 We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. And this is Community Matters. And we're going to ask, what's going on already with the ban? The Ninth Circuit ruled last Friday, was it? Today. Today. This morning. This morning. Yeah. Okay. Hot off the press this morning. Yeah. This is Claire Hanoes. She is an immigration lawyer. She's been on our show many times. And she has done a lot of good things in Hawaii vis-à-vis immigration. And she is familiar with the immigration community, that is, the people who would like to come here. So it's very important we get her take on the ruling in the Ninth Circuit, not only on this ban, but on the other bans that have come by, and what's likely to happen in the Supreme Court. So what happened this morning, Claire? Oh, so this morning, the Ninth Circuit issued a decision that we had all been waiting for. And it basically upheld the injunction that Judge Watson issued back on March 15th in Hawaii. So there was a three-judge panel that issued a unanimous decision. And it's a great decision. It's 86 pages. It's available if you just Google. Ninth Circuit came up right away. And I really encourage people to take a read through it, because it's important for people to read and understand. And basically what the Ninth Circuit said is that in the sixth or seventh line, immigration, even for the president, is not a one-person show. So basically the president has limitations to his power. This was a reaffirmation of the power of the judicial system to keep in check. The president's attempts at extreme powers and sets things up for the Supreme Court probably in the fall. Yeah. Well, it's good news in many ways. It's good news for people who have been intimidated and disrupted over these bans. It's good news for the Constitution in terms of, you know, yes, there is a provision about religion, freedom of religion. Gee, the country was founded on that. Right. And there's also, I mean, to me, the important thing is the Constitution is alive and well in terms of the balance of power, the three—you know, I heard recently that there was a poll taken of people in the street. And they were asked, what are the three parts of government, you know, three branches of government in this country? Nobody knew. Yeah. It's very scary, because, you know, when you get Trump on the stage here, people don't know, and we need the federal courts to articulate this and remind us what's going on. And the Ninth Circuit is known to be a fairly liberal court, so this was probably expected. But the Fourth Circuit ruled somewhat similarly a few weeks ago on this issue. It was a little narrower issue. They were just looking at the people affected from the nine—or, I'm sorry, from the six countries that Trump was trying to ban from entering. I did not address the refugee ban, which was in the state of Hawaii suit. But again, the Fourth Circuit, which is a much more conservative court, voted, I believe it was 12 to 3, in favor of upholding the injunction as well. So it doesn't have to be from a liberal court. I mean, there can be minds that are more to the center, to the right, or recognizing and, again, speaking out to the limits of presidential power. The arguments in this case—in this court, in this case, weren't as much constitutional as kind of statutory, the Immigration and Nationality Act, which sets it—well, in the Constitution that Congress has power over most immigration laws to create them. The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act gave the president some powers, but they're not at all unlimited. And so what this argument did, again, was from the Ninth Circuit, just reaffirmed that in order for the president to make such kind of sweeping bans against people, there needs to be much more as far as fact-finding that there's a nexus between the ban and all the people that the government is trying to keep out of coming from the United States. There's so many questions flow out of this. I mean, some of the original questions, to me, they still linger. How do you do it right? I mean, let's assume he was motivated by a piece of national policy that says we have to protect ourselves from terrorists. Right, which we can all agree to. I think we do a pretty good job at doing that. There is a vetting of all foreign nationals before they come into the United States. But if you look at—and this case actually references a study that was done of terrorist acts in the United States from, I think, 2002 until the present, the majority of those who committed were people who were born in the United States. So they're not people who were coming from overseas. True. It's not really an immigration issue at all. Right. Not here. And to some extent the same thing exists in Europe. A lot of this has been by people who were born in Europe. Absolutely. So why are people who are born in these countries feeling so disaffected and disenfranchised that they're willing to take such really extraordinary measures? I don't have the answer for that, but it seems— That's a pretty thing. But that's where the effort should be going in to understand how this is coming out of our own communities. I think the lesson is that you can't—I don't think there is any way of crafting a band that would affect 180 million people. Oh, no. Which is the six countries that were listed, 180 million people. There's no way—unless you can show that the vast majority of those 180 people have direct links to terrorists or not. There's no way you can prove that. It's not true. It could never be true. Exactly. Exactly. And that's what—and that's basically what the court held. You know, it's really too bad we have to have this conversation. It's too bad that he did that. I mean, I'm not talking about all the other things he's done that are too bad, but this one is really too bad. And I think of the Statue of Liberty. Give me your tired, handled masses yearning to be free. Right. This is a fundamental aspect of the country. And the country's vitality, in large part, has been all through, all through these 300 years, whatever, many years, maybe 250, 40 years, whatever it is, has been based on that notion of, give me your tired, handled masses. Right. And that's where we get the strength of our innovation, our economy, our workforce. And all our endeavors are really based in large part on recent arrivals. Right. Immigrant mentality is more vital maybe than some of the complacency. We see people who are not immigrants, honestly. Right. And if you look—I mean, especially in a place like Hawaii, I mean, you know, you can always look at and see how the first people of nations have—immigration has usually been a bad thing for them, the Native Americans, Native Hawaiians here. But for everyone else, you look at how immigrants actually benefit and enrich our society. Well, again, look at all of our own individual histories and how and why. Again, we all came—even the first peoples, everyone came from someplace else for a reason. And people are still trying to do that. I think we quickly forget our own histories, our own family histories and the ability to, you know, put ourselves in the shoes of people who are— who have made more recent journeys. Right. Right. Right. The new arrivals, we shouldn't do that. Right. And it happens in Hawaii, too. Absolutely. You know, the new arrivals are the ones everybody—you know, I want mine and I— Right. Even though I'm also a recent arrival. Right. You know, the other thing is that we have been a beacon. This country has been a beacon to the world about opening your borders and taking those tired, huddled masses yearning to be free. And one of the interesting things is that this—what this says is we're not sure about this anymore, that we have fights about it, that we have a president who wants to terminate it. We have people who—some of his constituents, many of his constituents who voted for him, they want to stop that. They want to shut the whole thing down. They want to build a wall. They want to build a 2,000-mile wall. Yeah. Adbilias. Between right. I mean, I don't even care how much it costs. I mean, that's another—but even take the cost away from it. You know, a good part of the United States not that long ago was Mexico, right? I mean, we're very far from that in Hawaii. But if you spend time in Arizona, California, and Texas, you have—a Native American tribes who have land that crosses borders. You have families who have crossed borders seamlessly for many, many years. And now, not only is there a very fortified border, but they want to put up a wall. And that's—and right, and a lot of the people who voted for Trump are absolutely in favor of that, which shows, I think, how far we've slid and how far we—how much ground we need to try to claim to explain why that's a bad thing, why that hurts all of us. But I think, you know, as long as the economy's in the dumps, people are going to be looking for groups of people to blame. Yeah. And migrant workers, poor people, have always been around the bottom. Here, that's the Micronesians in Arizona, in Hawaii. It's the Mexicans and the Central Americans. Yeah. The other thing that comes to mind, and I was reading about this recently, is that Pierre Trudeau, the older Trudeau—I guess he was in the 60s— he was a very enlightened guy. And one of his big policies that he changed, it was disruptive in Canada at the time, he opened the borders. He took in everybody. Canada was taking a lot of people in after World War II and all that, but he opened it much wider than that. And he made it national policy, and he made incentives for them to come and disincentives for people to, you know, not treat them well. And the result is Canada has a huge level of vitality, maybe even greater than ours, person for person, because they do that. And it seems that we, who were the beacon, are no longer the beacon. You have asylum seekers in the United States who are afraid, who are dying—literally dying—trying to get into Canada. They're freezing to death on the Canadian U.S. border, trying to cross into Canada, because they feel like they'll be more— they'll have a better shot in Canada than they will in the United States. Yeah. It does not— Why don't you remind me of the people who were trying to avoid the draft in the Vietnam War. Right. They went to Canada. Canada accepted them with open arms. Right. And, you know, that was really a sign of a failure on the part of this country, that we would have our own youth leaving town that way. I believe immigrants in Canada are called New Canadians. So there's this—I mean, it's, you know, welcome. We recognize that you're here, that you're here long-term. You're going to be part of our extended community and welcome. And there's a lot more done to work on integrating them into Canadian life. Yes, that's true. And a much more beautiful, you know, welcoming attitude towards refugees and immigrants that I wish we had here. Yeah. So after this break, Claire—that's Claire Hanoes, immigration lawyer—I'm going to talk about how this changes the practice, if at all, in your immigration practice and how it changes the views of immigrants and whether, you know, we will ultimately damage us to have had this—and I'm hoping we have to speculate on what's going to happen at the Supreme Court, but assuming that it's the same as these two circuits, has this damaged us to the world? Has this damaged us to some of those really valuable immigrants who might come here and who we have thrived on in the past? We'll take a short break. We'll be right back with Claire Hanoes. We'll be drinking today because I'm the designated driver and that's okay. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. I'm the guy you want to be. I'm the guy, say good morning. I'm the guy with the H2O and I'm the guy that says, let's go. Okay, we're back. We're having a really interesting discussion with Claire Hanoes, an immigration lawyer. I want to take a little slightly different tack for a minute and ask, let's assume the Supreme Court does validate the fourth circuit and the ninth circuit on this and it becomes the law of the land that he can't do this and he can try all he wants. He's not going to be able to do it. But even then we've had a very unpleasant conversation. We've demonstrated we're divided on the issue, at least divided. We're a president who would like to go back to the 12th century. So the question really is, how does this affect your immigration practice? How does it affect the people who are in this country on papers that may not be so good? How does this affect the people who are outside this country who might have entertained the thought of coming here and making a life? I think we have to remember that it's not just Trump, right? There's a whole team of people behind him that Trump didn't write his executive orders. He's not that bright. There are a lot of really bright ideologues who are misguided, but they're not stupid. And lots of people in Congress who wish that they could get away with this. And so the message that it sends to the world is a real, I think, discriminatory intent towards people from many, many different countries all over the world. And so one of the arguments that Hawaii made in this case was that it was damaging to the state's economy and to the University of Hawaii because we have graduate students at UH from these countries. We have faculty and undergraduate students from these countries. And new entities who are in limbo. And so even if the Supreme Court invalidates the travel ban, you're going to have people who have options about where they go, thinking about do they really want to go to a place where it's so clear that among so many people they're not welcome or do they want to go someplace else? Do they want to look at New Zealand or Canada or other countries? And a lot of those answers, it will take a long time before there are statistics on declining enrollments from those countries. But we're going to take not only a financial hit, but a hit too. These are people who could come, who do very well, who contribute greatly, who would like to stay in the United States and do great things. And who really enrich our communities and they're not going to want to come here. So I mean that in some ways it's a certain class of people, right? Because people who can come from foreign countries and study in the United States often are coming from more elite. So you have that group of people who are impacted. But the other executive orders that Trump has issued on immigration have had a real kind of similarly chilling effect in our community. But among different groups of people. People who are say with final orders of deportation who had been in the past granted states of deportation because they've been able to show that they have extraordinary equities and humanitarian concerns usually involving having U.S. citizen children that they're primarily taking care of. And under President Obama again there were lots of really good people who were deported. It was not all roses and unicorns under President Obama but there were directives from the administration that prioritized some groups of people above others. Trump's executive orders, the other ones that were issued on immigration on January 25th which are worth people going back and taking a look at basically get rid of those priorities. So everyone's a priority now. And we're seeing that locally with more local clients getting these call-in letters to report for deportation. He's arrested 41,000 people taking them off the streets and put them in detention. 41,000 people since the beginning of the year. Well, it's really too bad. I heard a piece on NPR. I think it was an Indian doctor and his wife in Arkansas, the state of Arkansas. Did I say Dr. Lawyer? He was a lawyer. He was a law professor teaching at the law school there in Arkansas. They had a life, I don't know, 20 years or 30 years in this country and there had been a racial murder nearby and then with the ban and all this. See, it's not just that we have a ban but this turns the rock over on people with hatred. And then you have more hate crime. You have more racial crime. Which are very, very well documented. It gives license for the haters to come out and then they feel justified. And so what happened with this lawyer? He was talking on NPR and he said, you know, my life and I, we've made our life here. We have kids, family, house. I'm a law professor in an American law but we're going to leave. We're taking off. We don't like this country anymore. And I think, although not everybody's going to do that, it takes a certain amount of courage to go to another place and start fresh. There are a lot of people who think about it now. Sure, sure. And that's, that's brain power that could be used to do other things. I mean, the fact that we in 2017 are talking in Hawaii about churches offering themselves open as sanctuaries for people who are fleeing deportation. I lived and worked in Arizona in the early 90s. Just a few years before that there had been a very active sanctuary movement where churches and individuals were taking people who were in fear of being sent back to places that were dangerous for them. I never thought that here in 2017 we'd be having those same discussions again. I really thought that that was a closed chapter of history. And instead of working on family reunification and kind of moving forward, we've taken a huge leap back. And I mean, that's sad for me as an individual but for the people who are directly affected it's really devastating. And for the children who are really affected it's devastating. Oh yeah, tearing families apart. Tearing families apart. People who have been law-abiding citizens in the first sense of the word for a lifetime having their lives destroyed. Right, right. And how does that benefit? How does ripping these people, the local case of the Kona coffee farmer that's gotten actually international attention because of the very powerfully written decision from another Ninth Circuit judge. Unfortunately he couldn't help. Unfortunately he couldn't help but I'm really glad that Jim Stanton pursued that case and I'm really glad that that judge wrote that decision because it's really powerful and it kind of puts back in everyone's face this is what happens. And how, not only for this man but how does taking him away benefit us? And I still has a lot of discretion to whether to affect or to not affect removal orders. I'm never sure on a local level how much pressure there is from above but I'm sure there's quite a bit of pressure from above that even if people at the local level say, you know what, Mr. Stewart, he did a number of DUIs. None of us are flawless in our pasts. Okay, he has his mistakes too. But nothing that really justifies in my mind tearing him away from his family and leaving his kids without a father day to day. There's a morality here. There's a whole ethical world that opposes this sort of thing. Yes. And you, I mean, you've been, activists is maybe, maybe it's the right word. I'm fine with that. She's good with activism, I like that. Claire Hattus is sort of an activist immigration lawyer. She takes these issues very seriously. She represents her clients with great zeal and she sees the larger process and wants to protect people and do the right thing. It's an ethical, moral kind of thing. How does it affect you? You must be kind of in a state over this. And how does it change your practice? Yeah, it personally takes a toll on me. It takes a toll on my husband and my kids. Again, not nearly the kind of toll that it takes on my clients. So I always have to remember that I can try to walk in their shoes. I think I try to do that. But you know, my shoes are not their shoes. I was born with a great deal of moral privilege and opportunity than a lot of my clients. You know, it's really about kind of sustainability and not burning out and finding solidarity, I think, with people who also care about these people the way I do and who will come out and support them in different ways. I can support them by helping them with their legal issues as best I can. But other members in the community, maybe, who don't have the legal background, have come out in support in so many other ways. And that feeling like I'm not at all a lone voice. And we're in this—you know, it's a long struggle. And we have to sustain each other and looking back on kind of the old fighters of past and how they were able to maintain themselves and sustain themselves are what I look at for my examples. I don't have really the luxury of burning out. I have to keep going. And, you know, we had an experience last week that was really powerful where one of my clients had to report for deportation. And we applied for a stay-of-removal and we're waiting to find out what's going to happen. But ICE decided—immigration customs enforcement decided to set a bond on her. And it was $5,000. And that was far more than—she's a single mom of two U.S. citizen children. That was far more than she could pay. And there were a group of 35 or 40 people who had come to support her. And these aren't people who knew her. These are just people who knew enough about her and thought that what was going on was wrong and they wanted to be there and not have her feel alone. And they very quickly raised that $5,000 bond. And they were so happy to do it. People were writing checks for $500, apologizing that it could not be for more. So we have—we really have a lot of love in our community and support for these people. And if you're watching this and if you're interested in doing more, you know, contact me. Contact Harris United Methodist Church has been a leader. Church of the Crossroads has been a leader in this issue. We have a good, strong growing network of immigrant rights activists in Hawaii, thankfully. But aside from paying for bonds, I mean, what can you do if the immigration service is down on these people as a matter of not only these executive orders, but the whole tone of this administration is to go after anybody. 41,000 arrests. And that was somebody passed the word, we want you to arrest more people. Right. That was not these three orders. We want you to arrest more people. Yeah. So we have to resist in many different ways. How do you do that? Well, yeah, I mean— How do you do as a lawyer? Ah. So there are, you know, constitutional challenges that can be brought, like the suit that Hawaii is bringing. We can support our attorney general and say, you know, thank you for this. Continue doing that. That sends a message. That sends a message even to people who aren't affected by this ban that we see immigration and we see diversity as a good thing. It can be done individually in different cases. There are different class actions that are being brought. There are class actions being brought and suits protecting sanctuary city status in other places. So, you know, we need to educate ourselves and learn about these things and try to implement best practices here. So it's both on a very individual level, as far as individuals affected, and it's in a larger kind of global picture. And we've had, you know, resolutions introduced and passed by the City Council supporting our diverse communities and what immigrant—and really resisting Trump policies. And so there's lots and lots of different ways of pushing back. Yeah, and the good news is that the—at least the federal— and probably, well, I would say federal and state judicial systems are fair-minded about this. They're not accepting his policies when there are constitutional issues like this. That's right. That's right. So you can have new confidence that there's somebody who will listen to you when you take a position against his policies. Right, and that helps give us strength to go, you know, another day. Yeah. So, but getting to the—getting to the where this is all going, though. So we have now— Supreme Court wants appeals from the administration on both the Ninth Circuit and the Fourth Circuit. And presumably, the Attorney General, whoever he may be— That's right. It's not clear to me. Right. We'll then, you know, argue the case and, well, take the case up and it'll be resolved at the Supreme Court as to whether these, what do you call it, injunctions against the ban or ban. And that will come up probably in November, the next session, because they're just about to go on their break and they'll be back late October or early November. What do you think will happen? What will happen in the interim first, okay? Presumably, there are injunctions against the enforcement of at least the first and third, maybe all three of those ban executive orders. The status quo is he cannot enforce them, right? Right, right. So, as far as the executive order, the Muslim ban and the refugee ban, people are still coming in, although there might be people who are choosing to go other places. Again, we don't know. So, I think it's really— some of this is just wait and see. There's not much on these issues in the courts that we can do affirmatively accept again to let our governor and attorney general know that we support the actions that Hawaii has taken. You know, it's hard to see how the Supreme Court could rule against this, what the Ninth Circuit did. These aren't super complicated arguments, actually. You know, that there are limits to the president's power. The president clearly exceeded them. And we have a new Supreme Court justice, and we'll just have to wait and see. We'll know more. We'll know more about the use of this ban. Yeah, I'm sorry. I wish I had the crystal ball, but it's very—it's cloudy right now, I don't know. Yeah, but I think there'll be events. I don't think the Supreme Court is completely isolated from the events that take place in the country and the expressions of public opinion about this issue. And I think they will be affected. And my guess would be is that they will affirm both the Ninth Circuit and the Fourth Circuit. I'm knocking wood and hoping that they hear us. I would think so. And then in the meantime, while we're kind of maybe in a wait and see mode on the Supreme Court, we need to be very vigilant as to what's happening in our local communities as far as deportations and law enforcement actions and possible collusion between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement and really have—Hawaii is kind of a tricky state because we have the neighbor islands and we really need to keep our ears to the ground on all the islands. But we form some pretty quick kind of rapid response networks and those networks are growing because more and more people are just totally outraged and to the point of saying, what can I do and really ready to— some of the people who are coming out in support are kind of the old timers, but there's a lot of new people who are, again, just outraged and want to open their hearts and open their pocketbooks to help people in our community. So, again, those networks are growing and people are in it for the long haul. It's normal. It's fine. It gives you a good feeling about the Hawaii diversity and about maybe the country at some level. Yeah, it really represents the best of—you know, some of this represents the worst of humanity and then what we're seeing in Hawaii really counterbalances that to show the best. But it's an issue we didn't have to have. It's a controversy we didn't have to have. No, I mean, there's so many other important— Yeah, it's one of so many controversies that we don't— I mean, we're only talking about immigration. We're not talking about women's rights. We're not talking about environmental rights. You know, and all of those—I think all of those movements that had made so many grounds, healthcare, are all in a—really trying to hold on desperately to the gains that have been made but really hoped to be much further along in advancing the issues. Thank you, Claire. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Dennis. Immigration lawyer, art excellence. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.