a little bit as well.
MS. MALKIN: Sure. Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: So – unless you’d like to do it. But I have a few of my favorite passages. (Laughs.)
MS. MALKIN: Please. Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: But just tell us a little bit about how you got into the immigration issue.
MS. MALKIN: It’s been a long journey. It’s been a quarter-century of being out of the closet as an advocate for strict immigration enforcement, and for very vigilantly highlighting how every aspects of life in America is affected by the decisions to either enforce the laws or to neglect and abandon them. And everybody here who’s followed my work, whether as a newspaper columnist in my beginning days in Los Angeles, to the Seattle Times, to my stints on Fox News, and then on social media knows my own personal history. And that, of course, is a big part of it. I’m not an immigrant hater. I’m not a racist. I’m not a xenophobe. And as many times as people call me and paint me as a white supremacist – (laughter) – I’m not going to call it off. (Laughter.) I’m just not. (Applause.) And – yes.
And for a long time that label has really deterred and scared people from speaking up, and I feel like it’s part of my mission to provide a signal. You know, we hear a lot about virtue signaling all of the time. And really, that’s a misnomer because that’s vice signaling. And the vices that so many people signal for the approbation of both the open-borders left and the right is the vice of wanting to put a shield up to tell people I’m not racist, I’m not a hater. And I don’t think we need to be defensive because, in fact, what motivates us is love – love of our country – (applause) – love of our family, and love of our Creator. That’s what binds every single person in this room.
And so from my early days in Los Angeles I really started to see the fissures, the cracks in our unified civic culture. And L.A. was the canary in the coalmine, and in fact it is the 25-year anniversary of Proposition 187. Every time that voters have had the opportunity to weigh in on the topic of immigration and sovereignty, they’ve always weighed in favor of unity and against division – which, of course, the euphemism for division among so many in the Open Borders Incorporated infrastructure is diversity. Who could be against diversity?
Well, for my family the imperative was assimilation. It was to swear to uphold the laws and Constitution of the United States, and to adopt one common tongue and one common civic culture, and to abide by the laws in this country, and to understand that it was a privilege to be here and not some sense of entitlement. So that’s what drove the early days of my reporting, was to talk about, for example, the impact of mass illegal immigration from the southern border on things like the school district and, you know, the teachers having to deal with hundreds of different dialects in the school system, and almost a militant sense – especially among the academic elite – that there was something wrong that demanding that people assimilate into America.
And that’s when I became familiar with concepts like Reconquista. And that is where I tripped on the likes of the Southern Poverty Law Center, where I was first targeted in 2006 and 2007. These were the very early days –
MS. VAUGHAN: Yeah.
MS. MALKIN: – before anybody knew what deplatforming was, before the Hate Map was even a thing. And I was targeted early on for Fox News appearances where I would talk about this idea of Aztlan and the idea – the declared, explicit idea among left-wing academics/identity politics radicals that the entire Southwest did not belong to the United States, and the way that this academic elite was going to take it back was by sheer demographic overwhelming.
I moved from Los Angeles to Seattle, and made many friends and contacts with the Border Patrol on the northern border. And that certainly opened my eyes up to the dangers of the much-neglected northern border, which, you know, nobody talks about. But you know, when you have Liberal Canadian governments that are allowing every last jihadi group to get into the country, yes, that poses a threat to us. (Laughter.) And there was a wakeup call with the – it was, yeah, the 2000 LAX Millennium plot –
MS. VAUGHAN: Yes.
MS. MALKIN: – where somebody had come in from the northern border –
MS. VAUGHAN: Washington.
MS. MALKIN: – in Washington state, and it was a very vigilant Customs agent that made the difference between innocent people living and dying there.
Then, of course, 9/11 hit, and that’s what ushered in my first book, “Invasion.” And there the primary focus was on national security and public safety. And I highlighted many cases in which law enforcement officials had given their lives because of sanctuary policies that created the revolving door for so many criminal aliens. I talked about the jihadi threat, the domestic threat of many criminal alien menaces into the country, and the – sort of the systematic way in which all of – all of the law enforcement mechanisms which would have stopped, for example, the 9/11 hijackers from getting in failed us. And I wanted people to see systematically that, you know, at the time the book came out, that it was important to frame the issue as immigration as a national security – you know, immigration as a – as a national security matter, frame it that way.
And then, of course, there’s the economic impact of mass uncontrolled migration. It’s not merely enough, as you hear so many sort of talking points people say: I’m against illegal immigration, but I’m for legal immigration. And that’s at a very elementary level. And you know, it takes some people longer than others to come around, and it takes a lot of thought and study about the entire picture. All 9/11 hijackers came in legally. You know, many of the jihadists that have wrought bloody consequences in this country have come in through other legal means – short-term visas, business visas, student visas, tourist visas, the Diversity Visa Lottery. And again, it’s a sense of this overwhelming of the system – sometimes deliberate and sometimes accidental – that has created not only national security problems, but economic threats to the American workforce.
And so I teamed up with John Miano, who’s a former computer programmer turned American lawyer representing American workers who have been negatively affected by things like the H-1B program – not just H-1B, but primarily. And John Miano was fighting in court, as you can document and follow on Center for Immigration Studies’ website all of his – I mean, it’s been an 11-year, 12-year battle now.
MS. VAUGHAN: Yeah. But a victory not too long ago.
MS. MALKIN: Yes, yes, that’s right.
MS. VAUGHAN: That tech workers affected by these visas programs actually have standing to sue in a federal case being heard in Washington. That’s a victory.
MS. MALKIN: OK. How “Alice in Wonderland” is that, that it took almost a dozen years for American workers to be recognized in court and have the ability to sue when we’ve got every last legal left-wing organization in this country that’s taking illegal aliens all the way up to the Supreme Court to fight for their rights to avoid deportation, get work permits?
MS. VAUGHAN: Or people who haven’t – who want to apply for a visa, haven’t even been approved for it, had standing to sue over the president’s vetting executive – you know, executive order, or the travel ban as it is now popularly known.
MS. MALKIN: The travel – yeah, that’s right. People who aren’t even here yet, yes, who have standing in American courts. It’s crazy.
And so then, you know, just to fast forward, the last year I have spent numerous sleepless nights and early mornings compiling “Open Borders Inc.” And it is a tome. It’s the longest of the books that I’ve written, my seventh. Lucky seven or unlucky seven, I don’t know. (Laughs.) Nearly 500 pages. Of course, a lot of this material will be familiar to those who have been in the fight a long time, but I think just sort of like the comprehensive nature of it and as a useful comprehensive guide, especially leading up until the 2020 elections about who’s subsidizing this massive human smuggling racket.
MS. VAUGHAN: And this is chock full of information, not only so that people can understand more and learn more. And there were some things that even as long as I’ve been at it shocked even me. (Laughs.) But it’s also a resource for people to use when doing what you all do on a regular basis: lighting a fire under our lawmakers, talking to your neighbors, and so on. So, I mean, there are a bunch of appendices. Don’t be too put off by the size of it. (Laughs.)
MS. MALKIN: That’s right. (Laughs.)
MS. VAUGHAN: But it’s really full of a lot of information and very well-documented.
And I’d like to read one section that I think is particularly relevant to us here in the Commonwealth at this particular time. And this is in the chapter entitled “The A Team: Abolish ICE, Antifa, and Sanctuary Anarchists.” We had some, you know – maybe some near – maybe we’ll have some close encounters tomorrow; I hope not.
MS. MALKIN: No. (Laughs.)
MS. VAUGHAN: So this is a section on the government sponsors of sanctuary anarchy: “Not all open-borders subversives hide behind black bandannas and throw Molotov cocktails. Sometimes they wear three-piece suits or silk dresses. Sometimes they wear badges or black robes. Sometimes the worst enemies of law and order are the very people subsidized by taxpayers to uphold law and order. They are local police chiefs, county executives, district attorneys, mayors, judges, governors, members of Congress, and federal officials whose words, actions, and inaction enable the Abolish ICE, Antifa, and anarchists. Walls and border controls are not enough to save America from invasion. The government sponsors of sanctuary anarchy must be exposed, shamed, voted out of office, impeached, and prosecuted.”
And then Michelle goes on for several pages with a cast of characters that many of you will recognize the names:
Federal Judge Indira Talwani, who attacked ICE agents in Massachusetts when they took an alien into custody who had received probation for visa fraud and dared to arrest her in a courtroom, a public place.
District Attorney Rachael Rollins. (Boos.)\
You talk about Bampumim Teixeira, whose trial started this week, the man who avoided deportation after admitting to robbing two banks. Sentence bargained down to seven months served a 364-day sentence – conveniently – released. After release, he’s now been arrested and charged, and is being tried this week in the gruesome double murder of two Boston doctors.
Marian Ryan’s name comes up, and Judge – or should we say suspended Judge – Shelley Joseph.
MS. MALKIN: Yes, Shelley Joseph. Yes. (Applause.) Lock her up.
MS. VAUGHAN: (Laughs.) Lock her up. (Laughter.)
And our favorite, Newton City Council, figures in here too.
So a week from Monday there’s going to be a hearing at the statehouse here for the perennial state sanctuary bill to be heard, which would make the Commonwealth of Massachusetts even more of a sanctuary. And I would encourage people to make your voices heard, contact your lawmakers, and so on.
It’s important that people have the facts about sanctuaries. How did we end up with the sanctuary movement, so many sanctuary jurisdictions – about 300 of them now? And what do you think is motivating it?
MS. MALKIN: So there’s a lot of special interests that have created this perfect storm that is trying to transform our sovereign nation into a sanctuary nation. And obviously, many people will be familiar with the late ’60s and 1970s, when a lot of left-wing Evangelical Christians essentially brazenly openly called for their churches to defy federal laws and welcome into their parishes and dioceses and churches people who were evading deportation. And that really flourishes in the Southwest. And many of those institutions, which were allied with the social justice wing of liberalism, have remained there, and they have agitated for amnesties from 1986 until the present, and used the pulpit to preach this warped version of scripture of welcoming the stranger and, you know, putting their political agenda above the national interest.
Then you’ve got the entire legal community. And here, right, it’s the ACLU that is essentially – I mean, you can’t even say ghostwriting because they’re openly writing the amendments to the sanctuary – right?
MS. VAUGHAN: Yeah. Oh, absolutely yes.
MS. MALKIN: Right, the sanctuary laws. So basically every law school in the country has these pro bono clinics that are populated by all of these students who are being sent down to the border, and they work in conjunction with these left-wing religious organizations.
And then you’ve got an entire subsidized structure of candidates that are running, many of them directly or indirectly subsidized by, for example, George Soros money. You got to give the guy credit: they have their agenda, they’re sticking to it, and they’re very disciplined. And this is why we have Rachael Rollins and Marian Ryan and now Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, literally a red-diaper baby of convicted domestic terrorists from the Weather Underground, who do what? I mean, these people in the ’60s and ’70s were targeting police. They were assassinating them. They were killing them. And they’re celebrated by Hollywood. Robert Redford made a movie about Chesa Boudin’s parents. And Chesa Boudin – (changes pronunciation) – Boudin, Boudin? (Laughs.) Any Asian people here? Because Boudin is – I’m thinking the – it’s the food. Anyway – (laughter) – right?
Anyway, immigration is his main platform. It’s to turn San Francisco into an even more radical sanctuary than it already is, just like what’s happening here and Montgomery County. There are, obviously, electoral benefits, and I guess collection plate and pew benefits that come from these sanctuary policies.
MS. VAUGHAN: Political benefit.
MS. MALKIN: And political benefits as well. And I think that’s the most dire and alarming – you know, from the perspective of Republicans, who are preaching America first while they’re allowing this to happen in their backyards. And, yeah, that’s how we got to where we are. I mean –
MS. VAUGHAN: And you know, we don’t want to end up like Montgomery County or the state of California or the state of Illinois. The public safety and the human costs are just too great.
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: And I think that’s what lawmakers need to hear and see.
MS. MALKIN: And I would say about sanctuaries as well, you know, the reason I’ve held these Stand With ICE rallies and the reason that I’ve targeted all of these sanctuary cities on my tour is I escaped Montgomery County, Maryland. That’s where my kids were born. We could see it coming 12 years ago. MS-13 was just beginning to surface. We would go to a local mall that has now basically been taken over by the gangsters, the public schools there now, obviously, everything that’s happened over the summer that became national news.
So I went from L.A., sanctuary; Seattle, sanctuary; Montgomery County, Maryland, sanctuary. I go to Colorado thinking, OK, this will be a great place to raise my kids in Colorado Springs, the home of Focus on the Family. And what’s happening there now? We’ve got a governor who’s trying to – well, he’s playing both sides, but ultimately what they’re trying to do is county by county, you know, Californicate the whole entire country. (Laughter.)
MS. VAUGHAN: Well, last week there was a hearing on the Hill. Not the one that all the news coverage is about, the –
MS. MALKIN: Right. Bread and circuses distraction, everybody. (Laughter.)
MS. VAUGHAN: A real hearing on the Senate side about – it was an update on the border crisis. And they presented the latest statistics: 1.1 million apprehensions and people turned back at the legal port of entry, which was up 68 percent from last year; 978,000 people apprehended at the southwest border, up 88 percent over the prior year; 473,000 family units – family unit members, a record; 76,000 unaccompanied minors, which was the highest number ever in a year. Massachusetts – according to some of the Border Patrol intelligence, Massachusetts, is one of most popular destinations that is listed when they are interviewed after apprehension. They are coming to East Boston, Lynn – (background noise) – I’m sorry, that’s my phone – Milford. Another statistic that they put out that was alarming is that they’ve estimated that there are 150,000 individuals that were not apprehended, that got away. Drug seizures are up a lot. According to the Pew Research Center, Massachusetts has the fastest-growing rate of new illegal arrivals settling here of any state in the entire union.
One of the Homeland Security officials who testified said we are just one court decision away from right back to the worst period of the border crisis. We’ve made some progress because of the Trump administration policy changes.
MS. MALKIN: Right.
MS. VAUGHAN: And they’re going after the smugglers to a greater extent than has been the case before and having some success there. In the book, though, you talk a lot about some players in this border crisis that do not receive enough attention in the news media: not the smugglers who are affiliated with the cartels who control the southern side but the accomplices of the smugglers, who are mostly NGOs and operating outside the – I would argue just as far outside the laws as the other smugglers. Can you tell us a little bit about the groups that help enable this flow of illegal workers into our country?
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. So the opening chapter of the book I called the Caravan Cartel – “All Aboard the Caravan Cartel” – and it’s not just about the formal drug cartels. And I talk about probably the most visible of the NGOs operating south of the border became international news, Pueblo Sin Fronteras. And the head of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or at least one of the declared heads, is a man named Irineo Mujica, who is a binational citizen of both Mexico and the United States, purportedly gained his U.S. citizenship as a result of that notorious 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act so-called deal, which was a very one-sided deal. Remember that the reason that Reagan signed it was because it was supposed to be a one-time amnesty, blanket pardon. We’re just going to do it once and then get our system in order. And we never got the enforcement part of it, and –
MS. VAUGHAN: Right. The end of illegal immigration as we know it.
MS. MALKIN: Right, yeah. Of course. Right. And then you read all of those statistics and that tells you what we ended up with.
And he claims in newspaper interviews that his family were agricultural workers, so they came in through SAW is how they got amnestized. And he immediately turned around and started working for not our country, but the one south of the border. And he’s been holding these caravans that, again, really just escalated under the Trump administration but have been going on for years and years, pretty much like clockwork with every holiday, right? Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, And I think it’s the brazenness with which he was amassing people, basically thumbing his nose at both countries and bringing people across. And –
MS. VAUGHAN: Really to test our defenses.
MS. MALKIN: Oh, to test our will or lack of will.
And what I did was track all of the NGOs and religious organizations on both sides of the border that were enabling – basically acting like sherpas for this illegal alien workforce, because that’s what it is. It’s for cheap labor workers. It’s not for compassion. It’s not because we care about families and giving them opportunity.
MS. VAUGHAN: Or any sudden persecution or oppression of people –
MS. MALKIN: Right, right, right.
MS. VAUGHAN: – that would qualify them for asylum.
MS. MALKIN: Exactly, or use visas or whatever. So there’s essentially a bed-and-breakfast network. And I half-joked cynically that it won’t be long before we have Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews – reviews of these shelters, many of them subsidized and operated largely by Catholic organizations and sects: the Scalabrinians, the Jesuit Refugee Service. And a lot of rank-and-file Catholics – how many Catholics in the room? I’m raising my hand. Yes, right. Everybody in this room knows what’s going on.
And I’ve urged people to do more homework, and I’ve provided a lot of fodder for them, to show where your money actually goes that you put in the collection plate. For example, every Sunday – usually Sunday before Thanksgiving; I think it’s going to be the Sunday after because Thanksgiving is so late – there is a national collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. (Boos.) See? The knowing groans tell me that you in this room know, but not enough Catholics understand that what they’re doing is subsidizing – this isn’t just remotely Alinskyite; directly related to Saul Alinsky allying with the former bishop of the Chicago Diocese, Bernard Sheil, to provide a permanent funding mechanism for left-wing organizing. It is a political arm.
And CCHD has been at the forefront of lobbying for every amnesty since 1986. They put the DREAMer illegal alien students’ rights and needs and so-called privileges above Catholic American students and workers, certainly. And along with that, there’s a larger left-wing agenda which is pro-abortion and pro-restorative justice in the schools to prevent consequences for dangerous students, and a lot of that is to sort of erase unpleasant racial disparities that they don’t want any record of. That’s what led to the Parkland shooting, this restorative justice ideology. And CCHD is just one of the many tentacles of the open borders Catholic machine. And we all know in this room that Pope Francis has essentially designated himself the global leader of the anti-Trump, anti-American-sovereignty resistance.
So when I – when I advocate for actually taking action on the information in the book, the first thing that we can do to defund Open Borders Inc. – I mean, it doesn’t even have to happen at some national political level – is stop putting money in the collection plates and start, you know, this next Sunday for the national collection for CCHD. The only –
MS. VAUGHAN: This is the second collection, right?
MS. MALKIN: Right. Second collection, yes. Thank you for the clarity. But that’s the only way that things are going to change, is if you hit these institutions in the pocketbook.
MS. VAUGHAN: Absolutely. And I thought it was – because I had always noted that the divide on the immigration issue in this country is often a matter of different worldview of elites and regular Americans. But I thought you made an interesting point in the book about why the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which as you point out has strayed a long way from its original mission –
MS. MALKIN: Yeah, which is fascinating. I don’t know if you all know this, but really they started out as a post-World War II organization to support American soldiers.
MS. VAUGHAN: Right. And now they’re part of Open Borders Inc. But the motivation is – I mean, I think there is some of that elite/regular person divide. But your point also, there is more to it than that. And I’ll let you articulate that.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. Well, tell me if I’m – I mean, there’s so much there. But I think one of the points that I made was sort of the transnational alliance with the United Nations and this shared goal of subverting local control, which is at the heart of, you know, sort of the principles of the founding of this country, and subverting American sovereignty by taking an end run around it, mostly through the Refugee Resettlement Program. And so that these globalists outside of our borders get to determine who comes into our country, where people are redistributed, and without any sense of feedback or a sense of self-determination in the very communities where hundreds of thousands of people, many of them coming from countries that are hostile to our interests and shared values, and fundamentally transforming – to borrow that infamous phrase – America community by community.
MS. VAUGHAN: And that – the church is the largest nongovernmental refugee resettlement agency in the world, or more specifically the Migration and Refugee Services branch of the U.S. Conference.
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: And they were reimbursed to the tune of more than $11 million in each of the last two years for which we have information for administrative costs and program services for refugee resettlement activities. This is big money.
MS. MALKIN: It is a racket.
MS. VAUGHAN: And the U.S. Catholic Church is one of the biggest government contractors in the refugee resettlement industry.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. And so notice that this is – this is such a textbook example of media bias because The Washington Post and the fake-news manufacturers at The New York Times, which I call “the fish wrap of record” – (laughter) – will – that’s an insult to fish wrap. (Laughter.) Fish wrap is useful. But they’ll dutifully report on all of these religious organizations that are direct contractors or subcontractors in the refugee resettlement racket and they’ll moan about, for example, President Trump’s reduction in the numbers of refugees resettled. Last month there were zero that were relocated here, to which I say three cheers – to which the Open Borders Inc. establishment responds, “Racist!” And many America first lip service payers in the Republican Party will also gasp in horror if we say out loud what America first really means. And they’ll report on all of the hue and cry from these religious organizations that will beat up America and say that we’re turning our backs and this is not who we are – “who we are,” you know, as if the Emma Lazarus poem is the Preamble to the Constitution, right? That’s –
MS. VAUGHAN: Or in federal statute.
MS. MALKIN: Yes, exactly. But they will not mention what should be right there as, you know, the first clause in describing them: how much money they’re making, right, and how much they stand to lose if President Trump succeeds in doing what he’s doing.
MS. VAUGHAN: And that gave them standing in one of the lawsuits against the refugee policy, was that they were going to lose a lot of money and have to fire staff.
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: Since when do you get to sue about that?
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. (Laughter.)
MS. VAUGHAN: Well, one more thing I want to touch on before we open it up for questions. And this is important because in the near future the White House is going to be releasing its new immigration reform proposal, which has been crafted by Jared Kushner. It’s a – being billed as different things; as a campaign document, maybe, but it’s being written up as an actual bill that they hope will unite the Republican Party around a particular proposal. And this is going to increase permanent immigration by about 10 percent, and especially in the categories of employment immigration, which is designed to give green cards to a lot of the people who have been living here for years having arrived as guest workers. And there are a lot of good enforcement provisions with it – anti-sanctuary measures, asylum reform, E-Verify, measures to make it easier to deport criminals and gang members – but we know if it is designed to be legislation that there will be an amnesty added and there will be more guest worker admissions added to it as well. In fact, this week the House passed a farm worker amnesty and guest worker bill. They’re teeing all of these things up to be attached to the Kushner plan.
But with – so much of the focus of this plan is on green cards for guest workers. How did we get so many guest workers here – somewhere between half-a-million and a million in various different categories – how did that happen? And should we be giving them a fast track to green cards?
MS. MALKIN: At this point, all of the red lights – the emergency lights are flashing on our country. And what I proposed in 2002 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is something that really needs to be escalated even further. We need a break. We need a pause. We need an overall immigration moratorium, period. (Applause.) This is a country of 330 million people. The Democrats are always pointing to the homelessness problem in every major metropolitan area that is run by Democrats for the last 30, 40 years. And America first and American sovereignty means that we take care of our own here first.
And with regard to guest workers and the sound and fury from the usual suspects in both parties, the uniparty of low-wage workers, there’s no such thing as an IT tech worker shortage. And that’s what the –
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Amen! (Applause.)
MS. MALKIN: That’s what the subject of “Sold Out” is all about. That is a manufactured crisis. And –
MS. VAUGHAN: Truly.
MS. MALKIN: The thing is that the left alone and George Soros would not be able to accomplish that goal in conjunction with Silicon Valley and Mark Zuckerberg and Forward.us and all of the lobbies for the corporate interests if not for the enabling partnership by largely Senate Republicans. It’s Mike Lee that’s out there crusading for so much of that, and he’s got other Senate Republicans with him onboard, and before him it was Orrin Hatch, throwing American workers under the bus. And I think that these things get through because there’s not enough exposure of them. There’s not enough tough, honest talk about how these programs are run to the detriment of our American workforce. There’s age discrimination. There’s citizenship discrimination. And there’s a massive betrayal of young people.
And that’s why I think we’re seeing more and more, especially on college campuses, that independent young people, who were urged to go into STEM fields because there would be a guarantee of a good job at the end of it, are discovering that, what’s stapled to their diplomas? Well, you know, a trip back to their parents’ basement when they can’t get jobs. And then condescension among the elites in both parties that, oh, yeah, we need – you know, who’s responsible for, you know, the situation that so many of these young people are in? And a lot of them are disillusioned about what their future might bring, and there aren’t enough people addressing it in either party, certainly not in the clown car of the Democratic presidential field.
That’s what’s shocking to me, that in a – in a country of 330 million people there isn’t one person who can self-identify as a Democrat and not see that there’s a huge opportunity here? I mean, that’s just – it’s flabbergasting.
MS. VAUGHAN: There used to be a few Democrats who took a principled position.
MS. MALKIN: Barbara Jordan, God bless her.
MS. VAUGHAN: Yes.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. Yeah. (Applause.)
MS. VAUGHAN: But yes, it’s – yeah, there’s this myth that there’s – you know, Johnny can’t do math and we have a shortage of skilled workers. And the first myth is that all of these workers are actually all that skilled to begin with.
MS. MALKIN: Yes. Yes. And we dissect that in “Sold Out.”
MS. VAUGHAN: Highly recommended.
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: So I want to let you folks have a chance to ask some questions of Michelle. And, OK, why don’t we start here, and then Tom?
Q: Can you comment – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a comment about six months ago. She equated the detention camps down at the border in Texas with the concentration camps in Europe during World War II. Do you want to comment on that?
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. So when I was at the Stand With ICE rally in Tacoma, Washington, we were graced by the presence of a man who was brought to this country as a refugee. He was Jewish and his grandfather had escaped Nazi Germany, and he was disgusted by this kind of rhetoric from the likes of Alexandria Open-Bordez, right? (Laughter.)
But that’s all part of the tactic of the likes of the SPLC to tar and feather not only the patriotic men and women who work at ICE, who work at the Border Patrol, but also to ply this false narrative that we are treating so poorly, as if it was some sort of human rights violation, people who are being detained because they don’t belong here. And what is the aim? What is the target? It’s throwing a wrench into this vital function of interior enforcement.
And Jessica read the passage where I said that walls and borders are not enough. We could have 2,000 miles of steel-fortified walls 18 feet high along every part of the border. We’d still have an invasion problem. What is it, 40 percent of the people who are here illegally overstayed their visas, and if we – if we tie the hands behind the backs of every ICE agent and deportation and removal employee and put gags on the mouths of local police and state troopers so that they cannot cooperate with each other to detect and to detain and deport people who don’t belong here, it’s absolute chaos, and that is the intention of the open borders Left and Right is to create chaos and anarchy.
What it does is it demonizes every single person who works at DHS who has that kind of function, and so that’s why we’ve got these concerted doxxing campaigns, harassment, bullying, and violence by the likes of Antifa and Abolish ICE. Every single employee, 20,000 of them, has been targeted. There are online dossiers now, and that’s why I’ve called on people, good people who are brave enough and committed enough, to stand with me at these rallies or organize them themselves, and that’s what we’re doing in Boston tomorrow, Saturday, 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. at the Burlington facility.
Can I get a show of hands of everyone who’s going to come? I want – you know, if you can come, please come. I think it’s important to exercise this muscle of civic engagement and I try to practice what I preach I’ve told people every single rally that I’ve gone to.
And I understand a lot of people can’t do it. But we’ve had people, veterans in wheelchairs that came out, moms with their children, even though they were warned not to come, and that’s very heartening and encouraging to me, because if we’re going to tell people, hey, we want you to show up at the polls next November, it’s really important.
STAFF: Folks, just because you’re not mic’ed up please stand up and speak real loudly. Thank you.
MS. MALKIN: And then we’ll repeat the questions as well.
So we’re doing that tomorrow at the Burlington Center and, you know, I’m telling people I don’t have to be there and I think it’s very appropriate the Sunday before the Thanksgiving holiday to express our gratitude to these men and women. It’s not done often enough, and I, largely, felt that I needed to take it, like, upon myself to do it.
I mean, Jorge Ramos calls himself an activist journalist and he gets to sit as a moderator at a presidential debate, right. Why can’t I be an activist journalist, too? I call myself a community organizer for America. (Laughter, applause.)
MS. VAUGHAN: We’re going to go next to Tom.
Q: While you were speaking, I received a rather obnoxious message from one of my colleagues and he says, in part, “So you went to the Michelle Malkin event tonight. I hope the media don’t catch you when you walk out of Lou’s house.”
MS. VAUGHAN: Wow.
Q: To which – to which I respond, as the vice chair and founder of the Massachusetts Republican Jewish Committee, we are very grateful and full of admiration that, despite the obstacles, you have graced us with your presence here tonight and thank you for that. Thank you so much. (Applause.)
MS. MALKIN: Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. Thank you.
Thank you, Tom. Just for context and that’s what we’re up against, and so it matters that each of you took the time to come out. I’m sorry, it’s – it’s been hard the last couple of weeks and it’s not just me. It’s not just me, because I can take it. It’s my family.
Q: We support you wholeheartedly.
MS. MALKIN: Thank you. (Applause.)
Q: And I’ve never understood why, with computers, they can’t see that the people that come in with visas don’t come out. That just seems so simple.
MS. MALKIN: Yes. So let’s talk about that, and the Center for Immigration Studies has been at the forefront of highlighting the need for a fully functional – thank you. Oh, man, this is so authentic, like, yeah. For a fully functional biometric entry-exit system, and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks we got all of these promises from both parties that this was going to happen because we understood the dire consequences of not being able to track down student visa overstayers like the many – well, I think five out of the 19 were visa overstayers.
Now we have a problem where there are upwards of 700,000 visa overstayers wandering around out there and we have no idea whether they’re otherwise law abiding, right – that phrase. Hi, Geraldo Rivera, right. Or whether they’re –
MS. VAUGHAN: Or Jose Vargas, you mean? (Laughter.)
MS. MALKIN: Or – yeah, and Jose Antonio Vargas. Yes. They have the same playbook. But whether –
MS. VAUGHAN: Geraldo Rivera?
MS. MALKIN: Yes, has said the same thing – otherwise law abiding. Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: Oh. Oh. I thought you meant he was –
MS. MALKIN: No. No. No. He uses that phrase, otherwise law abiding.
MS. VAUGHAN: OK. (Laughter.)
MS. MALKIN: But whether they’re here for good or for – or for evil. And, again, you can’t just lay this at the blame of Democrats.
Q: Right.
MS. MALKIN: Republicans, you know, not too long ago had the White House, the Senate, and the House, and they didn’t put it into place. Now, so President Trump’s administration has gone where with it, you know, on the exit part?
MS. VAUGHAN: They’ve done some more pilot programs.
MS. MALKIN: Yay. (Laughter.) Yeah. Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: Sir?
Q: I often travel quite a bit –
STAFF: Stand up and speak up.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah, and project.
Q: I often travel quite a bit, and you go through America and every city is crowded and every city has just enormous number of foreign-speaking people. So 7 (million) to 11 million, which is a number that you often hear about illegals, seems to me to be ridiculous. What do you think the real number of illegal immigrants are?
MS. MALKIN: So I’ll talk about what I put in my book and then I’ll have Jessica update because, you know, Center for Immigration Studies is just the number-one resource on all of the facts, and facts don’t care about our feelings about open borders and, of course, the Center for Immigration Studies has also been in the crosshair, labeled a hate group just like I’ve been labeled a hatemonger.
But the truth speaks for itself, and I’ve got a little section at the front of the book called Open Borders by the Numbers and, of course, that 7 (million) to 11 (million), 11 (million) to 13 (million) number has been used endlessly. It’s sort of like this copy-paste thing that the mainstream media uses for the last 20 years, stuck there.
Q: We’ve got that many in Dorchester. (Laughter.)
MS. MALKIN: He said we got that many in Dorchester. Those were pre –
MS. VAUGHAN: I think he said “Dorchestah.” (Laughter.)
MS. MALKIN: “Dorchestah.” I haven’t been here long enough. (Laughter.) So that was Pew Research figures from whatever, two decades ago, and then it was Princeton University researchers who updated it and it’s at 22 million now or between 22 (million) and upwards of 30 million is, you know, essentially. what I say. So does Center for Immigration Studies.
MS. VAUGHAN: Yes. Well, a colleague of mine, Steve Camarota, is our numbers person and he’s now looking into some of the Census Bureau data and finding that even the Census Bureau data does not completely agree.
Conveniently, most of these other research organizations pick the survey of the Census that produces a lower number of presumed illegal aliens in our population. To be fair, it’s really hard to tell because we don’t ask. We don’t even – we’re not even going to be allowed to ask people if they’re citizens in the Census, much less what their immigration status is. So what we do is we try to identify them based on – you know, we try to make proxies and make guesses about how many people.
We also know that a lot of illegal aliens do answer the Census because there’s all this – there’s this network of government agencies and nonprofits that – whose grants and money that comes from the federal government is based on the number of people that they count. So they really, like, try to push people to fill out their Census forms. But we add in and over – you know, we think that there’s an undercount of people here illegally and try to estimate.
We don’t find that it’s probably as high as 20 million. One of the reasons that it might be lower than a lot of people think is because you would be surprised how many people are able to launder their status from being here illegally to a legal status either through, for example, marriage to a U.S. citizen or, you know, some kind of amnesty that takes place in all kinds of other ways so –
MS. MALKIN: Adjustment is the bureaucratic term.
MS. VAUGHAN: Right. Adjustment of status.
MS. MALKIN: The 245(i) program. Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: Right. Right. Cancellation of removal.
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: Stays of deportation. All kinds of other ways that take people out of the – you know, it doesn’t really take them out of the illegal population.
MS. MALKIN: Right.
MS. VAUGHAN: But it causes them to not be counted as here illegally. People with DACA.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: So they – they’re not – they don’t have a legal status. But they’re not necessarily counted as part of the illegal population either. So that’s why there’s a lot of softness in these numbers.
Henry?
Q: I have a question. I don’t want this – your answer to be excruciatingly long, but could you just go through the arc of this separation of families? I remember that it was a big deal where these asylum seekers, they were separating their children from the parents. And then I thought there was a change and they’re not doing it now or is it that they’re shortening – they’re keeping the families together by shortening the period that they’re in detention? I just wondered if you could –
MS. MALKIN: Yeah, I’ll give a short summary and then I’ll have Jessica fine tune it because it is arcane how this all came about. There was a lawsuit in southern California by an unaccompanied minor who had been detained and the lawsuit related to the conditions of the center, and there was a settlement that was reached between the INS and Doris Meissner under the Clinton administration and a federal judge who is still there overseeing this settlement called the Flores settlement, Dolly Gee.
And so it evolved from dictating the conditions of, you know, of what the facilities offered to unaccompanied minors into how many days they were allowed to stay there unaccompanied before they were released. And over time, the interpretation of the settlement determined a certain number. Was it 20 days?
MS. VAUGHAN: Twenty days.
MS. MALKIN: Twenty days before the minor would be released into either foster care or into the custody of a relative, likely here illegally as well, I believe, and then –
MS. VAUGHAN: Fellow gang member.
MS. MALKIN: Fellow gang member, you know, a trafficker.
MS. VAUGHAN: Right.
MS. MALKIN: You know, and so what was happening was that the separation of families was actually the policy, and then there was this manufactured outrage when people started paying attention to it under the Trump administration.
And so the White House and the good people – you know, people on the sovereignty side – in the West Wing finally realized that to shut off this huge magnet that was inducing illegal alien parents to pay smugglers and coyotes to bring either legitimate minors or people posing as minors into the country because they knew if they made it across the border that they’d be immediately turned out, that they finally did something to shut that racket down because it was not something that was ever legislated. It was an interpretation by a liberal judge who was in cahoots with the ACLU, which brought the lawsuit in the first place. How was that?
MS. VAUGHAN: That’s right, and the so-called family separation policy that was in place, what, 18 months ago came – family separation was not the policy. The policy was zero tolerance for illegal entry and that they would be prosecuted for crossing the border illegally because it is a crime and there are criminal penalties for it, which have not often been applied.
But when you detain someone for a crime, you don’t detain their children with them. So they went into this other foster care system that’s run by the Department of Health and Human Services. Despite the fact that you’re hearing about this policy as if it’s still in effect at, say, the Democratic debate or, you know, anytime a Democratic candidate is asked about immigration policy, the first thing they say is no more family separation.
It’s not – it’s not being applied in the way that it was last year. However, something like 30 percent of all of the family apprehensions that are occurring at the border are cases where the child is not actually related to the person who has brought them over and claimed that they are the parent.
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: This was something else that came out at that hearing last week. So they are separating cases of kids not related to the parents. They’re also not allowing parents who have a criminal record to be released with their kid. And so, yes, separations are still taking place for good reason – for the protection of the child.
MS. MALKIN: Exactly. And there are some incredible stories that I share in the book about some of these smuggling rackets that have been induced by this policy that was engendered by so-called compassionate open-borders liberals where individual children have been recycled by smugglers and just, like, sort of shared around. Well, this one – we’ll get this one across and then we’ll use him again and again and again.
And there’s another false narrative that I busted where I talked about many of those HHS-funded facilities. There’s one in northern California. And so you’ve got this dire view of Alexandria, her – (laughter) – talking about kids in cages as if it’s a concentration camp from World War II, and I talk about all of the amenities that are actually available to these unaccompanied minors including X-Boxes, anger management classes, yoga. But, of course, I’ll be, you know –
MS. VAUGHAN: Free refills.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah, the whole –
MS. VAUGHAN: Movie night, field trips.
MS. MALKIN: – you know, psychotherapy. And, of course, you know, many of the ICE detention facilities, which are also being targeted – I toured the Aurora ICE facility. This is the facility where, in July, the Antifa thugs trespassed onto the property, yanked down the American flag, replaced it with a Mexican flag and a defaced Blue Lives Matter flag, and talked about it as if it was Gitmo.
Inside there’s actually telepsychiatry booths. There’s free Lexus-Nexus terminals and a full service pharmacy. My crappy Obamacare style plan – you know, I have individual health care in Colorado and it’s been cancelled four times. Doesn’t cover my kids’ dental insurance but illegal aliens can get, you know, toe fungus cream – (laughter) – at the ICE detention facility.
MS. VAUGHAN: Lou’s got a question.
Q: Yes. The Boston Regional Intelligence Center for police – a variety of police departments around here – led by the Boston police have come up with a study and they know that 67 percent of the trafficking on opioids is done by Dominican illegal transnational organized crime families. And I – you know, we hear, oh, every politician in this state gets up in front of the TV cameras and cries a river over this crisis.
And you have identified in your books and, Jessica, in your research, that this crisis is really about a wide open border, and I know that in your book you talk about the nonprofits that are profiting from the open border. But can you talk about the cartels and how they use sanctuary cities and how they’re just keeping American children from – some of them from ever growing up because they’re dying?
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. And so I talk about some of the profiteering that goes on, the surcharge for the derecho de piso to make it across the final stage of the finish line, for example, and it is bizarre. But it’s almost – I mean, it’s very similar to the way that liberals talk about the homeless crisis as if it’s some sort of, you know, standalone entity that’s not related to the other terrible policies that they have in place.
And yeah, so it’s a lot of grandstanding and virtue vice signaling, right, about oh, we’ve got to solve the opioid crisis, and so they go after Big Pharma and, you know, make a big stink out of it and then, you know, settle on that, and meanwhile they’re enriching these Dominican drug cartels.
And we’ve had promises of designations of these drug cartels, you know, that they’re going to be considered as foreign terrorist organizations. Hasn’t happened yet, just like we were going to tax remittances. That hasn’t happened yet. But a lot of this great reporting has come from the Center for Immigration Studies, too, on the nexus.
MS. VAUGHAN: And then we have a case here in the Commonwealth not too long ago where a judge in Salem, Massachusetts, basically excused an illegal alien’s drug dealing – heroin dealing, I think it was – because he had to make a living to support his family.
So we have a question from our video pro. Come on in.
Q: Great. As a Bostonian taxpayer, a simple question. What’s the number-one benefit that the invaders go after to stick here? What do they – what’s the number-one thing they go after? Driver’s license? Insurance? To make a family? What is it that’s costing me lots of money? What is it?
MS. VAUGHAN: Well, what they want is to work is usually the number-one motivation but in terms of a public benefit, the highest cost we’ve found is Medicaid.
MS. MALKIN: OK. Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: And it’s usually for their U.S.-born children.
Q: Another question. What is the – obviously, the reason people come here is because of corruption in Latin America and other places. I know Trump has cut some of the aid. But what are we doing to make those countries more amenable so people stay there? That’s the whole question of why people come here.
MS. MALKIN: Right, and we have poured billions of dollars in aid. I don’t know the specific figures. But in the meantime, of course, we’re resettling large subpopulations of these country. I think 6 percent of Guatemala is now in America. Nine percent of Honduras is now in America. Twenty-two percent of El Salvador is now in America.
And I talked a little bit about electoral consequences and I know just simply to talk about sort of the political calculations here seems somewhat crass. But for the Republican Party, this is suicidal, and even all of these liberal institutions, these liberal media organizations are now reporting on it.
OK. Why does the GOP establishment only pay attention when it’s in The New York Times or the L.A. Times, as it has been over the past couple weeks? Now they’re saying it. They’re just outright saying it. Well, demographically this is going to be a problem for the Republican Party because look at what happened to California and now it’s happening in Virginia. It’s now – and now it’s happening to Texas.
But when I started out my book tour and pointed out that the percent of congressional districts with above average foreign-born populations that went Democrat is 90 percent, I was accused of being a conspiracy theorist. Well, sometimes conspiracy theories are conspiracy truths. So why is it that the establishment Republicans are throwing people under the bus and accusing people who are their purported allies of being some sort of crazy ranting racists while they sit there smugly?
You know, they don’t get to – have to bear the consequences of what you have to every single day. They live in gated communities, they have armed security guards, and then they thumb their noses at the rest of us when we try to tell the truth. That’s why I’ve been aggravated over the last couple of weeks, because these attacks are not simply coming from Media Matters. They did. When I launched my book tour and I started talking about these numbers and I started talking about, for example, the voting habits of large numbers of these ethnic immigrant blocs and I talked about how these numbers have, essentially, not budged. And so sort of the fantastical hopes and dreams of certain Beltway strategists, which are really just cynical promises because they’re going to keep collecting money – oh, well, you know, if we just sort of persuade them, if we have more outreach. Well, no. No. It hasn’t changed. It hasn’t changed, and we have to deal with that reality.
And so I think that that discussion is finally breaking out on the right, and it’s about time to have that reckoning. And perhaps we should have this debate settled before, hmm, the election, you know?
MS. VAUGHAN: No, but they were supposed to unite around the Kushner plan to increase – (laughs) –
MS. MALKIN: (Groans.) Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: But that’s – I mean, Republicans do seem to never learn that they can’t out-pander the Democrats on the immigration issue.
MS. MALKIN: That’s exactly right. But again, it just – it’s follow the money, find the truth, you know? When Paul Ryan was speaker of the House, he had a PAC and the PAC made somewhat – I think $33 million, and then he retired. Do you know how he largely made that money? By promising that they were going to build the wall and do something about immigration and repeal Obamacare. Ha, ha, ha. He went laughing all the way to the bank. He gets to retire, he gets to have a nonprofit that’s going to basically be run as a D.C. machine, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, and the rest of us are screwed.
MS. VAUGHAN: Where did he start off as a staffer? I read about him in this book too.
Q: Jack Kemp!
MS. MALKIN: Yes. He and Cesar Conda, Jack Kemp and Empower America, Bill Bennett, you know, the very elites that look down at grassroots people who understand the dire consequences of mass, uncontrolled immigration, both illegal and through many of these legal pipelines.
MS. VAUGHAN: A question in the back, and then John.
Q: Michelle, I wanted –
MS. VAUGHAN: Oh, actually I was looking at the gentleman to your –
Q: I’ll let you go.
Q: He said I can go first.
MS. VAUGHAN: If you worked it out, that’s fine by me.
Q: Michelle, I want to thank you so much for being here. You were wonderful – (off mic).
But I just want to say one thing. And I – you know something, I was never involved in politics, but the past three or four years with Trump in there, it became every single night watching it intensely, you know. And I see Trump taking up all these ideas, immigration, you know, and he wants to build a fence, he wants to do this here, and he brings it all to Congress and they do nothing. They do nothing. They don’t even answer him. How can that happen in this country? You know what I mean? It’s – I mean, we could sit here and we could do all the things that – we do the wall and stuff we can do, but we can’t do nothing because it has to go through Congress. And they’re just lazy.
I don’t know what happens, those Democrats over there – (off mic) – they all just do nothing. All the things that Trump has put up with, they don’t even give him the courtesy of answering him back. How can they do that? They don’t – I mean, I sit down and I watch him and I say, Trump just goes crazy. I mean, look what he’s been doing. I mean, he’s the only one that’s taking – he’s the only one that’s done anything – (off mic) – the only person in this country. And they’ve got all those congressmen over there, those 300 or 500 idiots, that don’t do nothing. They won’t even answer him. They don’t have the courtesy. Those Democrats don’t even have the courtesy to say no, we’re not going to do that. They don’t even answer him.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah.
Q: I’m sorry.
MS. MALKIN: No, no, no, I think it’s – I think it’s very healthy to vent your frustration and for people to hear it. This is being live-streamed, so it’s going out to at least – well, it’s suppressed, because Twitter’s shadow banning, but about 2.1 million followers on Twitter, and this’ll be shared, and I think people need to hear that.
And I do just want to tweak it slightly, though, because it’s not just Democrats. It’s not just Democrats, right? It’s – there’s a lot of Republican fragging that’s going on inside the tent, and they –
Q: They should be ashamed of themselves, going against their own people.
MS. MALKIN: They should, but here’s the – yes, they say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And if you have the same so-called GOP leadership that has been in place for 20-plus years obstructing actual progress, that’s part of the problem. (Applause, whistles.)
Q: Thank you for listening to me.
MS. MALKIN: Thank you. I appreciate you.
MS. VAUGHAN: John (sp).
Q: Yeah. OK, well this kind of following up – well, following – (off mic). About four years ago you had Jeb Bush, and he had a certain immigration program. And as you’ve just explained, the Kushner program just seems like it’s – after having humiliated Jeb Bush, he has adopted de facto the kind of program that Jeb would have forced – pushed on the rest of it. In the meantime you’d have a lot of good things from people like Tom Cotton. He’s got – at least got us in the right direction. You had a lot of – I mean, it appeared that the open borders people were leaving, but it looks like if what you’re saying, I mean, yet down some other part of the way – (off mic) – Stephen Miller, who should be saying other things to him. And instead he seems to have – is taking, I don’t know, the advice of Kushner, who is some kind of reincarnation of Jeb Bush. A second thing about this administration, it looks to me like a lot of the people he put, especially on Homeland Security, I think it took four years, and I think the guy that’s about to take power is pretty good.
MS. MALKIN: Umm.
Q: You don’t agree. Cuccinelli, you don’t –
MS. MALKIN: Oh, no, Ken Cuccinelli’s fantastic. Of course, the acting head of DHS is Chad Wolf, who is a registered foreign lobbyist for NASSCOM, the biggest lobbyist for Indian outsourcing interests. And he has nominally recused himself from those matters, but doesn’t give me much cause for reassurance, does it you? No, because I was recently told that he actually didn’t recuse himself. So it’s – yeah, it’s swamp politics.
Q: But again, there – we have – that’s on the executive side. He has had three years and – OK, I was taking a good signal from Cuccinelli, but –
MS. MALKIN: Yes.
Q: – after three secretaries of Homeland Security, I’m not impressed. So what is – this gentleman has said Trump has brought back us to where Jeb Bush would have put us.
MS. MALKIN: I’m going to let you go first on that.
MS. VAUGHAN: Well, I will just say last night I was reading through and listening to a little bit of when we gave you the Katz Award back in 2016, and you said that it would be great if Donald Trump were elected for the immigration issue, but voters were going to have to watch him like a hawk. So you heard it from Michelle first. (Applause.) Right.
MS. MALKIN: Right. I hate being right. (Laughter.)
MS. VAUGHAN: The reality – the reality is that even the White House, there are two different factions, maybe more, but that there certainly are people working in this administration, some of whom understand the immigration issue and have been working to make sure that the right policies are implemented, that policies are restored, but there are lots of others who I think outnumber the immigration hawks in the White House who are carrying water for the employers and the donor classes who want to see an unending supply of cheaper labor being allowed into this country, and work to suppress immigration enforcement, suppress rule changes that would protect American jobs.
For example, there was a regulation that was written to rescind a policy of the Obama administration that allowed the dependents of people admitted as temporary guest workers to get a work permit. That’s not allowed in law; it became an Obama policy. The Trump administration wanted to go back to the law and not allow them to have work permits, and the –one of the key – the most powerful person that you’ve never heard of who works in the Office of Management and Budget and controls the flow of new regulations went to DHS and said, we want you to take this rule back. We’re just too busy to handle it. We don’t want to do this. This is the – an executive branch agency telling another one that they don’t want to – that regulation that they’ve been pushing for very good reason to be implemented. So there –
Q: Boo.
MS. MALKIN: Yeah.
MS. VAUGHAN: There are – there’s tension in the White House. There’s a constant civil war over the immigration issue, even in this White House.
MS. MALKIN: And that’s why each and every one of you has to be outspoken in whatever way you can be, OK? Whether it’s social media, sign up for a new Twitter account or use Facebook, and I know there’s even ambivalence about using these platforms, knowing that you could be cancelled at any moment, but this is our Spartacus moment, right? Because we have strength in numbers to do this. (Applause.) And that’s – that is the means by which we can bolster the pro-sovereignty wing within the White House. They will respond to grassroots pressure.
And we lived through this during the 2006, 2007 amnesty battle, right? That wasn’t a battle between left and right. That was a battle between the open borders and pro-sovereignty American First factions inside the so-called conservative movement. And somehow, Center for Immigration Studies, FAIR, NumbersUSA, ordinary Americans – talk radio was very critical in that battle, and the early days of the conservative blogosphere beat back that amnesty. Yes, it was a temporary victory, but it was a victory. And it took all of those forces to overcome the entire uniparty Beltway swamp. We need to do that again. They will respond to public outrage, and they need that bolster of public support. And I think that it benefits President Trump to call out those members within his administration that are sabotaging his number-one platform that got him elected in the first place.
So look, pick whatever it is that is your most important thing. If it’s build the wall, build the wall; if it’s defunding sanctuary cities and defending your back yards from criminal aliens; do that. But on the employment part of it, there are rising numbers of these IT workers who are now much more vocal. They’re organized; they have national calls. Don Collins and US tech workers, and you can find all of these accounts on Twitter. Follow them, retweet them.
And with regard to Jared Kushner, it’s not just H-1B. It’s not just stapling green cards to the diplomas of F-1 visa holders. It’s all those things like the EB-5 racket, which we exposed and sold out and which Center for Immigration Studies has an entire subsection on the website devoted to.
To me, it’s just as crazy to handle visa issuance like the diversity visa lottery, some random lotto, as it is to put a premium on selling green cards and a path to citizenship to the highest bidder. That is a recipe for corruption and cronyism. It’s something that the Republicans understood when Terry McAuliffe was doing it with Chinese investors in Virginia or Harry Reid, who was doing this as well, but now they’re all going to be keep quiet about it because Jared Kushner’s businesses are profiting from it as well? No.
I mean, the problem with so much of the so-called mainstream media as well as, unfortunately, a lot of the controlled opposition in the conservative media, is you don’t have enough honest brokers who are calling – willing to call out both sides when they’re selling out our country.
Q: Yes.
MS. VAUGHAN: OK. Brendan and then Peter.
Q: I think that Trump, there’s about 385 federal judges, district up to the Supreme Court. And we had, I think, a judge in Hawaii make an order, a district level judge that stopped the Trump administration. Can you talk about that as far as immigration is concerned? And what can we do that we have federal judges at the district level basically telling us what kind of immigration policy we’re going to have? Can you –
MS. MALKIN: Yeah. So you have these rogue – I call them sanctuary anarchists, right? At least with Antifa we know what they are, right? But these are every bit as damaging anarchists in our society, the ones that issue these local injunctions in their small jurisdictions and then blow it out nationwide. And there’s more that the Trump administration could be doing, I think, unilaterally to stop that. And I’ve said – and I don’t mean this glibly, but I really think that there should be some sort of impeachment movement of these judges, right? Never mind the impeachmentpalooza on Capitol Hill. (Applause.) But pick a target, freeze it, and – you know.
MS. VAUGHAN: Demonize it.
Peter. And this will have to – I’m sorry, this will have to be the last question because I think we’re running out of tape, right?
Q: Yeah. Then we have a quick presentation to do.
MS. VAUGHAN: OK.
Q: They all – all this seems, I have to say, very overwhelming, you know, as someone who’s been in the fight for a long time and watched it. And looking at the funding and so forth makes it particularly overwhelming. It seems like every single angle on the – all the institutions are funded, all the bad guys, gals, are funded and so forth. And so when I look at where we’re talking about what we should do, you know, we should go on Twitter and so forth, but it – I certainly think that we need more organization. We need – you know, we need a lot more, and I think it’s pertinent it starts with funding. There has to be a very concerted effort to defund those organizations, those bad organizations.
But overall my question is really, I mean, you’ve already begun to answer it in terms of activism, going on social media and so forth. To me that doesn’t seem good enough. To me it seems like there’s really got to be some kind of imperative. There’s really got to be a whole game change and maybe of the mindset of most regular Americans. We though a lot of people don’t have the wherewithal to go on Twitter. People work and so forth, they’re busy, and we’re talking – you know, we constantly talk about what people should do, you know, do this. A lot of people feel that they don’t have time to do that.
And so I know that this is a very difficult question, it’s a broad question, but that’s really my question is how do you motivate people and how do you give people hope that they’re – we can turn the corner by taking action. And how do we go ahead and organize that action so we know we’re doing the right thing – we know we’re making progress?
MS. MALKIN: I don’t think it’s a difficult question to answer, because I address it directly in the last chapter of the book, which I call the Border Defenders Action Plan. And everything starts locally, and that’s why we’re all here. That’s what you do when you network. We’re in the cradle of liberty where, you know, we’re a ragtag bunch of American revolutionaries did an incredibly dangerous and seemingly impossible thing. To surmount all of the sort of transnational globally funded networks, it means standing up to the old guard of swamp leadership that has sold us down the river.
And so, I mean, you’ve got so much enough to deal with here in Massachusetts, but it is – it’s not an impossible task and it’s not inevitable that our country will fall. And yes, I’m giving people sort of dire warnings demographically about what is happening, but I think we are really standing at a critical moment. And I don’t agree with you that oh, well, we’re all busy, we don’t have enough time and anyway Twitter, what’s that? Who cares? Well, one person does make a difference. One voice does make a difference, and I think especially with young people, I mean, that’s the future. They have to fight for themselves. They have to assert their rights to self-determination.
I have a 19-year-old and I have a 16-year-old, and they have to take responsibility and accountability for their own futures. I’m doing as much as I can, but ultimately it’s up to them. This is an educational mission and in terms of activism you have these incredible organizations. Lou (sp) pulled out all the stops to bring people here. Use that opportunity and leverage it. And pick some small doable function, OK?
Jessica’s talked about these hearings that are coming up. You’ve got this Boston City Council. You’ve got these rogue district attorneys. And if it means that somebody’s going to stand up and do the impossible and David/Goliath with some sort of campaign, well, it didn’t turn out in the end to be a great triumph, but there are hopes. Dave Brat? Who knew that he was going to overturn Eric Cantor and the machine? And really, it’s a matter of getting the right people in place and reminding them why they were sent there in the first place, at least when it comes to political office.
But I’m a believer that practicing free speech is in and of itself a valuable thing. To speak truth to power, that’s what I’m doing. And yes, it sounds self-serving to say, well, you know, go out and buy my book. If it was just that – if this was just about selling a product, like I couldn’t sustain that for 25-plus years. Like I think that there’s value in one individual standing up, speaking for what they believe in and posing as a role model for other people to do the same thing. I think that once you have that signaling and that license, that that’s an inflection point and that leads to electoral change, political change and ultimately to policy changes that we all agree should be adopted to save the country.
MS. VAUGHAN: Well said. (Applause.)
(END)