Migration policy institute. So long with our partners, catholic legal integration clinic endorsed down law, we are very delighted to a commute to the 16th annual policy confronts. Do you get a we will in a moment from executive director but i wanted to join with clooney and also thinking for hosting us and once again for this meeting to go to the dean slave trader, and to all of the staff that were involved in putting this together. It couldnt happen that went out you. I also decided in the i want to. Our team has been involved in putting this together. There are people here on stage, so thank you to all of you as wale. In 16 years our organizations have connected this confronts we work very hard to bring a richer way of viewpoints on current rates and mitigation and law and policy. From policymakers and the federal state and local loophole from experts and academics, from journalists and Service Providers from advocates and from Law Enforcement leaders as political strategists and many others. Today you will hear voices from across the spectrum and from bandage whites differences. At the time immigration has been so polarized that we believe firmly that this is an important as ever to hear directly from the stakeholders and field questions to them. Again we will and we look forward to a full day and engaging and provocative discussions. The me now introduce the keynote speaker. Acting secretary together then we michael liam secretary became actor at the helm of 240,000 person agency. The department that is responsive from everything from paper and cybersecurity to Emergency Response and filled till it says till it is the dilatation travel and attritional. More importantly for our purposes today he is responsible for the most crucial act positions of migration. U. S. Citizenship administration sentences and Border Protection. Before week beginning acting secretary, he sold a number of roles in the Border Protection including surfing as commissioner and Deputy Commissioner and director of one of the largest fields commands. Secretary michelina has received a president ial award. The highest award. Before that American Metal for spearheading efforts in developing imaging post 911 antiterrorism strategy. He holds a law degree from the university of chicago. Just about about everybody in america knows, immigration is about as contentious complex and polarizes subject as it exists today. It just an acting secretary of is the center of that. Major changes in the order and signing agreements with the different countries, shaping Legal Immigration system and the refugee policy. All subjects that we will discuss at length in a diverse array of gambles. But for now, i know you are all eager to hear from second the terry and important to ask questions and during the question and answer. That will follow the remarks. With that i will turn it over to you. [applause] [inaudible conversation] screaming yelling what do we do, stand up fight back. Okay. Thats enough now, thank you very much. We hear you. This is the forum where we respect free speech and we respect your right to protest but with respect to this audience who wants to hear the speaker, lets save the rest of it for the q a. Who would like to hear the speaker now. Please be seated now. Screaming. Yelling. Protesting. [inaudible conversation] please be seated so we can hear the speaker and engage with the dialogue. [applause] secretary mcaleenan good morning everyone. Protesting, screaming. Yelling what we do, stand up and fight back. That is enough. Kenyon continuing to protest. Can you hear me, we hear you we hear you,. Screaming fight back. We hear you but we are here for dialogue. It is time to finish this. You robbing this rest of this audience of hearing this important information. Until we hear, we are not in a conversation so lets stop the oneway street. Lets lets look at that speaker and the sales have an exchange. Thank you very much. Lets try again. I want to think the catholic legal integration network. And others. Protesting screaming stand up and fight back. Can you please have respect to the rest of the audience who came here to lets look at that speaker. Protesting screaming fighting back. In fighting back, please allow the speaker to make his remarks. In this audience is come here for this purpose to hear and engage. Please. You may stay standing but please stop shouting. [applause] thank you doors will give it one more shot. As a career Law Enforcement professional, dedicated my career to protecting the rights of free speech and all of the values we were here in america. From all threats. So go ahead and try one more time but otherwise im going to go back to work and try to keep this country secure. Protesting. Colleagues, you know invoking democracy and democracy requires dialogue and listening. It requires a twoway street. The secretaries agreed to take questions and answers. We are robbing time from the period of questions and answers we can engage with the public. We lets look at that remarks and have a chance to question him. Including people who disagree with them. Last time team. Boats to cover today. There are some very serious issues that weekend talk about in candor in a real dialogue. Or we can continue to shout. Okay what is going to start with is that id like to take her dialogue this morning about the politics and the daily news cycle and lets talk about the challenges and efforts that we face over the past year but also given that this is primarily an audience of Immigration Lawyers advocates and law students, its also talk about some of the fundamental issues we face in the current legal framework. And its ability to address largescale Immigration Laws. Protesting. Screaming. If were on attack, what we do. We stand up and fight back. Continuing to protest. [background sounds] are you prepared to say for the rest of the confronts. Please be seated so that weekend continue. Will have a few opening comments and then we will try to regroup and get his confronts off on other elements. Good morning. My name is anna gallagher. I am the new executive director of catholic Legal Immigration network. Here in the dc area and very pleased to be here. Before i give you five brief welcoming remarks, i would just like to know a few things. We understand and appreciate your concerns. We all have years of history and working in the immigration and refugee world. In the United States abroad and sending countries and receiving countries. So we appreciate your concerns and understand them. We are disappointed that we could not use this opportunity to raise questions and asked the secretary to explain why this administration is doing what theyre doing. I appreciate your. , is the right. And i think its the wrong place because i do believe most people that are here wanted to hear and answer questions. [applause] now i would like to take those minute to officially we will all of you and to thank you for attending the 16th Immigration Law policy confronts. As the new executive director of clinic this is my first opportunity to cohost this confronts and its a great opportunity for me i was always impressed and removed and walked away with boats of questions and some answers. So i appreciated feel honored to be here. Im also appreciative of longstanding institutes that have been with this conference. Im especially pleased to be sitting at this table with these people. So it is more important than ever, that all of us with an interest in that fair and just administration of our laws, come together to actively discuss what is happening now and what we can do. So i we will you all and i look forward to a robust discussion during our question and answer. So i know will handed off to darth meiser to introducer panel. Thank you very much for being here. [applause] thanks anna, will do a little changing of the guard here now. [background sounds] okay, once more in morning. Good morning to my family here. For those of you, zero, we usually put the names on both sides. Do we not have this. That is actually one of my favorite problems about being speakers that the names in the outside you dont know where you are supposed to sit moses printed on the other side. So good morning, my name is doors, those of you have been regulars at this conference will know what i will say no to those who are new to this conference and that is for many years, the first panel of this gathering, has been what we call a state of plain. In the state of play, we try to talk about what is current and what is the state of the immigration enterprise and the state of immigration politics events and developments. And every year, it gets a little bit more interesting and a little bit more charged and i guess we certainly miss that stander this year have away. We have a terrific panel here of people that know politics on both sides of the aisle as wale as people have covered these issues so let me quickly run through the speakers. And then we are going to have as much of a conversation as we can. Im going to ask questions. Pamela switzer and relief time at the end for the audience for participation. On the left is a former speaker for policy and trade council. Paul ryan was a speaker of the house of representatives, she is now with agent gump. Our next to her is ms. Miss braley who is president of Community Change action and Vice President for Community Change. And this is the new job. So we are welcoming her to her new post. As the organization you might have known the best is the center for Community Change which is going through a name rebranding. So we will. We are delighted to have you here and in this new role. Next is immigration correspondent at the houston chronicle. Who has been very much on the frontlines on these issues. In her reporting. And then there is of course somebody that we all know and have such high regard for, julie preston. Julia of course is now contributing writer at the marshall project. The most of you will know her as the longstanding person reporting for the new york tim times. I think unite here are the grayhaired people his table because we have been at this for a very long time. And that is exactly like they wanted julia to participate today. She has been faithful audience member at these meetings so she knows this job very wale really has a perspective that very few others can bring that are suppressing today. Let me just make this opening observation and that is going to ask sort of two sets of questions. Questions that have to do with the bordering questions and do with the politics of immigration as we go into a president ial election year. The issues that have to do with the border obviously are self evident. There is so much that is taken place since we met last year just thinking back when we met last year, the caravans hadnt even began. Suddenly came the caravans and then came all of the visibility that surrounded them. The increases in the numbers to a very high loophole. Peaking in may. With the dismantling basically basically the countries asylum system. So there is so much to talk about. It has to do with the border. We cant cover all of it but the top of the state of play idea. And then of course, where the election is concerned, we know the President Trump, but we deeply that he won his presidency largely and immigration. We have every reason to believe that immigration will continue and recur in center stage issue in a reelection in 2020 so that of course is extremely important as wale. Im going to begin with the questions with our journalists. And i going to start first with julia for the reasons that i talked about. Im going to say that julia you have covered this issue and we have followed it for decades. See you really do have perspective on how things have evolved. I wonder both of you could start us off with some observations about the degree to which the current era is different from what youve seen in the past. Or maybe its not different. Maybe it really is what we know which is this immigration has been contentious. Draft history and maybe this is simply todays version of it. Talk to us about that. If there is any observation that you have what it is youve just seen that is happened. Feel free to share that as wale. Thank you very much doris and andrew for organizing this important in debt every year. Its such a fantastic gathering of people who care about the immigration system. Thank you very much. So i see some continuities between President Trump and bath administrations but mostly very stark differences. Lets talk about some of the similarities. Border enforcement. I think that the president rhetoric about a porous border and billing the big beautiful wall obscures the fact that border enforcement has been strengthened and fortified with persons and Border Agents surveillance technology, military style equipment, more enforcement, since basically the 1990s and particularly on the end of the Bush Administration and president obama. There is a lot of continuity despite the rhetoric about the porous borders. There is a lot of continuity in terms of border enforcement. In terms of interior enforcement, i think its always good to remember that by the department of Homeland Security his own statistics, president obama, deported almost 3 million people. So the history of permanent punitive family separation in the forum of deportation its not new with this administration. Theres a legacy there from president obama that i think is possible to forget about in the current environment. I think on president bush, president obama and now congress has failed spectacularly to take on this responsibility is to address the just extremely damaging dysfunction in our immigration system. The immigration system is failing in my view to meet the labor needs of the country and to live up to the United States humanitarian and responsibilities and obligations in failing to achieve the social imperative of the uniting and preserving and strengthening immigrants families and congress has just been awol. Through several administrations. Its good to remember that. And also, in the absence of congressional actions, maybe something thats interesting for you, both president obama and now President Trump in a very aggressive way, have been tempted to use executive power to take it with the immigration system in the interest of creating more deportations. Generally this kind of executive tinkering if thats the right word, has led to a cascade and an unintended consequences and more chaos in the system. The example i would. To, there are many examples of this, i would. To, the effort to speed up deportation, proceedings for certain people in the immigration courts. It started with the rocket daca on president obama. There is a certain law of gravity or physics in the immigration for switches that when we speed up one case, you have to postpone another. This seems to be a basic equation that seems to escape the notice of the executives who want to somehow gin up these courts to get deportations done faster. Really all its done is create increasing chaos and increasing backlogs in the situation today we have more than a million cases in the backlog of the immigration course. Its really a catastrophe in the courts. Am i staying that President Trump is continuity or that this is somehow more of the same. I am not. Im not staying that. This is the radical change. Mainly because this president is trying to change the core narrative that is animated in our immigration policy for almost a century. He sees immigration as a liability, not a benefit. I think it minimum we can say that he regards immigrants and refugees with suspicion. You take it further than that but i think it minimum we can say that. And this is the kind of unabashed nativism, empowered by the full authority of the white house that really we havent, but try to go back in history try to remember when weve had this particular set of principles governing our immigration policy. I want to just look at the detail that emerged from this extraordinary story that my colleagues had last week. A detail in the story that drew less attention than the local field with snakes and alligators that the president had proposed. It was that steve miller, who is the president his policy advisor, was seeking to replace francis, he is the head of u. S. Citizenship of immigration services. Those of us in this room, are familiar with franks record would not necessarily describe them as a softy. The millers idea was that he wanted, he didnt think the system was doing enough as he put a change to the culture. This is the agency that delivers approvals of visas. This is the agency that when a person qualifies is supposed to put out the we will mat. Instead, with this administration is seeking to do is turn this agency into the agency that rejects people. They keeps people out. So you can imagine a more profound cultural change philosophical change in the system. I just want to cite one example of that. There are many of them but it is one that doris referred to witches the onslaught of the systematic dismantling of this administration are a silent system with respect to the border. So i just want to mention briefly what is happen there and i am probably leaving a few things out but former attorney general session and the current attorney general willie barr, have used their authorities over the immigration courts to revise decades of case law and shut down the availability of a asylum to specifically to the people who are coming from Central America with flames having to do with Gang Violence and sexual predation. The administration have sharply limited the discussion and flexibility of judges. In the immigration course who are dealing with these asylum systems to give us a fury of discretion or to exercise this possibility with the way they are handling the dockets and handling fees cases. The administration has moved to deny bond, to asylumseekers and increase the detention of the asylum seekers. The administration of pipe zerotolerance prosecutions for unauthorized Border Crossings. Even if two people who were intending had expressed an intention to seek asylum. The administration asked to force migrants