Title: Rep. Nadler Talks Department of Homeland Security and More

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Later this hour, we'll play excerpts from last night's Democratic mayoral debate and invite your reactions. Get ready to call in, especially if anything in the debate changed your thinking about any of the candidates or any of the issues that's coming up. Also, our friend, Naturalist Marielle Anzalone, on a new campaign to preserve biodiversity in the New York area in the era of climate change. How many species are we at risk of losing, and what can be done about it?

We'll have a call in at the end of the show on the happiest place you've ever lived or that you imagine would top your list. This year's Happy City Index, as they call it, is out. We'll tell you where in the US and where else on earth they ranked. We'll invite your calls on the so-called happiest place you've ever lived, and or what qualities in a city or suburb or rural area, for that matter, make you happy, or do you think would make you happy to live somewhere? We'll start with this.

New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler is with us. As our local news site Gothamist first reported, one of his staffers was handcuffed in the congressman's office and briefly detained by agents of the Department of Homeland Security. We'll play some sound from a video of the incident. According to one of the agents in the recording, Nadler's office was "harboring rioters." Needless to say, the congressman is outraged, and needless to say, this comes in the context of the deepening crackdown on immigration.

Just last night, Trump announced a new travel ban on a list of countries. They are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The New York Times says it was not immediately clear why those countries were selected. The Times reports it also limits travel, but without as complete a ban from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and notably to me, Venezuela, because there are so many Venezuelans. Cuba also notable on that list. That's also why I emphasized Haiti in the original list. Just so many people, so many families with roots here from those particular countries, as well as those others in Africa and the Middle East.

We're going to talk with Congressman Nadler about what he thinks that's about and the implications. Congressman Nadler's district is in Brooklyn and Manhattan. He is a past chair and ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee, which is going to be relevant to some of this. Congressman Nadler, we always appreciate when you come on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Congressman Nadler: Thank you. Let me just make one correction.

Brian: Please.

Congressman Nadler: For the last three years, my district has been entirely in Manhattan. It goes basically from 14th Street, River-to-River, up to 96th Street on the East side, 114th on the West.

Brian: Thank you. What happened in your office, according to you?

Congressman Nadler: What happened was outrageous. DHS agents forced their way into my office and put my staff in handcuffs. They ignored a demand for a warrant, which is now-- This whole thing is an outrageous breach of proper legal boundaries. They have no right to search my office without a warrant and push my staff around.

Brian: All right. I will play some sound from the video that's been circulating on social media, and then we'll talk more about it. Listeners, much of this is hard to hear the words in, but you will hear the aide in question crying, and you might hear the agent saying to another aide that he thinks they're harboring rioters and that he doesn't need a warrant.

Staff 1: No, she did not. That is not what happened.

Agent 1: You pushed him back.

Agent 2: That is not what happened.

Agent 1: Hold on a second.

Staff 1: Do you mind [unintelligible 00:04:03] your contact information [unintelligible 00:04:04].

Agent 1: No, I'm not [unintelligible 00:04:05]

Staff 1: Hey, [unintelligible 00:04:07] pick you up. We got you.

Staff 3: Got you.

Staff 1: No problem.

Agent 1: I don't have to [unintelligible 00:04:12]

Staff 3: You're okay. You're going to be okay.

Agent 1: [unintelligible 00:04:14]. I'm a federal officer. We here checking on something. We have the right to check.

Staff 1: Let me see your warrant.

Agent 1: We don't need a warrant.

Brian: We have the right to check. We don't need a warrant. Congressman, you want to interpret some of that audio for our listeners?

Congressman Nadler: Completely wrong. They need a warrant. Congress is a coequal and a separate branch of government, and they have no right to enter a congressional office without a warrant. You heard one of my staff aides asking for a warrant, and they said they didn't need a warrant, which is incorrect. They also said that my office was harboring rioters. There were no rioters. There were no riots in the building at the time of any sort.

They forced their way in and pushed one of my staffers, and she allegedly pushed back, and then they detained her for assaulting a federal officer. You're talking about a very petite young woman, and she's not pushing a very large officer. They put her in handcuffs, and you can hear her crying. She was quite hysterical, actually.

Brian: Did she put her hands on the officer in some way?

Congressman Nadler: No, the video clearly shows the officer pushing her, not the other way around.

Brian: Who did they say they were looking for? If they were allegedly looking for rioters, what's your best understanding of who they--

Congressman Nadler: They said later that they were looking for rioters. At the time, they didn't say anything. They just barged their way into the office.

Brian: Why do you think?

Congressman Nadler: I think that there is an immigration court in the building. ICE agents were grabbing people as they came out of the immigration office, presumably for expedited removal. Various observers were there, clergymen and others who were getting upset. Some of my staffers were there, and to de-escalate the situation, they invited some of the clergymen upstairs to my office. I suspect that the DHS people, I don't know what they thought, but they knew that we had invited some people up to the office, and they did what they did.

Brian: Was your staffer charged?

Congressman Nadler: Initially, she was told that she was going to be charged. They put her in handcuffs and brought her down to a holding cell downstairs, a jail cell with a toilet and a little slit for food. They took off the handcuffs and kept her there until I arrived at the office. I wasn't there, but when I arrived at the office, the officer said to me that, "Don't worry about it. She's only going to get a lower-order ticket, the desk appearance ticket." I said, "No, she's going to get nothing." They eventually said okay, and they released her. She came up and she was hysterical. She was hysterical until her boyfriend arrived and they left.

Brian: I see you're asking Judiciary Committee Chairman, and you're on the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, to investigate this in some way. What are you asking for?

Congressman Nadler: Actually-

Brian: Congressman Jamie Raskin?

Congressman Nadler: Jamie Raskin and I are demanding that we have a hearing of the Judiciary Committee and that we demand that Secretary Kristi Noem be there to answer questions in front of the committee because-

Brian: Any response?

Congressman Nadler: -she's ultimately in charge of this, and this is outrageous conduct. I want to know if this is just more of the Trump administration trying to eliminate the Bill of Rights.

Brian: Why do you put it like that?

Congressman Nadler: Because that's what they're doing. They're ignoring congressional prerogatives. They're introducing all kinds of rights. They're arresting people with no reason. They're expelling people from the country. This is a full-scale assault on our liberties.

Brian: Listeners, we can take phone calls on this incident or other things relevant to Congressman Jerrold Nadler. When we have our local representatives on, we always try to give you access, and this is no exception: 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Have you gotten any response from Congressman Jordan?

Congressman Nadler: Not yet.

Brian: Are you expecting anything positive? We know he's got a reputation as being very partisan, history of being very partisan.

Congressman Nadler: I don't want to put my thumb on the scale of his decision negatively, so I'll say no, I don't have it. We'll see what he does.

Brian: Any other action you're taking or planning to take? Based on some of the things you've said so far, I could see reasons why you might want to go to court.

Congressman Nadler: I don't know that we go to court. I can't go to court. Some of my staff people who were manhandled, they may have a right to go to court.

Brian: You raised the Bill of Rights, and it seemed like there was a dispute between you and them over whether the agent needed a warrant to do the extent of search that he did, so there are definitely legal questions there, right?

Congressman Nadler: Oh, there are definitely legal questions. One of the things I plan to do, because this is part of the reason for all of this, and for other reasons too, is to introduce legislation to repeal the expedited removal provision from the 1996 immigration law. This was added in the 1996 immigration law that I voted against, because we knew it would deny due process rights to people seeking refuge in this country. At the time, we were told that the purpose of the expedited removal statute was that if ICE officers saw someone who walked across the border, they could say, "Hey, go back," without bothering with court proceedings and so forth.

They used this only between 100 or 200 miles from the border. That's what they did, until Trump came in and applied it nationwide. Once it's applied nationwide, then they can deny anybody due process, and there's no protection, because expedited removal, you don't even have the right to go to court.

Brian: Listener asks in a text message, "Has he identified them personally?" I think the listener wants to know if you're calling out these agents by name.

Congressman Nadler: I don't know these agents by name.

Brian: Would you, if you did, or is it really on Secretary Noem, because this is a policy question?

Congressman Nadler: I think it's really on Secretary Noem, it's a policy question. No, I think the person who shoved my aides, that's a physical assault. If I knew his name, I would ask for his prosecution.

Brian: All right. Another listener texts, "Congressman Nadler was also an impeachment principal, don't forget that," referring to the first impeachment of Trump on the Ukraine issue. Do you think it's payback? I think that's what the listener is implying. Do you think this is part of Trump's revenge or retribution tour, that your office was singled out for this raid, or just because they had information that some of the people involved in that other incident were there?

Congressman Nadler: We're still looking at everything. I don't know the answer to that question.

Brian: We can talk about this more if listeners have follow-up questions. I want to move on to some other things, and one of those things is your reaction to the new Trump travel ban announced last night. I'll read the list of countries again. Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. According to The Times, it restricts travel, but without as much of a complete ban from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. Did you see this coming?

Congressman Nadler: I thought it might happen at some point because he tried it in the first administration. It is terrible and unjustified. When people apply for admission to this country, they are investigated to see if there's any reason they shouldn't get a visa, and that's what should be. To single out whole lists of countries, most of which are Muslim, shows religious prejudice. To single out whole countries in admission is just wrong and prejudicial and doesn't serve American foreign policy interests. It hurts American foreign policy interests.

Brian: It was adding a few non-Muslim majority countries to his original travel ban in his first term that allowed the courts to approve a version of it. Maybe something similar applies here. This is really a Muslim ban. Is that how you see it?

Congressman Nadler: It's primarily a Muslim ban, but not every country is Muslim. I think there's some other reasons in there, too. The courts may allow it, but that doesn't make it right. It's a terrible thing in terms of personal liberty, in terms of what the United States looks like as a supporter of liberty across the world. It doesn't serve American foreign policy interests, and there's no reason for it.

Brian: Do you have a theory as to why that particular list of countries? The Times article on it, as I read, said it is not-- What was their exact language? It was not immediately clear, something like that. Why these particular countries?

Congressman Nadler: I would agree with The Times. It's not immediately clear.

Brian: Why do you think Cuba and Venezuela, in particular? I know there's a lot of Venezuelans here in the recent migrant surge of the last few years. Some are gang members, and that's been a focus of the administration. Venezuela is a country that I think Trump would characterize as having a left-wing dictatorship. Therefore, many Venezuelans would have good reason to seek asylum in the United States or immigration to the United States. Same thing with Cuba, obviously. Why do you think those countries, and really, why do you think Cuba?

Congressman Nadler: Venezuela is a left-wing dictatorship, and President Biden had granted TPS, temporary protective status, for the Venezuelans who had come here, who would be persecuted if they returned home. It may be that Trump is just repudiating everything Biden did because he's small-minded. Cuba is another communist dictatorship, and people like Marco Rubio know why people are refugees from Cuba. His family came over that way. To shut it off now, there's no logical reason for it, and it's just prejudice of some sort.

Brian: I think this listener wants even more of a reaction from you to what happened in your office. Listener writes, "I hear Representative Nadler's concern, but not his outrage. Where is the Democratic Party on this devastating example of creeping fascism? This incident deserves a massive public and political response," writes a listener.

Congressman Nadler: I am outraged by it, and it is an instance of creeping fascism, and we're doing what we can. The first thing we're doing is what I said, demanding a hearing by the Judiciary Committee with Kristi Noem in front of us. If that doesn't happen, we'll see what else we do. I'm not sure what our further options are, but it is outrageous, and I am outraged by it.

Brian: How do you see the context of the incident in your office? I'll just read from the news organization, The Hill, a little of how they contextualize it. It says, "It's not the first time sides have clashed over Trump's deportation policies." You tell me if you think this is even really a clash over deportation. "Last month," it says, "The Justice Department arrested the Democratic mayor of Newark at a migrant detention facility in the city. Days later, the agency charged Representative LaMonica McIver with assaulting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during the same protest in Newark, charges she denies." Do you see this as in a category with that?

Congressman Nadler: Yes, I do. I think her outrageous arrest and the assault on my office are both instances of the Trump administration trying to tyrannize Congress, trying to intimidate the Democratic members of Congress. This is outrageous, and it's part of an attempt at fascist takeover to eliminate opposition in Congress.

Brian: Now, the listener writes, "If what the congressman staff person alleges is true, what should citizens do if physically provoked by an ICE agent?" This listener also cites the New Jersey incident, and then repeats the question, "What should any of us do if we are in that position to not have it said that we were 'assaulting a federal officer'?"

Congressman Nadler: You should do two things. One is don't assault a federal officer. Don't resist. If a federal officer is trying to arrest you or something, don't resist, to give them the excuse to charge you later with assaulting a federal officer or resisting arrest. Then you can sue. You can complain to your representative in Congress, and we can make this part of our confrontation. We have to confirm fascist behavior immediately. I did, the staffer was released. We have to expose fascist tactics. Go to the press, The New York Times, CNN, this show, wherever, and we can publicize it and make it part of the opposition. I view next year's elections as all-important in terms of stopping the attempted fascist takeover of this country, and this can add to that.

Brian: Richard in Brooklyn, who says he's an immigration lawyer, you're on WNYC with Congressman Jerrold Nadler. Listeners, if you're just joining us, we've been talking mostly about the incident in Congressman Nadler's office in which one of his staffers was detained by Homeland Security agents as they accused Nadler's office of harboring rioters. By the way, it doesn't seem from the coverage that I'm looking at that they found anybody who they were supposedly looking for, who they were categorizing as rioters. Is that accurate?

Congressman Nadler: That is accurate. There were no riots. I don't know what they're talking about, about looking for riots. There were no riots in or about the building.

Brian: Richard, you're on WNYC from Brooklyn. Hello?

Richard: Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Good morning, Congressman Nadler.

Congressman Nadler: Good morning.

Richard: I want to provide some additional context to what's happening in the immigration courts in New York regarding the expansion of expedited removal. People are going to their court hearings because if they don't show up, the judge can order them deported in their absence. Then when they walk out of the courtroom, at least some people are being grabbed and detained by ICE.

One young man, this was on your show last week, I think Elizabeth Kim was talking about the young man, high school student in the Bronx, who was grabbed after his hearing because the judge had granted a motion to dismiss. There's another young guy, I was actually contacted by friends of his. The same thing happened. I checked online. He's now in the detention center in Louisiana.

Brian: There was that Columbia student, same thing, went for a scheduled check-in, was detained. That student was eventually ordered released by a court and did get to attend Columbia graduation, but it's part of that same pattern that you're describing. Richard, go ahead.

Congressman Nadler: I think these are just individual incidents that we know about. I think it's a lot more prevalent. They're doing this systematically.

Richard: Can I tell you what actually the government lawyers are doing?

Brian: Please, Richard.

Richard: They are filing a motion to dismiss the court proceedings. It's not just a check-in. This is a court hearing. It's called the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, essentially the government lawyers. There's us on one side and the government lawyers on the other side in an immigration court case. They file a motion to dismiss, which we generally don't have any advance notice of, or the person, if unrepresented by counsel, he or she doesn't know what to do with a motion to dismiss. The judge grants it.

The motion to dismiss is essentially saying, "We, the government, see no reason to continue with this case." Judge grants it. The person is told, "I'm dismissing your case. You have 30 days to file an appeal," walks out of the courtroom, ICE grabs him. That's what's going on. The government lawyers and the ICE agents are working together.

Brian: It sounds like it, Richard. I'm so glad you called because I had seen this word dismissed in some of these stories, and I hadn't gotten to understand it yet for myself. Dismissed makes it sound like, "Okay, the immigrant can stay here," but you're interpreting it in a different way. Will you explain it again for our listeners? Because they're going to run into this word in this repeated pattern.

Richard: The government has a very, very, very low burden in immigration court. They simply have to show that there's a basis under the immigration law for the person to be in court. Usually it's an overstay of a visa or they came across the border, something very, very elementary. The difference between a case being dismissed and proceedings being terminated, which is not happening here, if the proceedings are terminated, that's where the person has either status or the government hasn't proved that the person belongs in court, or they're pursuing another application, like an application for a green card, and all three sides, the government, the judge, and our side, we all agree the person shouldn't be in court.

When I read in the Gothamist article last week, and I heard Elizabeth Kim using that term, I, too, Brian, knew that there was something missing there. Then I read about what really is going on, I read essentially a practice advisory about this unilateral motion to dismiss, where they're saying, just repeating myself, the government is saying, "We're not going to continue to pursue this." It doesn't mean the person has any status, doesn't mean that they have the right to be here. They're just saying, "We're not going to pursue it."

Brian: Then there are the ICE agents waiting at the door, and they grab the person for detention. Doesn't that start another court process?

Richard: The person has the right to, as I said, appeal the order, they can fight the detention, but you know how quickly the government is moving nowadays.

Brian: They may send you out of the country before you have the chance. I know that's obviously in dispute in the courts, and the person has to be able to get a lawyer, too. Richard, I really appreciate your phone call. Congressman, any reaction to that immigration lawyer, any of those details?

Congressman Nadler: No, I assume everything he said was correct. He's the immigration lawyer, I'm not. It shows the different ways the administration is working to deny these people any kind of due process.

Brian: Back to the travel ban for a minute. The president cited the apparent terrorist incident in Boulder, Colorado, as a reason for imposing this now, but the country that the suspect in that case was from, Egypt, was not on the list. Do you understand that?

Congressman Nadler: It just shows the hypocrisy of the administration for saying that. They arrested this person for murder, he should be prosecuted for murder, but even if he came from Egypt, what does that got to do with it? He didn't come from Egypt. This just shows the hypocrisy of the administration more.

Brian: Or he did come from Egypt originally.

Congressman Nadler: Yes.

Brian: He didn't come from one of the banned countries.

Congressman Nadler: That's what I meant. He didn't come from one of the banned countries. He came from Egypt, so what's the point? What does this got to do with it?

Brian: We've got a few minutes left in the segment. Can I get your take on the status, as you see it, of the so-called Big, Beautiful Budget Bill, as Trump calls it? We've certainly been reporting, everybody's been reporting on Elon Musk slinging an increasing number of darts at the bill in recent days. Hakeem Jeffries, of course, your colleague from New York City and the minority leader in the House, says, "Yes, it is an abomination," to use Musk's word. He agrees with Musk on that, but of course, for different reasons.

For Jeffries, it's for all the cuts to Medicaid and other things that Americans need. For Musk, it's for all the spending. On the back of Musk's criticism, and for some other reasons, it seems like even some members of the Republican Party in the House, where it just barely squeaked by because of the slim majority they have in the House, are expressing regrets now. What do you think's going on with this bill?

Congressman Nadler: I don't call it the Big, Beautiful Bill. I call it the big, horrible bill. It's got all these cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and all kinds of things, aid to schools, rural hospitals, you name it. It has a couple of provisions that have nothing to do with this, like denying the power of judges to issue contempt, which is the only way you enforce a judicial order. Because the judges are calling out the Trump administration on all its illegal acts, this would make the Trump administration or any administration actually superior to the law. That's one thing it's got. It's a horrible bill.

It will also greatly increase the deficit. We are on an unsustainable path. What we ought to be doing, obviously, is greatly increasing taxes on the rich that have been greatly lowered by Trump in 2017. Whether it will pass or not, whether the Republicans who are expressing doubts or maybe intimidated by Musk, who will be more intimidated by the president, I don't know. I can't forecast whether it'll pass or not.

Brian: I also want to ask you, before you go, if you've read the Jake Tapper book about President Biden's state of being.

Congressman Nadler: No, I haven't.

Brian: Did you have any impression of your own during maybe the latter part of Biden's term that he had any cognitive issues beyond what we saw in that televised debate that might have led you to have questions about his capacity to govern?

Congressman Nadler: No, I didn't have that much contact with him. The first I thought when I heard that debate, I said, "Oh, my God," and then I knew.

Brian: Do you have suspicions that people close to him were covering up? Obviously, Republicans are seizing on this and saying, "Do we even know that the president was really making the important policy decisions as opposed to leaving it to top aides around him because he was incapable of doing so?"

Congressman Nadler: I think he was making the important policy decisions. He was clearly slowing down. From what we've heard, I didn't see this. He was clearly slowing down. He was clearly having better and worse periods. I think he was ultimately making the policy decisions. You saw the day of the State of the Union address back in March. He was sharp, and he wasn't just sharp reading from the teleprompter, he was sharp responding to Republican heckling. He obviously had capabilities.

Brian: Last thing, our next segment is going to be excerpts from an analysis of and listeners' reactions to the Democratic mayoral primary debate that aired on TV last night. I see you're endorsing Scott Stringer in the mayoral primary. Stringer so far has not made much of an impression based on the polls. Are you staying with that, or do you want to say why Scott Stringer compared to some of the other apparently more prominent people in this race?

Congressman Nadler: I think Scott would make an excellent mayor. I've known him for many years. He was my successor in the assembly. Then he was an excellent borough president and an excellent comptroller. He shows he knows how to run the city. He shows he understands the city, and he's very progressive. That makes him my number one pick. My number two pick will be Brad Lander, who also has shown that he's progressive, that he's capable of running things as comptroller. He showed that. Those are the two that I'm prepared to say publicly right now.

Brian: What do you think about Cuomo as a potential mayor?

Congressman Nadler: I think that would be terrible. I think Cuomo, the attorney general, Tish James, report established very credibly that he assaulted women, and he resigned from the governorship because of that. I think there's a lot of evidence that he was responsible for deaths during the COVID pandemic by sending senior citizens into nursing homes where the pandemic was raging. When he was governor, he was not very progressive. He worked with the so-called IDC, the Independent Democratic Conference, which empowered Republicans in the state Senate to oppose progressive measures. To my mind, those three things are disqualifying.

Brian: He would certainly argue he was progressive on a lot of big things, guns, fracking, minimum wage, et cetera.

Congressman Nadler: He opposed the minimum wage increase, and he was forced into it by pressure in the legislature and from other sources. I remember that he opposed it for a long time, and he delayed it.

Brian: Last thing, what do you think of Zohran Mamdani, rising number two, according to the polls?

Congressman Nadler: I couldn't support Zohran Mamdani for a number of reasons. Number one, his criticism of Israel for committing genocide, which I think is wrong, his support well before this war for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, which is really a campaign against Israel's existence. That's one thing. Secondly, he's 33 years old and has never run anything. It's one thing to have wonderful opinions or not, but to run the city of New York, you have to have executive experience. He's not run anything, and he has no experience with executive leadership at all, so I don't see how he could be mayor. When I was 33 years old, I was, I think, a very good state assemblyman. I would not have been qualified to be mayor.

Brian: Congressman Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan, thank you for joining us today after the incident in your office, which was the main thing that prompted this conversation, and for talking about some other issues with us. We really appreciate it.

Congressman Nadler: Thank you.

 

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