- I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Tonight on "Here and Now," a first look at President Trump's
immigration agenda.
Later a look ahead to Governor Walker's welfare plan that ties
work to FoodShare benefits.
It's "Here and Now" for January 27.
- Funding for "Here and Now" is provided, in part, by Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.
- In a flurry of executive orders this week, President
Trump acted on his campaign promise to take on immigration
policy, including his battle cry to build the wall.
- We have to build the wall.
We have to stop drugs from pouring in.
We have to stop people from just pouring into our country.
We have no idea where they're from.
And I campaigned on the wall and it's very important.
But that wall will cost us nothing.
- A first look tonight at President Trump's executive
order to build a wall along the border with Mexico and his call
beefing up border patrol and immigration officers to deport
undocumented immigrants and strip so-called sanctuary cities
of federal grant funding.
In the midst of this, Milwaukee County is considering
reaffirming a resolution there that protects immigrants in a
"safe county," urging the sheriff to not deputize local
law enforcement as immigration agents.
Reaction and response now from Christine Neumann-Ortiz,
Executive Director of Voces de La Frontera, an immigration
rights organization in Milwaukee.
Thanks for being here.
- Thank you for the invitation.
- What is your reaction to President Trump's executive
order to build the wall and beef up immigration enforcement?
- It's not surprising, but I appreciate the opportunity to be
on this show because I think people really need to be
informed about the reality of the consequences.
As you mentioned, the 25th, the day the executive orders were
signed, there was the Milwaukee County resolution, a public
hearing that really affirms antidiscrimination policies and
affirms the culture and policies that value our diversity that
strengthens -- calls for strengthening immigrant
protections and for other groups as well.
And I think it's very timely because one of the things that
was being said is, "Oh, this isn't going to happen." And the
reality is on that same day those executive orders included
some of those pieces that we speak to.
One of those pieces, of course, is the fact that he's
threatening, bullying local government by saying, "Oh, we're
going to pull federal funding if you don't--
refuse to be an arm of immigration."
If local law enforcement and local jails
don't function as an arm of immigration.
So he's promoting 287G, which means that local law enforcement
would be turned into immigration agents.
And he basically stripped all of the enforcement priorities that
were won under the previous administration by the immigrant
rights movement, which has broad support, which included that
only people who have been -- where there's a judge's federal
warrant for probable cause.
So you've been convicted of a serious crime, would you be
transferred over to immigration from a county jail.
All of those things have been stripped, and basically if you
are undocumented, you are now a target for deportation.
So the county ordinance was really affirming that we do not
want to enter into any of these kind of agreements and we
believe that these kind of enforcement priorities
are important because you should not--
we should not be breaking up families.
We should not be racially profiling people and driving
without a license, taking away people's constitutional rights
to a fair trial, should not be a part and parcel
of any kind of community.
- Let me just jump in and read for our viewers what Sheriff
David Clarke has to say about this.
He says, the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office will continue
to do everything we can that is codified in both state and
federal statutes and in the overarching concept of the rule
of law in our nation to assist in addressing the reality that
there have been terrible crimes of violence perpetrated in our
country by illegal aliens and that the federal government is
right and just to seek their deportation.
The agents of ICE, just like any of their law enforcement
brethren, will continue to enjoy full access to the needed county
facilities to perform their lawful duties.
So that flies in the face of what you would be seeking
in Milwaukee County.
- He's a total hypocrite.
Right now, Voces de La Frontera has a lawsuit, because one of
the things that the immigrant rights movement won in November
of 2014, after hundreds of local and state governments created
these enforcement priorities.
So only after you've been convicted and there's a judge's
warrant, will a county jail turn you over to immigration,
otherwise they're not interested in this, like broad blanket
approach, which has included even U.S.
citizens being handed over to immigration.
And people who for a minor infraction such as driving
without a license, you know, or now it could be a speeding
ticket or something that happened ten years ago
would be handed over.
So what he has -- just to clarify what the lawsuit is
about, we do not know if Sheriff Clarke is complying with these
federal enforcement priorities because he has refused to let
the Wisconsin people know if he's actually complying.
There are also four people dead in the county jail and he's
refused to take responsibility.
- We just have about 30 seconds left, so I wanted to ask you,
Speaker Paul Ryan is saying that "dreamers," the undocumented
immigrants brought to the U.S.
as children here will not have the rug pulled out from under
them.
Does that give you some comfort, those words?
- Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
Because those "dreamers" came here at a young age.
They love their parents.
They love their uncles and their aunts.
They love their brothers and their sisters.
And we have a broken immigration system that has trapped millions
of families in a mixed immigration status who every day
live under threat of deportation.
You bet those kids who were crying after the election,
elementary school children because they feared their
parents, they were going to come home and their parents were
going to be gone.
You bet this is not a consolation.
We need federal immigration reform that is just.
And that's the best thing that Congressman Ryan can do if he is
sincere about helping these families who contribute
economically and in so many ways to our churches and our schools
and deserve equality.
And we deserve policies at a local, state and federal level
that affirm civil rights and constitutional rights
protections.
And that's what we're being threatened with at the federal
level.
- All right.
- I encourage people to pass similar ordinances and to get
involved to make sure that we hold the line on what our values
are.
- We need to leave it there.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, thank you very much.
- Thank you.
- President Trump released another executive order this
week aimed at immigration.
This one indefinitely blocks Syrian refugees from entering
the United States and suspends immigration for at least 30 days
from predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and
Africa, while authorities work to toughen screening procedures.
All of this happening as a Syrian refugee living and
working in Middleton waits for word on his application for
asylum that he filed nearly three years ago.
We visited him last winter when he was certain he'd be granted
that asylum any day.
He says the waiting has been excruciating and new executive
actions around Syrian refugees add little comfort.
- It was I think the first six months was the hardest thing.
Especially every day when you go outside to open the mailbox, you
know.
- Mousa Aldashash had his interview for asylum with an
immigration officer in Chicago in May of 2014.
- And the worst part was like when the officer told me it was
going to take the decision three weeks.
So, you know, every day, every single day after those three
weeks was like every time I go to open the mailbox, you know,
putting my hand in my heart.
It was very tough.
- He says at first he thought just telling the officer he fled
from Syria would be all the words needed to explain why he
sought asylum.
- People killed.
Cities destroyed.
- Aldashash and his family escaped the death and
destruction in the spring of 2013, driving seven days and
switching cars three times through danger zones to reach
the Turkish border and then on to a flight to Chicago.
He described the harrowing escape to us when we first met.
- I took my wife and my daughter from house.
- And you said that you had to take a really circuitous route.
- To avoid ISIS, avoid Assad regime.
- Aldashash said he studied business in college and worked
for a global construction company in his home country.
But he says he knew he had to get out to save his family
when bombs destroyed their home.
[speaking Arabic]
Aldashash escaped with his wife, baby daughter, his parents and a
nephew.
His brother had resettled in Middleton years earlier and so
the family moved to be near him.
Since Mousa and his wife Khlood arrived, they had another baby,
a little boy.
His parents were granted asylum based on his application, but
why the wait for him?
- It's just going to take time of checking the background.
But for me, the problem is -- like I don't know how these
things work.
I'm not worried about...
- His lawyer says while her client has nothing to hide,
because of the destruction of the country, the U.S.
government has a terribly difficult time, she says,
obtaining the information they need to assess the security
risks or absence thereof in the backgrounds of refugees coming
from Syria.
So the wait could be based on careful vetting, with calls for
even more scrutiny.
In a letter congratulating Donald Trump on his election,
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker specifically asked the new
president for more input in the refugee resettlement process for
refugees from countries with terrorist ties, saying, quote,
we would like our state to have a broader role in determining
how many refugees and from which countries until we are
comfortable with the vetting process that is being utilized
to screen these individuals.
- I think really for us we want to make sure Homeland Security
has an aggressive and appropriate vetting process.
That we have an idea who's coming in, where they're coming
from, how long they're anticipating being here.
- Aldashash and his family hope to stay permanently.
They currently have temporary protected status, meaning Syria
is designated as too dangerous for deporting people.
Aldashash in no way expects that.
He has never even considered that he won't be granted asylum.
- Oh, my god.
I never -- I never thought about that.
You just say the words, like, you know.
- He has work papers and is employed.
He is mastering English and soon his daughter will be in school.
They have lived in Middleton for nearly four years.
- I just start to build my life.
I start to live like normal, you know, everything's going on,
even if I'm still like -- I want to feel like everything, I'm
related to this land.
- He says as he rebuilds his life in this new land, he
doesn't often allow himself to look back, because he says, in
his home country there's nothing left but the pain.
Senator Tammy Baldwin's office made an inquiry with immigration
officials on behalf of Mousa Aldashash because of his concern
over the delay.
The Chicago asylum office responded that it is actively
processing the case, but has to perform additional review
resulting in the longer processing time.
For more on people from Syria, the current vetting process and
refugees from other countries, we sat down with Scott Gordon,
journalist with WisContext who had some reporting on that topic
this week.
We started by asking about current numbers of Syrian
refugees in the U.S.
and Wisconsin.
What do we know about the current numbers of Syrians
coming into the United States as refugees?
- Well, in 2016 the U.S.
actually surpassed that goal of 10,000 by quite a bit.
More than 15,000 refugees from Syria were admitted into the
United States.
In Wisconsin, so far it's only been about 130, 135 people.
So not a lot resettled here yet, though that obviously could well
change in the future.
- More Syrian refugees continue to be resettled in Wisconsin,
I mean, as we speak. - Yes.
The last time I pulled up the State Department numbers on
that, in January, it was about 11 more people had entered the
state from Syria.
- Now, we know that President Trump and Governor Walker voiced
strong concerns about the vetting process.
What can you tell us about that vetting process?
- It is a long and extensive vetting process.
How it starts is someone applies to the UN's refugee agency.
There's some screening that goes on there.
The UN says that only about 1% of the world's refugee
population even makes it past that first step.
And then on the American side, the State Department and various
federal intelligence agencies and other agencies, you know,
put the refugees through a pretty extensive screening
process.
- In fact, would it be described
as quite a stringent process?
- Yes. And there are extra screening steps
for people from Syria specifically.
- Meanwhile, though, you're kind of digging deep into
another area in this reporting and that has to do with a larger
number of refugees coming in from a country in Southeast
Asia.
Tell us about that.
- That would be Burma, and the crisis in Burma has been going
on a lot longer than the crisis in Syria.
And there are a lot of parallels there where you essentially have
a government relentlessly attacking its own people.
You know, in Burma there's been strife among different ethnic
groups and religious groups for centuries.
It's essentially a country with a lot of -- with multiple civil
wars and multiple campaigns by the state that essentially
amount to genocide or something very close.
- So how many refugees are there from Burma
in the United States?
- More than 166,000.
So they're one of the top five largest
refugee groups in the country.
- And in Wisconsin?
- In Wisconsin, a little over 5,000.
So they're currently a much bigger refugee group here than
Syrians.
- And where are they mostly settled here?
- Mostly Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Madison and a smaller number in
Sheboygan and Eau Claire.
There's also some parallels with the Syrians in that one of the
groups coming out of Burma, the Rohingya, are mostly a Muslim
group and I spoke with someone from the State Crime Initiative
at Queen Mary University in London who is concerned about
how anti-Muslim rhetoric from Donald Trump and from other
figures in the United States will affect them.
- The term "alternative facts" has become part of the political
lexicon this week, compliments of Trump spokesperson Kellyanne
Conway.
We take a closer look now at the ongoing tug-of-war over the
truth between the White House press corps and President Trump.
Here to help is UW-Madison School of Journalism Professor
Michael Wagner.
Thanks for being here.
- My pleasure.
- What was your reaction when you heard Kellyanne Conway
describe as alternate facts the crowd numbers that Donald Trump
was talking about at his inauguration?
- Well I thought that was a pretty ridiculous thing to say.
It is completely clear to anybody with eyes that one crowd
was larger than the other.
Is it important that more people went to Barack Obama's first
inaugural than Donald Trump's?
No, it isn't.
But is it important that people who work for the president of
the United States and the president himself can say, "This
group was larger than that group" and be honest about it?
Yes.
That's important to be able to do.
It's the kind of thing that when she said that I think it
decreased the amount of trust that the news media and the
public had in the information the White House is putting out.
- When is an alternative fact a lie?
- When it's not a fact.
You can have alternative facts.
You can say, well, if we're looking at education numbers and
say we might look at test scores as one fact and we might look at
graduation rates as another fact.
And they might lead us to different conclusions.
But here the way she was using alternative fact was to say what
we're going to do is we're going to cut off part of the
photograph and keep evidence away from you that reveals the
truth.
That is not a fact.
That's a lie.
- So there's a big difference between that and cherry-picking,
which politicians do all the time to make their case.
- Sure.
Politicians will regularly pick the best numbers available to
make their policies or performance in office look good.
This is a different kind of thing.
- So if this is to persist, what is the responsibility on
the part of the press corps or all journalists in covering
this administration?
- I would say relentless aggressive truth-telling,
as specific as possible.
And so one thing that a lot of reporting about say the size of
the inaugural crowd has done has tried to point out, so we have
the photographs, which tell a clear story, but there are other
ways to look at the number of viewers of the inaugural in
terms of who watched on television, who streamed it on
the internet and reporters have done a good job of telling those
stories as well.
But I think what's really important here is for
journalists to be relentless and aggressive in pursuing the
verifiable truth.
On some of these scores
they've done a good job in the early weeks.
At other times the administration gets away with
things that they shouldn't.
- Because one of your concerns, if they will talk about
alternative facts that have to do with this thing that was
demonstrably false and kind of small as in crowd numbers, what
are your concerns about using this kind of method on the part
of Kellyanne Conway or others on larger issues?
- Well, the first concern is what else are you going to be
willing to lie about and are those going to be more important
things, more consequential things for the country.
The other thing is that it really diminishes our trust in
our government.
It also diminishes trust in the news media because the
administration is attacking the news media relentlessly.
One of President Trump's advisors, Steve Bannon said that
the news media are the opposition party, which is a
remarkable and incorrect thing to say about the role of the
news media in a democracy.
So one worry is about diminished trust in our institutions.
If we can't trust what facts are, if we can't agree on what
the truth is and what the truth isn't, it becomes very difficult
to successfully live in a republican democracy.
- Now, another thing that Donald Trump has pushed is this
idea that up to five million people committed voter fraud in
this past election and, you know, people have said this is
false.
It isn't the same as those photographs, but experts and
even other members of his party say that this is false.
But do you think that he's using that kind of falsehood to push
policy?
It's like a different thing than his, quote, obsession with
crowds and ratings?
- I think it's partially to push policy, especially related
to some of his ideas about immigration, whether it's
building a wall between the United States and Mexico or
preventing refugees from countries that are in difficult
shape from entering the United States.
So there's some policy about it.
But it's also -- one thing that he does to divert attention from
other things.
If there's negative news, we usually get a really amazing
statement that ends up not passing the truth test
from the president.
We got it on the campaign trail and we're getting it now
that he's in the White House.
- So we have to watch closely. - We certainly do.
- Michael Wagner, thanks very much.
- My pleasure.
- As we pivot from federal to state politics this story broke
today.
A federal panel that last November called Wisconsin's
Assembly boundaries "an unconstitutional gerrymander"
this morning ordered state Republican law makers to redraw
and approve district maps by November first 2017.
The state is expected to request the U.S.
Supreme Court to take that case.
For tonight's look ahead, Governor Scott Walker's welfare
plan that he'll detail in his next state budget early next
month.
He calls it "Wisconsin Works for Everyone," taking off of former
Governor Tommy Thompson's "Wisconsin Works" program of the
1990s, which mandated work or employment training in return
for a benefit check and child care.
The new plan would require parents who receive FoodShare or
food stamp benefits to work 80 hours a month.
Governor Thompson toured the state with Scott Walker this
week to announce the plan.
Tommy Thompson joins us next week to discuss it.
Tonight we're joined by Milwaukee Democratic State
Senator LaTonya Johnson who opposes the plan.
Thanks very much for being here.
- Thank you for having me.
- What is your opposition to requiring parents of school-aged
children receiving FoodShare to work 80 hours a month?
- My objection to this is the sanctions.
There is no way to impose a sanction or a decrease in
benefits to the parents and not have that affect the family.
And my biggest concern are those children.
A sanction to the parents seems like it's going to be a small
deal, but it's not.
My concern is what does that look like for those children who
are already living in poverty who have no control over who
they're born to or if their parents are going to get it
right and be able to maintain the requirements that are
required?
- Now, I understand that the maximum benefit of FoodShare for
a family of four would be like $650.
Any ideas on how that sanction would work?
Let's say it's a family of four and they are receiving $650.
- From my understanding, if a parent is -- if a family is
receiving $650, say that that cut to benefits is a $150 cut.
That means those benefits are decreased by $150.
That is that parent'-- that family's allotment
for that month.
And so there's no way to isolate that parent who doesn't
participate in this welfare to work program from the benefits
of the children.
It decreases the entire allotment for the family.
- The 2013 law that required adults with no children to work
in return for FoodShare resulted in 21,000 finding work and
64,000 losing their benefits.
Would you expect to see a similar pattern with any new
such requirement?
- Well, the part that concerns to me about those able-bodied
individuals who didn't have children is that 21,000
individuals found work.
But there's no distinction in how many of those individuals
actually have real jobs and how many of those individuals were
actually working for their benefit.
Because that 21,000 number includes both parties.
So it includes those who are required to work for their food
stamp benefits.
So the only payment that they're getting is their food stamps,
plus those individuals who found jobs.
And for those 64,000 individuals who are no longer on the
program, there's no follow-through to find out where
those individuals are, if they were able to find work or if
they're just living in poverty unable to feed themselves.
- The governor says that there are 7300 FoodShare households
reporting no income and, again, recipients can either work or
enroll in job training.
Why isn't that beneficial to unemployed recipients?
- We all want individuals to work and to find a job and to
become economically self-sufficient.
So requiring those individuals to work is not the issue.
The issue is imposing sanction on those families that would
result in those children sinking further into poverty.
And that's the concern.
We want to make sure that those children do not lose meals
because their parents are not participating in the program.
- All right.
Very briefly, with less than 30 seconds left, another prong of
the governor's plan would require people receiving housing
vouchers to work, and he believes these changes prevent
people from settling into assistance.
What do you think about that part of the plan?
- I think that that part of the plan, the housing authority has
a wait list for low-income families who are eligible who
can't get on the system.
I think what we see is a war on those individuals that are
living in poverty.
That somehow living in poverty in this state is your fault.
So we're taking a by any means necessary approach to punish
those individuals who are low income rather than finding
solutions that will work for everybody and will lead those
families to economic self-sufficiency.
- Senator LaTonya Johnson, thanks very much for joining us.
- Thank you.
- Now for a quick look at other news of the week, including
ballooning costs for highway construction in Wisconsin.
A new state audit shows 16 major projects will cost $3 billion
more than original estimates due to inflation, inflation
not accounted for.
The report also downgraded the percentage of state highways in
good condition from 53% to 41%.
And that's our program for tonight.
I'm Frederica Freyberg.
Have a great weekend.
- Funding for "Here and Now" is provided, in part,
by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.