Immigration lawyer: Trump’s quick-moving deportation plans leave little time for people to understand their rights

NINA MOINI: President Donald Trump has made many promises, as we just heard, about what he'll do on this very first day in office, that he'll end the war in Ukraine, pardon the January 6 riot defendants, implement a tariff on products imported from Mexico and Canada, and close the US border, among some of them. But the promise he has mentioned most often and rested much of his presidential campaign on, is to start a mass deportation program. Today, he declared a national emergency at the US Southern border, and in his inaugural remarks, said he will begin deporting millions of immigrants without citizenship status and bring troops to help close the border.

To help explain what the president said he'll start doing today, Hanne Sandison is here with us. The refugee and immigrant program director at the Center for Human Rights joins us. Thank you so much for being here, Hanne.

HANNE SANDISON: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

NINA MOINI: I'm curious about your first reactions, having listened to the past few hours of inauguration day.

HANNE SANDISON: Well, it's not a surprise, unfortunately. I think a lot of what Trump is promising is in line with what he has been saying throughout his campaigns. And he has been threatening a lot of really intense anti-immigrant actions in order to stoke fear in those communities. But we know that there's a lot-- there's a lot that he can do as the executive, and there's a lot that he can't do unilaterally either because it has to go through Congress, or because he is going to need the funds in order to do the things that he's promising that he wants to do.

So again, not a surprise, not out of line with what he's been saying. But we're prepared to respond and know that he can't implement most of what he's saying, especially within short notice.

NINA MOINI: And remind us, for folks who don't know, who you serve and who you interact with at the Center for Human Rights, and how you are beginning to prepare for some of these promises, as you said.

HANNE SANDISON: Yeah. So I direct the refugee and immigrant program at the Advocates for Human Rights. And we serve indigent asylum seekers, trafficking survivors, and unaccompanied minors, so kids that came to the US without one or both of their parents. And we represent thousands of people going through the legal immigration process to secure permanent status here because they have experienced a human rights violation or because they're likely to if they are returned.

And those are processes that are part of our laws and part of the international conventions that we've signed as a country. And it's an important way to guarantee human rights for the folks within our borders and ensure that we're not deporting people to violent situations, if they were to return to their home countries.

NINA MOINI: Are you more so preparing legally and in the courts with paperwork, or are you interacting with people, giving people plans for what to do or guidance? How are you-- how are you preparing?

HANNE SANDISON: All of the above. We've been talking to clients in the community broadly, along with our local partners, to remind people the rights that they do have. A lot of the things that Trump is proposing, mass deportations being one of them, those are designed to move quickly. They're designed for people to be afraid and give up their rights or not know their rights and not take advantage of them. And so we have been busy reminding people of the rights that they do have under the US Constitution and reminding them to make sure they're getting their information from reputable sources so they can trust the things that they're hearing.

We're also preparing internally. We are well coordinated. We've done this before. We were around in the prior Trump administration as well, and have deep partnerships across the state and across the country, and ensuring that we have every tool available to us to protect the human rights of our clients and the immigrant community more broadly.

NINA MOINI: And one of the things about the immigration system is that there are many different types of statuses. There's a temporary protected status. And that doesn't mean that somebody is here illegally or without documentation. Sometimes these can all be conflated or people don't understand. From where you sit, what needs to be done to better explain what our current immigration and resettlement and border policies are to Americans, to voters, and everybody.

HANNE SANDISON: Yeah. The reality is it's an incredibly complex system. We talk about the immigration law system as being second only to the tax law in its complexity. So it is hard to explain the ins and outs of the law, which makes it really hard to talk about in a straightforward way that's digestible for people. I think it's important to speak truth about our undocumented community and immigrant community more broadly.

There's, like you said, a variety of statuses. And there's people that don't have permanent legal status but are in the process of applying for that here. So they're in the court process or they've submitted an application for asylum in the asylum office. So there's a lot of things that-- options for people that are on the table that they are just waiting to have adjudicated because our immigration system is underfunded. And we don't have the number of immigration judges or asylum officers necessary to move these applications forward in a timely fashion. So we're telling some of our new clients now that are applying for asylum, in the asylum office specifically, to expect a 5 to 10 year wait before they get a decision on their case.

So I think it's important for people to recognize the complexity of the system, the length of time, the amount of money that it costs for people to go through this, and also to recognize that most people want to find a way to regularize their immigration status. And if they have an opportunity to do that, they will do that.

NINA MOINI: We know that there's pretty much agreement across the board that there do need to be some policy changes to immigration and just different facets of the system. From where you sit, what would be good policy or good changes to make or maybe one thing that you think would actually be helpful?

HANNE SANDISON: Oh, yeah. My wish list, I would love that. I think immigration law, like I said, is really confusing. And a lot of the changes that need to happen need to come from Congress. There needs to be appetite in Congress to pass immigration reform on a broad scale. So there have been updates throughout the years that update specific pieces, minute pieces of immigration law. But we haven't had a large overhaul in many years.

And those small updates mean that it starts to-- the cohesion starts to break down. So what we need is a broad immigration reform that takes into account who we want to be as a country, who we want to be in our communities. What do we value? What process do we want people to go through if they want to come and be a part of our nation and our community? And go from there.

Go from what is our aim here. We're not tackling small issues as we see them or breakdowns in the system here and there, but starting from what do we want to be, who do we want to be, and then creating a clear immigration policy that advocates can understand, that the community can understand, and that people in the process can understand because the lack of clarity has made it really hard to talk about. And it's really hard for immigrants to go through the process as well.

NINA MOINI: Hanne, we really appreciate you taking the time. And like we said to our guests before, we would love to continue to touch base with you in the months to come. Thank you for your time.

HANNE SANDISON: Absolutely. Thank you.

NINA MOINI: That was Hanne Sandison, the director of the Refugee and Immigrant Program at the Center for Human Rights.