CNN One Thing

This is one thing, I'm David Rind, and immigrating to the US was never easy. But now, depending on what country you're from, critics say it's basically impossible.

Anytime you throw a hurdle in what's already a system full of hurdles, it's just gonna get more complicated and difficult for people who are quote unquote trying to do it the right way.

Stick around.

You like spicy or do you like just?

How spicy is it?

Yeah, tamarind so it's sweet and spicy.

Yeah.

'The 24th Somali Mall in Minneapolis is usually bustling. The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is home to the largest population of Somalis in the entire country, and a lot of them come here on a regular basis. It's filled with barbershops, offices, boutiques, and restaurants serving classic Somali dishes like Jibati.

Sure, yes, please.

But when my colleague Rob Kuznia stopped by on Wednesday afternoon, he saw fewer people, empty shops, and a lot more fear.

You see the mall now, people are scared, no one wants to come outside.

I don't want 'em in our country, I'll be honest with you, okay? Somebody would say, Oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want 'em in our country. Their country's no good for a reason. Their country stinks and we don't want 'em in our country. I can say

This was just one day after President Donald Trump went on a xenophobic rant against Somali immigrants. He described them as garbage.

You know, they came from paradise and they said this w isn't paradise. But when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don't want 'em in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.

'Not long after, the Department of Homeland Security had launched a new immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities, what they're calling Operation Metro Surge. Now, according to the US Census Bureau, the vast majority of foreign-born Somalis in Minnesota, 87%, are naturalized citizens. But even those with full legal status, like Kamal Ali, told my colleague Rob they aren't taking any chances.

'People are carrying their passports. I'm not popular. Really? Yes. Citizens that have been here twenty-five, thirty years. I've been here thirty years. I got my passport calling. What do you do? Oh you do? Yeah. Do you normally? No. Wow. What then? I don't want no issue. People have real feelings.

Many Somalis say they feel their entire community is being singled out, demonized. Same goes for Afghans in the US, after an Afghan national was accused of shooting two National Guard troops, one fatally, in Washington, D.C., right before Thanksgiving. And in the wake of that tragedy, President Trump announced he would further tighten the screws on all forms of immigration.

We must now re examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country.

Practically what that means for our clients is it's kind of twofold.

Elisa Taub is an immigration lawyer based in Memphis, Tennessee.

For some clients, it means that applications that were properly at you know filed, they've done everything right. You know, maybe they're seeking an extension of stay on a petition that was already approved, or they're filing for a green card application. Maybe even they have a green card, they're applying for citizenship. Those applications are paused. And there's really no information about what's going to happen, how long it's going to take. So for them, they may be okay. Their status might be okay in the US, but of course, there's a tremendous amount of anxiety about what's going to happen next. For other of our clients, there's been a more practical impact. We've had a client who has a green card, properly applied for citizenship, went for his citizenship interview, passed the interview, and was scheduled to go take the oath of citizenship, where he would actually swear his allegiance to the United States, get his citizenship certificate. And because of his birth in one of the countries that is covered by the travel ban that was issued back in June, his citizenship oath ceremony was canceled. And we have no idea when that's gonna come. And so he

So he had done all the hard stuff, all the vetting, all the paperwork. He just had to go and take the oath, but now that's on hold.

Yep. Wow. And he's not the only one. There are individuals all across the country that have had met that same fate.

Have you ever seen anything like that? Just kind of a blanket pause on all kind of applications? Like, is that a thing that happens?

No, I've not I've never seen anything quite like this at all.

So, what exactly are these policy changes? And what do they say about who the Trump administration really wants in this country? I want to turn to our resident expert on this, CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is here now. So, Priscilla, you and I last spoke as things were coming to a head for the big Border Patrol operation in Chicago. But since then, it seems like the entire landscape of legal immigration in this country has really been flipped on its head after this National Guard shooting in Washington, DC. So, how should we think about where things stand on that front as we approach the end of the year?

Yeah, that shooting that was allegedly done by an Afghan national has certainly brought into the spotlight what the administration was already starting to do on legal immigration. That is to say they were tightening the screws, they were changing policies that were affecting people who were again legally going through the US immigration system. And then they sort of did so full throttle. So that is to say that they have made more moves to make it more difficult for people of certain nationalities to get their immigration benefits, to get their green cards, and to get US citizenship.

Okay, so can you walk me through some of these changes? Like what stands out as most consequential in your mind?

You know, in terms of most consequential, it's a hard question to answer because taken together, it's so remarkable and has ramifications for just about anybody that's going through the system right now. So, for example, the administration paused asylum decisions. That means people who have been going through the whole process to obtain asylum in the United States, they may be able to continue to submit paperwork, but they're not going to get a decision on their case. The halting of immigration applications for nationals of those 19 countries of quote concern. That's that travel ban list from the president. That could affect people who are on the cusp of getting a green card, for example, or of being naturalized to become a U.S. Citizen. The administration has recommended actually to the Department of Homeland Security expanding the travel ban. So instead of 19 countries, having a total of around 30 to 32 countries. So it's a continued cracking down, but it's different because typically we think about the deportation campaign and the immigration arrest happening in the country. But this is this behind the scenes full throttle that has massive ramifications for millions of people in the US. So there's over a million asylum cases that are backlogged. This has been an ongoing issue for multiple administrations. It continues to be one. So that is over a million cases that somewhere in the process are going to be put on pause because the administration's argument is that they need to go back and do additional vetting. What that looks like exactly is still unclear because so much vetting is baked into this process.

Yeah, I can't imagine they weren't doing any vetting at all previously.

Yeah, the Department of Homeland Security has their own sort of checks in place. That is this ongoing vetting. In fact, I spoke to one attorney who told me even people who are the day of walking into their naturalization ceremony, so to become US citizens, there is vetting happening up until that very moment. They're constantly checking to see if anything crops up. So there's certainly a lot of continuous vetting, but it has been an ongoing criticism by the Trump administration of the Biden administration that the predecessors didn't do things correctly and therefore they're essentially going to go back and recheck their homework. But what that recheck looks like when we know that the system has this baked in and has, and that's been the case for years, is still a little fuzzy.

Are you able to kind of describe what it does for someone who has like a case paused and what that does to how they are trying to, you know, go about their day or their lives or or kind of where they're allowed to do that?

So people who are applying for asylum are often allowed to legally work in the United States. So the longer that any sort of paperwork is done on your asylum case, it can start to affect your ability to legally work as you have been doing in the US. That can also happen with other visas. There's one person I always think about when talking about asylum to really underscore to people how long and rigorous this process is. I had spoken to a woman who had claimed asylum under the Obama administration, was still going through it under the first Trump administration, was still going through it under the Biden administration. So she was living in the United States, had been for three different presidents, and still had no resolution on her case. So that's how long these cases can take. So if you pause decisions, it it's just gonna add more time. Now, the attorneys I've spoken with said, look, this was already taking a long time, and there are measures in US law that require that these cases be done in a certain amount of time. So I think there's some question here as to whether there's litigation down the line on this front. But certainly, any time you throw a hurdle in what's already a system full of hurdles, it's just gonna get more complicated and difficult for people who are quote unquote trying to do it the right way.

We gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, Priscilla and I are gonna talk about why critics say the Trump administration is getting more comfortable saying the quiet part out loud. Stick around? As I've been trying to wrap my arms around this story this year, I I keep thinking back to the travel ban during Trump's first term and the outrage that inspired, you know, the scenes of protesters descending on airports across the country. And in the face of that and a bunch of legal challenges, Trump eventually backed off. But here we are in 2025, and the list of countries on this second travel ban seems to be growing, along with all these other restrictions and pauses. So was was this the goal all along for the administration for it to be this far reaching when it comes to people trying to come here legally?

'Well, the travel ban, the first go-around, sort of under the first Trump administration, there's a lot to be remembered of what how that all unfolded, right? Because it just sort of happened out of the blue and and the customs officers at airports didn't know what to do, and so it was all very messy. But there were multiple iterations. This was litigated, this went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Essentially it was decided that the administration does have a lot of leeway on this. The administration, as soon as they came back into power, immediately set up the travel ban again. The administration, or rather, the officials working in this administration have been preparing for the reshaping and overhauling of the US immigration system for years. We saw glimpses of that and we saw some of it take effect in the first Trump administration. But then over the last four years, they were still working on this under the Biden administration. Of course, they were not in power, so those policies were not taking effect, but the crafting of those policies was starting to happen. And so what we're seeing now is the culmination of all of that work and this belief, well, there's a bipartisan consensus that the system as it is now does not work. But the Trump administration has really put a squeeze on who should be considered to be allowed to be in the US and who's not. And I think an example of that is the refugee admissions process, which has been, by all accounts, has been grinded to a halt, except for white South Afrikaners.

That's the only group that is allowed to come through this program?

Right, largely. I think there are still some exceptions for a few others, but that is indicative of how they think about who is allowed to come into the US and who is not.

Yeah. And I wanna ask about that because does the way that Trump and his administration talk about all this have an effect on the American public? Because we think of Trump saying shithole countries during his first term, but that was behind closed doors. We only learned about that through reporting. This time Trump is calling Somali immigrants garbage during a cabinet meeting. Steven Miller is writing about, quote, importing societies on social media. But, you know, unlike the first term, there's no expectation that Republicans will condemn the comments in any major way. And even though a lot of the public, you know, they say we're offended, we're appalled, but they're definitely not surprised that they're hearing that kind of stuff from the administration. Like I guess I'm wondering has going after immigrants in this way consistently for ten years now kind of shaped the way that the public kind of thinks about this stuff?

Well, and the rhetoric over the campaign trail was that there was an invasion at the border. Invasion was a very intentional word. I think the memories are still fresh among the American public about what happened over the last four years under the Biden administration, which we covered extensively, and that was that there was a crisis along the US southern border. And the Trump administration and the Trump campaign at the time framed this in a way that was a threat to the US because of who was crossing and the way that the situation appeared and sometimes was mismanaged. And so the American public, according to polling, has still generally really backed the idea of mass deportation. But they start to fracture when you ask them how it's being done. So I think about, for example, I went to Dural and Florida, which is affectionately called Dorozuela because there are so many Venezuelans there. And Venezuelans did buoy, the ones that are US citizens, of course, did buoy the president's election into the White House. They were really surprised when the administration was coming after the people who did it right. I mean, for them, they had been sold the goods that it was going to be going after public safety and national security threats. And then when their neighbors who were here on a temporary basis were getting targeted for deportation, they were stunned. And we haven't even talked about the economic. Impact of this, which I think we're still probably in the early phases of, but even if your company does hire people who are legally in the United States who are US citizens but are afraid to show up or nervous about something that's happening in their community and aren't, that's gonna affect your bottom line. And so how does that affect things down the road? I mean, there's just so many, there's still so many questions here because we haven't yet met a year and people are still digesting what's happened over the course of this year.

Yeah, I mean that's just kinda what I wanted to end on. Like how lasting could this damage be? It it's not like this process, and I'm talking about immigration writ large has ever been smooth or easy for anyone involved in it. And it Congress can never seem to find any agreement on how to improve it, even incrementally. It just seems like moving a boulder up a hill. So where where do you see this going from here?

This will be very lasting. It's hard to know how lasting because there were a lot of changes done by the Trump administration in the first term, but then when the pandemic hit, it made everything a little more muddled, right? Because there were some systems that were shut down because of the pandemic. So it was hard to measure what was because of the Trump administration that was lasting versus the pandemic. But certainly the changes that are happening now will have lasting effects. There are also people who are being fired, immigration judges, for example. So that will have an effect on the immigration courts, even if they backfill those jobs with other people.

Yeah, say more about that. Why is the Trump administration getting rid of immigration judges if they want to conduct this deportation effort?

Well, they're not telling them that's the problem. So we reported on the purge of immigration judges. I spoke to multiple who were fired, who got two sentences in their emails saying they were terminated effectively, some who were in the middle of proceedings when it happened. So having covered this and talking to sources, there's certainly a reshaping of the immigration court system that's happening. It's so important because immigration judges do decide who gets to stay in the United States and who doesn't. So there was speculation that it was because some of these judges had higher grant rates, therefore allowing people to stay in the US, but the administration has not said that that is the case. And there was nothing in their termination letters that stated that as the cause. But all of this is to say that there are so many things happening beyond the immigration arrest that people see on the news that will have lasting effects on this system. And unfortunately, that is just the state of US immigration right now, where it is consistently a patchwork of policies decided by the executive branch, which leads to whiplash every four years, if not whiplash within the course of a few years, or even a few days, or even a few months, or even in a day. So unless Congress does pass immigration reform, this is the reality for people going through the US immigration system for the foreseeable.

Well, Priscilla, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Even as he demonizes immigrants from other countries, President Trump continues to angle for a Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, the building housing the US Institute for Peace now has Trump's name on it, even after his administration gutted the agency earlier this year. And on Friday, Trump was awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, which critics say was created by the Soccer Federation solely to appease Trump ahead of next summer's World Cup. That's all for us today. We will be back on Sunday. In the meantime, follow the show so a new episode pops in right away. And if you like it, just tell a friend, tell a family member about it. Word of mouth really helps us grow. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you later.