Mo Goldman on ICE targeting DACA

Thank you Ali Hart • عَلي هارت, "Sushi"(Jen) of MIND HAVEN, Rarelightmare, PJ Schuster, Stephanie Munoz, and many others for tuning into my live video with Mo Goldman! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Immigration attorney Mo Goldman drops by for an update on DACA.

Transcript:

Jenn: Well, welcome, everybody. This is…Hi, Anna Maria. This is Borderland Talk, and we are with Mo Goldman. He is an immigration attorney from Tucson, Arizona. He is my buddy. (laughs) We hang out together when I’m in Tucson, when he’s in San Diego. Mo also ran for Congress, but the Democrats didn’t choose him because they’re losers.(laughs) Yeah. Yeah, they made a bad choice, but, you know, we’ll support their candidate.

Mo: We all make bad choices in life.

Jenn: Yeah, we all make bad choices, but you would have been a great congressman, Mo.

Mo: I mean, I made the choice of being an immigration attorney. (laughs)

Jenn: There you go.

Mo: In retrospect, that was an insane life decision. (laughs)

Jenn: Well, I mean, the other thing about Mo that’s important to know is that he’s the grandson of Holocaust survivors. And he has written a book. Please give the name of the book, Mo.

Mo: It’s “The Last Survivor, Lessons from the Past and the Dying Dream of Freedom.”

Jenn: And in that… I always make him say it because it’s such a long title. And sometimes he forgets it as well. But it documents what his grandmother and grandfather went through. And then I also believe, too, when your grandfather passed away, she remarried, correct?

Mo: Yes.

Jenn: And that man was a survivor as well.

Mo: He was also a survivor, yeah.

Jenn: Yeah.

Mo: We had a litany of survivors in my family.

Jenn: Yeah, but it’s especially interesting because then your mother became an immigration attorney, you and your sister are immigration attorneys. And then to be going through this, and I think what the book does is, through Mo’s eyes as an immigration attorney and knowing his history, his Jewish history, the Holocaust history that directly affected his family. I mean, he wouldn’t have been here if his grandparents hadn’t survived. And then seeing what we’re going through today, I recommend picking that up. And you can order that online.

But today, Mo, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to invite you on and talk about what’s going on over there in Tucson. You have several, a handful, maybe less than a handful of clients who are DACA clients. And that’s, what is that, Deferred Action?

Mo: for Childhood Arrivals.

Jenn: For Childhood Arrivals. And so DACA is for children who were brought here, very young, through no choice of their own. And it was something that the Obama administration did. It’s kind of a temporary immigration status, I would say, right? It doesn’t give them full protection as we’re finding out now. And what we’ve seen because ICE is lazy and they’re not really going after the worst of the worst and they’re going after children and they’re going after people who are here legally. And DACA is one of those groups.

Last week, I believe it was last week, the Tucson Sentinel, or within the last two weeks, came out with a report about you guys had a press conference, and three of your clients that you’re going to talk about, Carla Toledo, Roberto Navarro Bocanegra and Myndy Valencia Sanchez. And at that press conference, which I was very impressed by, you had Tucson Mayor Regina Romero. So it’s good to know that your mayor supports you all. City Council Member Lane Santa Cruz and then also Congressional Representative Adelita Grijalva. And what she stated I thought was pretty interesting, she said that she feels these attacks - because obviously ICE is claiming that they’re going after the worst of the worst, but they’re not - they’re going after people who are trying to do it the legal way and using you and paying you to file immigration documents with USCIS, which is the legal way to do it - she stated that she feels that ICE is trying to sow anxiety among immigrants so that they do not apply or they just give up and self-deport and leave. I agree with her. I think that’s correct. And the three clients that you’re going to talk about today kind of demonstrate that.

Mo: Exactly.

Jenn: Before we went live, we were talking because I said in the article when I was congratulating you about Karla Toledo that you won and you said, well, not really. (laughs) I didn’t catch that in the article or it wasn’t in the article. So you did manage to get her DACA renewed. So that’s good. So she has her legal documents. But now please tell us what is going on with Ms. Karla.

Mo: So Karla Toledo, just to give a little bit of background, she has DACA. She came to the United States when she was one year old. She’s now 31 years of age. So she’s been in the United States for 30 years. She graduated high school. She went to post-secondary and she’s been just a great, great community member. ICE showed up at her house on May 18th of this year. They didn’t have a judicial warrant. They, it appears showed up thinking they were going after somebody else who did not live in that home. She was living there with her husband. And then when she resisted and said, I want to see a judicial warrant. They wouldn’t leave and eventually coerced her out and she ended up getting arrested and detained by the ICE agents. There were five of them. Thankfully, there was surveillance camera footage that caught a lot of what occurred. Through some public pressure and media attention, we were able to get her released from Eloy Detention Center a few days later.

And then ICE put her case in front of the immigration court. They charged her as being deportable despite the fact that she has DACA protection. They also lied in that - I know this is a big shock to everyone. Their spokesperson lied about her, accusing her of being a criminal, accusing her of entering the country illegally, even though the last time she entered with a permit called advance parole. Just to try and, of course, smear her name in the public eye and to continue to spread the propaganda that all these immigrants are horrible, vile criminals.

So this is where it gets really weird. In early June, I think it was around June 3rd, ICE agreed to dismiss her deportation case. And then a day later, after the judge ordered dismissal, they reinstated, they recharged her with a new deportation proceeding with her husband. And their reasoning behind it was, we’d rather you guys both be deported as a couple, as a family unit.

Jenn: Well, how kind of you. (laughs)

Mo: Yeah, very generous.

Jenn: Bullshit. (laughs)

Mo: And so, thankfully, Karla is... she epitomizes courage. She has been very outspoken in spite of the fact that she’s in this perilous position. She’s done media appearances. She goes out... she supports a community. She has become a rock and a pillar to a lot of the other people who are facing removal who have very similar backgrounds. So I am so grateful in a weird way that I got to meet her through this situation.

Jenn: Yeah.

Mo: You know, the weird kind of juxtaposition that you and I were talking about is that while her deportation case, which is still ongoing in the immigration court, is going on, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, USCIS, approved her DACA extension for another two years.

Jenn: Well, what’s the basis of the deportation? Don’t they have to have a, this is the cause for us to bring a charge?

Mo: Yeah. The Department of Homeland Security does not – so when Obama introduced DACA, the idea behind DACA was that the government would use their prosecutorial discretion in a much broader way than just on case – I mean, every case is evaluated separately, but it gave a large swath of individuals if they met certain requirements including being here since June 15, 2007, had to be present in the U.S. on the date that the program was announced, which was June 15, 2012, they have to undergo a vetting process. They put it all out there.

Jenn: They jump through a lot of hurdles to even get that DACA, right?

Mo: Yeah, and they’re exposing their undocumented status. So there was always going to be a risk that this could end up backfiring, you know, and people knew that. But the allure of it is most of these folks, if not all of them, well, most of them, were never able to have a legal work authorization card or a social security number or any sort of semblance of a life so that they could move forward with with something. You know, so they’re not just sitting on their asses all the time. You know, not being able to function in our society. And it’s better for our economy, it’s better for our streets, just having people out there who are licensed drivers, who are insured. You know, there are economic and societal benefits to it. So the problem with DACA, however, is that it is not a permanent legal status. And so that’s where we get this like real bizarre scenario arise where you have people who have DACA protection, which is supposed to protect them from being deported. And now ICE is saying, well, we can still deport them. It makes no sense.

Jenn: Do you think it eventually, I mean, because - so knowing the culture of the agencies and stuff, it feels like to me, and I see this with the Biden CBP One app that was used to bring in people legally during his administration. Do you feel it’s that same kind of thing where they’re like, well, we just don’t recognize it. We don’t like it.

Mo: Yeah, it’s exactly what it is.

Jenn: In our mind, it’s not legal.

Mo: Yeah, but it’s just a bizarre scenario when you’re getting approved on DACA and then on the flip side, they’re trying to deport these people. It’s like mixed messages.

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Jenn: Yeah.

Mo: And I’m not saying... I’d rather have mixed messages than them saying, no, you’re not going to get DACA. But I was shocked when the DACA got approved. In fact, I did not want it to come out in the media because I was worried that some you know, nefarious-minded individual suddenly makes a call and says, okay, let’s get rid of her DACA now and try to revoke it. That could always happen. But we knew that the media was aware that her DACA was going to expire July 21st. And so then they were going to start asking around. And sure enough, on July 21st, both Karla and I started getting contacted. Hey, what’s going on with your DACA? And at that point, it had already been a few weeks since her DACA renewal came through. And so we had to tell people what happened.

So, I don’t know. It’s a weird—the whole thing is just freaking bizarre. I mean, none of it makes any sense. And these are the individuals who are the easiest targets of this administration. Them, people with temporary protected status, people with pending asylum claims.

Jenn: Unaccompanied children.

Mo: Unaccompanied children. They’re just going after anybody that they can, you know, get their hands on. And, I mean, one of the reasons and a big reason why is, and we all know this, there’s economic gain to private prisons. And it justifies their investment of billions of dollars in this institution.

I wrote about this earlier today that on Monday I was in the Eloy Detention Center, and I witnessed something that really triggered me where after court. When you walk into Eloy, there’s this narrow corridor and it’s surrounded by on both sides, visitation areas. And when you walk through there, it’s all just windows and you can see the faces, the blank faces of people whose souls have been sucked out of them because of what our government’s doing. And they’ll stare at you and you just, you know, it’s disheartening. But when I was coming back from court, these two women were mopping the floor in their prison garb. And there was a young man who looked like he could be their son who was monitoring them, working for CoreCivic, the organization that owns and runs Eloy Detention Center. And they had mopped the floor, and then I felt really weird stepping over into the mopped-up area that they had just finished doing. I felt bad. But then it occurred to me, this is nothing different than the concentration camps that my ancestors had to work in. And the conditions, while maybe not exactly the same— are very similar in a sense. And the fact that they have these undocumented people, probably undocumented, doing labor, which they consider voluntary labor, so that they can pay them a dollar per day to do, is a fucking, I’m sorry, it’s a slap in the face.

Jenn: Even if they do pay them. I mean, most of them are saying that they don’t pay. And now we’re finding out that the government is charging them for their custody. So when they get back in their country, now they want to send these bounty hunters after them to get money from them for that.

Mo: Exactly.

Jenn: I don’t even know how that’s supposed to work, but whatever.

Mo: But what about the fact that they... all right, so... so CoreCivic and GeoGroup, I think, combined $1.4 billion in revenue in the spring of this year.

Jenn: Yep, in one quarter.

Mo: Okay, 1.4. And the, I think, CEO of CoreCivic, Mr. Swindle, which is quite the name, Mr. Swindle said that it means it’s the equivalent of about $300,000 per bed that they profit off. That’s what he said on their call with their investors. Now, here’s a question: if we were so concerned about Americans having jobs, why are they not hiring Americans to clean their facilities at a living wage then?

Jenn: Because then they wouldn’t have that much profit.

Mo: It’s slave labor. I mean, it’s fucked up. I watched that and I looked at these two women and just... it’s so disheartening. Every time I go into that place and walk out, I feel like a piece of my own soul has been carved out of me. It’s terrible.

Jenn: It’s got to be really hard as an attorney, too, because I’m sure they recognize you as an attorney, do they not? And they’re like, there’s an attorney here.

Mo: Yeah.

Jenn: But you can’t take on every case, obviously.

Mo: No, and that’s a problem. There’s only a handful of lawyers doing this work. There’s mental health issues that come with taking these cases on where lawyers burn out really quick because of it. I think the ones that burn out faster are the ones who care more, obviously. They don’t see it just as like a dollar sign or some sort of profit gain. Obviously, you have to run an office and pay bills and so on. But you know, when you look at the humanity and dealing with this stuff, terrible.

Jenn: So what’s next for her? She has a hearing?

Mo: So for Karla, they scheduled a hearing next year for her and her husband. I filed a motion to terminate based off of the fact that she has DACA. ICE would not agree to join me in that motion to terminate, which... it’s a big shocker there. And we’ll see. All we can do is fight these cases as best we can.

Jenn: So she’s kind of living in limbo waiting to see what’s going to happen. God, that’s like waiting to find out what, you know, like you have to go take a medical test.

Mo: I know.

Jenn: You’re like, oh, you know.

Mo: So the good news about Karla is she doesn’t sulk. Although I haven’t seen her, you know, sulking at all. She got right back out there and started helping other dreamers and DACA recipients. And so that, you know, brings a little full circle to what happened last week with this press conference.

Before I knew of Karla, who I met in May, I had a client named Roberto Navarro Bocanegra. And Roberto has, I mean, you want to talk about a crushing story. He came to the United States when he was 18 months old, brought here by his family, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and had a just real tight-knit loving family. But his sister Patricia, when he was... 13 years old, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. And she was only 9 years old at the time in 2015. And there was a news story in the local media that profiled her for a nonprofit organization called Bald Beauties that helped women or young women who are dealing with losing their hair because of chemotherapy. Roberto was her bone marrow donor, and sadly, she passed away. And when that happened during all this, the family was so focused on her situation that he never applied for DACA. Never got around to doing so. And then in 2017, Jeff Sessions that September froze DACA, and then it remained frozen. And even up to today, he’s not been able to get DACA. Although, who knows if it would even give him the protection he needs. But he did try to apply again back in, I think it was like 2021.

Now, here’s where it gets very interesting. He graduated from high school. From Palo Verde High School in Tucson. Went to Pima Community College. Excelled in mechanical engineering. And then got a scholarship through the Dream.us, which is a pretty lofty, difficult scholarship to get. They only give it to a handful of dreamers. And he’s been at the University of Arizona studying mechanical engineering with a scholarship. Privately funded. And so in 2024, I got contacted by some people at the university who were supporting -they have an office there and they help immigrants and other students in these types of situations. And they asked me if I could consult with him. And I met with this guy, Roberto, and I was like, I was smitten with him. He had the smile that could light up a room. And I said to him, all right, man, what are we going to do with you? Well, it turns out he was married. He married his girlfriend, who’s a U.S. citizen. So he filed a petition. And when people say do it the right way, follow the law, one of the problems that gets lost in that rhetoric is that even when you try to do it the right way, the U.S. government screws you.

And so the problem he had was because he was brought here without a visa when he was a child, he’s not eligible to do adjustment of status to get a green card in the United States. He would have to process through a consulate outside the U.S. But if he did go, he’d face a 10-year re-entry bar. Thanks to the 1996 immigration law. So it’s a catch-22.

Jenn: Well, yeah. That’s tricky-tricky.

Mo: So, the only way to get through the process the right way is you have to do a petition called an I-130 petition through your spouse. First, that has to be approved. Then you have to do what’s called an I-601A waiver and get that approved. It’s a hardship waiver to show hardship to your spouse. Your U.S. citizen spouse in this case. And you can also show hardship to your parents if they’re citizens or have a green card. So in his case, we had to do the I-130 petition first. That’s going to take a year to two years, potentially. All the while, he’s here without status, but he can’t leave the country. So he’s trapped. And we filed it in January of 2025.

13 months later, in February of this year, we got a denial, an outright denial from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. And it’s on one of the most ridiculous reasons. When the petition was filed, it was done electronically. And mind you, like, you know, this is a situation where, you know, I was working on a pro bono capacity. You know, I don’t do that for everybody, but in certain cases, obviously, you know, you got to do pro bono work. It’s important. And when we did the petition, and it’s not that hard to do these petitions, to be honest, okay? The problem is, if you do it electronically, in one of the fields, his wife was supposed to sign it, and he accidentally put his name into the field. And then it comes back to us, but we don’t see who signed it. So we submitted it. They denied it because the wrong person signed it.

Jenn: Ugh.

Mo: They...

Jenn: Weren’t they also in the first Trump administration, they were doing ridiculous things like if you didn’t fill out every, I mean, just…

Mo: Put NA in every field? Yeah. So yeah, they’re looking for any reason to deny it. So I then turn around, I had a fund of money to pay the filing fee anew. So we refile it. We refile it in February. I feel terrible about this whole situation. You know, this is just totally messed up. Right.

Jenn: Right.

Mo: Two months later, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the service center that took his petition, sent it to court and put him in deportation proceedings.

Jenn: God!

Mo: So they took a legal petition and betrayed his trust, betrayed the trust of anybody, in my opinion, that wants to file a legal petition now.

Jenn: Right.

Mo: It’s, I mean, so now he’s in deportation proceedings because of that. This scholar, this person who, you know, has done nothing to warrant being put in this position. And so now we’re fighting his deportation.

Jenn: I have a lot of, not a lot of, I have a few friends who are DACA or they have workers permits or whatever, green cards, whatever their situation is. They’re legal. They’re here legally. And they’re up for renewal. And they’re like, we don’t know what to do. Because they know that USCIS has been turned into a law enforcement agency. They know that they are sending the documents that people are paying or you’re doing it pro bono from attorneys and stuff. And people need to remember that most immigrants can’t afford immigration attorneys. So they’re doing this on their own. And they’re wondering, like, are they going to use this against me? I have heard some of the people have gotten their renewals. But then they also always just live with the thought of, well, now they really know where I am because I just gave them my most current address. And so, it’s like Representative Grijalva said, is they’re trying to create anxiety within the legal community.

I find it so interesting, too, because like a couple of years ago in the Biden administration, on Facebook, the Border Patrol Union was, I don’t know, balking about some stupid shit. And I said, you know what? They’re not just going to go after the undocumented. They are going to go after the legal immigrants. You watch. You watch! They’re going to do it. And I remember they wouldn’t say my name, but they were like, this ex-agent, she was an agent a long time ago, doesn’t know what she’s talking about. We would never go after legal immigrants.

Well, I’m still waiting on that apology. (laughs) And that’s exactly what they had planned to do, because the fact of the matter is, of those who are undocumented, they commit far less crimes than Border Patrol agents as a population, percentage-wise. So I already knew that they were going to have to do this. And I knew, obviously, the culture of the agencies.

So, where is Roberto right now?

Mo: Well, thankfully, he’s not detained. And thankfully, Karla and others have, you know, reached out. There’s an organization called Common Defense that is comprised of veterans and people in the military who want to save our democracy. And they put on that press conference last week in Tucson for him and Myndy, and Karla also spoke. I honestly I marvel at the courage of these people because if they don’t speak up and people like us or people who are listening right now and observe watching this, we need to collectively be speaking out. What’s happening to people is just horrible. It’s something that should not be occurring on our watch. I don’t want to look back when I’m, you know, in my final days on this earth and say that I didn’t speak up and step out and do something for this society, for the marginalized, for all these individuals, because it’s just going to continue to go down this path unless we start to, you know, change the hearts and minds of the people out there. Especially the next generation that TPUSA is trying to indoctrinate. And so, how do you indoctrinate them into what would be a better way and a more selfless way of thinking? We have to share stories like Roberto’s and to have people like Roberto speak out.

Jenn: Right, right.

Mo: So he’s around. He’s still doing his thing.

Jenn: What’s the status of his case? So they’re still trying to deport him, correct?

Mo: Yup.

Jenn: And you’re still trying to get him status through DACA. Is that correct?

Mo: Yeah, his DACA is probably just going to sit, but we have a case. We’re going to fight it through what’s called cancellation of removal. Again, we’re going to have to show hardship to his wife. You know, it’s not easy to win those cases. Cancellation of removal, the hardship standard is exceptional and extremely unusual hardship. Exceptional and extremely unusual hardship, which is just extraordinarily high standard. What doesn’t get discussed enough is the damage that the 1996 Immigration Act had on our system and how it’s basically forced people to stay here and entrap them so that they can’t, like I said, leave like Roberto. You can’t just say, get out of here and go process at the consulate. If he does, he’s going to face a 10-year re-entry ban.

Jenn: Right.

Mo: Thanks to that law. But if he gets stuck in removal proceedings, he’s fighting a case, you know, with a standard that is completely outrageous.

Jenn: What does that mean in real life, though? Does that mean his wife has to have, like, cancer or something?

Mo: Medical issues, usually. Yeah, usually it’s like, you know, it’s just fucked up because, like, I’ve had so many people come to me over the years, and one of the first questions I’ll ask them, are your children healthy? Is your wife healthy? And then when they say, yeah, everyone’s healthy, I’ll be like…

Jenn: You’re sad. (laughs)

Mo: (laughs) Fuck.

Jenn: Yeah. Normally you’d be like, great, but this time.

Mo: Yeah, it’s a wonderful thing, but it’s not good for your case. So, you know, the more, you know, okay your family situation, you know, the worse off you are going to be in immigration court. It’s all backwards. You know, you got to prove that you have a horrible situation. And even then you lose these cases.

Jenn: Right.

Like, I mean, I had this woman who had both parents had dementia. She’s the only one who cared for them. Everyone else in the family had their own lives, had families that they had to care for. The judge admonished the rest of the family and said they all should carry their own weight and ordered the woman deported, despite the fact that the mom couldn’t sleep without this woman with her in bed.

Jenn: Are these new judges?

Mo: This was in 2019, and this guy was a judge for a long time. He’s passed now.

Jenn: Well, good.

Mo: And actually, I wrote about that situation in the book.

Jenn: Oh, okay.

Mo: I actually took excerpts from the transcript where he admonished the sisters. And I was like, what sort of fucking cretin are you, dude? Like, seriously. Like, sometimes you sit in court and you’re like... did we actually grow up in the same society? Like, what rock did you come out from?

Jenn: You wonder sometimes if they’ve been up there for so long or something that maybe they just get so full of themselves or I don’t know.

Mo: So then there’s Myndy, and Myndy’s the other DACA. She has DACA. It’s good through January of next year.

Jenn: So what’s the problem?

Mo: Well, here’s the problem. Before DACA existed, and again, the society around us, the MAGA society that just has this very one-dimensional viewpoint of deport them all, doesn’t consider what’s happening until it might impact them. And even then, sometimes they don’t give a shit. But we saw that guy in Houston who owns, some rich muckety-muck Republican who owns all these billboards. I don’t know if you saw his story. 75-year-old guy. I think his name is Jonathan Gannon. With a woman who’s Venezuelan, who’s his fiance, 30 years younger than him, 45. And all of a sudden, he’s on CBS News going, hey, man, I didn’t vote for this. And I’m like, no, you did. You just didn’t think it would happen to your person, okay?

Jenn: Yeah.

Mo: So, let me tell you about Myndy. Myndy was, in 2009, she was 18 or so. Yeah, she was around 18 years old. She had been here since she was, I think, eight. Again, brought over by family, didn’t choose to come here, was going to high school. And then she got pulled over, traffic stop, very basic, but they turned her over to ICE. She got put in deportation proceedings. Thankfully, in 2000, I think it was also 2009, the judge did what’s called administrative closure, where they closed her deportation case.

Jenn: Right.

Mo: And this predated DACA. And, you know, she got kind of lucky there because it was during the first two years of Obama’s first term where he was the deporter-in-chief. Well, I think we can change and call the current guy the deporter-in-chief now.

Jenn: Yeah.

Mo: So in 2011, DACA came around. She was able to get DACA. But she’s had DACA now 14 years. And in the last year, ICE reinstated her deportation case, which was totally out of the blue because they need to boost the numbers.

Jenn: How do you think that they found her? Are they just looking through DACA files?

Mo: They’re going down the list of all the cases. They just filed a recalendared case that I’ve had closed for like over a decade. They’re trying to get their hands on anybody they can because they are not able to fulfill Trump’s goal of getting rid of all these awful criminals. So now where do you find these people? You find them by making them undocumented.

Jenn: Yeah. The Haitians, yeah.

Mo: The Haitians, the Syrians, you know, and now all of a sudden, again, all these businesses are like, wait a minute, we didn’t vote for this. We voted for you to get rid… Well, no, half your staff is now losing their employment authorization. So, you know, maybe it’s time to start voting a different way.

Jenn: Yeah. So she has, she’s legal until January of 2027, and then they just opened it up. So, the basis of opening this up then is to say that she never entered legally, and therefore she’s deportable? Is that the excuse?

Mo: I mean, it’s a combination.

Jenn: So, it’s back to “we don’t identify DACA as being legal” excuse.

Mo: Yeah, basically they’re saying that she’s not in legal status.

Jenn: Goddamn.

Mo: Yeah.

Jenn: So, I know that your representative over there, his name is Ciscomani, and I’m going to put on my former Border Patrol hat and go, where does that name come from?

Mo: Italy.

Jenn: Is he not an immigrant? Is he not an immigrant?

Mo: Well, no, I think he had family that came from Italy, but he is an immigrant from Mexico.

Jenn: Oh. Oh. And so I’m sure he’s helping you, right? He’s there with your clients, right?

Mo: (laughs) No.

Jenn: Because he’s a republican right?

Mo: He pulled the ladder away from the wall.

Jenn: He’s like Senator Bernie Moreno out of Ohio. Shit bag.

Mo: So, you mentioned I think that I did run a very short fleeting moment for Congress. I remember when I told you, you were like, oh, great. (laughs) You were like, what are you doing, Mo?

Jenn: I was going to lose my Mo. It was all for me. (laughs)

Mo: But I woke up one day and I was like, I can’t. How can an immigration attorney with my background, sit back and let this guy who is an immigrant, who did it the so-called right way and has fulfilled the American dream, which, mind you, all happened when he was a minor kid through his parents. He didn’t do anything. I mean, you know, it’s nothing different than having your parent have a child here, for the most part. Like, you know, wasn’t like he did anything spectacular like Melania did to be able to get her kids. (laughs) With her Einstein visa. But yeah, I woke up one day and I said to my wife, I said, I’m going to run for Congress. And all I could think of was the movie Brewster’s Millions. You ever seen that movie with Richard Pryor? You should see that.

Jenn: Oh, yes, I have.

Mo: Yeah, I felt like I was going to have like a Richard Pryor sort of campaign where it was just going to be totally crazy, and it was for a while. But also the other guy I thought of was the guy who was working in the diner in Back to the Future who thought, oh, mayor, you know, like I could be a congressperson and go to D.C. because we need an immigration lawyer to fix this fucking mess. But instead, right now, we’re stuck with Juan Ciscomani, who I think is just doing nothing. Like, Karla Toledo and I went to his office to try to talk to people there. They wouldn’t let us in. It was the funniest thing. We showed up, and you have to push, like, an air button, you know, those little air phone things. And the, like, young intern or whoever was working there was like, you guys need to leave a note in the little mailbox outside. But we’re like, yeah, but we’re constituents. We want to come inside and talk to you guys about the plight of Karla and all these other dreamers. They were like, nope, you have to make an appointment. And I was like, this is the dumbest shit ever. Like, come on, you are our representative for my congressional district. I should be able to walk into this office that my taxpayer dollars are paying you for.

Jenn: Yeah. Yeah, so he still hasn’t said anything to you, right? He hasn’t….?

Mo: No, no. I’ve tagged him on. They don’t like me over at that office very much. (laughs)

Jenn: Has he had anything to say about any of this or anything to say on immigration?

Mo: No. So the reason we showed up at his office was we had this sign. If you give me one second, I’ll be right back. I got to show you this sign, okay?

Jenn: Okay, go ahead.

Mo: Hold on.

Jenn: I saw on the feed here, one of you guys was asking if Mo works for an organization. Mo has ties to all sorts of organizations and the University of Arizona, but he is a private attorney in private practice, so.

Mo: Is this backwards or can you read it?

Jenn: No, we can read it. Well, I think we can. “The internet is forever.”

Mo: Yeah. So this was a tweet that Ciscomani put out in, I think it was like December 2004, saying that he would support DACA recipients.

Jenn: Yeah, “DACA recipient should be able to stay in the country.” That’s what it says.

Mo: So Karla made a bunch of signs and there was a protest in front of his office. So we wanted to deliver him this sign to remind him that he tweeted this out because the internet is forever, even if you delete it.

Jenn: (laughs)

Mo: (laughs) So the funny thing was, and this was all caught on video, the lady was like, well, she’s like, you have to write a note. And I said, but we have a sign. Like, we can’t stick the sign into the mailbox. And she goes, well, you can leave it at the front door. And I was like, well, all right. So then we went downstairs downstairs. It’s a two-story building, but you can see his office from right in the front, and it was the funniest fucking thing. As soon as the coast was clear and we were out of there, the door opened up, and all I envisioned was a mouse. Like, there was a little piece of cheese in front of the hole, and the mouse came out, grabbed the cheese, and ran back in. They grabbed it, and they went back into the office really quick.

Jenn: Wow, that is so weak. I thought republicans were all like strong and everything and fierce and all that. (laughs)

Mo: No. They’re afraid of a 31-year-old DACA recipient who wears pink everywhere.

Jenn: They should be.

Mo: So anyways, yeah, it’s fucked up, dude.

Jenn: Let’s talk about the Haitians real quick. I think we’re going to see more of that with other groups. Did Cameroonians also get TPS during the Biden administration? I know the Cameroonians were going through civil war.

Mo: They did. yeah, Cameroonians.

Jenn: I’m worried about them too because Cameroonians are typically Black people and it seems like they’re targeting Black people. Did you see the video that came out a few days ago of the Haitian man after they put an ankle bracelet on him and he collapsed? I think what a lot of, I would imagine a lot of the people here know, but for others who maybe don’t is Haiti has a long history with slavery, and they were the one group that was able to repel the French and get them out of their country, and they have a very proud - they know their history and everything. And I think this is especially traumatic for them. But Mo, people are asking me, like, why would they be putting the GPS on them? I think it’s, for me, it’s kind of reminiscent of putting… it’s a digital ghetto is what it feels like to me. Like putting the Jews in the Holocaust in the ghettos so that they can track them down if they so much as cut it off. Those things are huge.

Mo: They’re cumbersome, yeah.

Jenn: They are a pain in the ass. They have to sit on the floor and recharge it, and if you don’t recharge it, or you get outside of where you’re supposed to be, man they’re on you like crazy. What’s your impression of that if I say it’s like a digitalized ghetto? Is that appropriate?

Mo: Yeah, I’d say it is. I mean, you know, it’s definitely, you know, if you think about ghettos and how people were entrapped in that, you know, in that little world that they were in.

Jenn: We’re going to keep you here until we figure out how we get rid of you is kind of what they’re saying, right?

Mo: Basically, yeah. And I remember my grandma would talk about living in the ghetto all the time and how hard it was. And, you know, you couldn’t leave and it was, you felt trapped. I mean, this is just entrapping you in a different sort of way. Again, look at who’s making money off of those. I think it’s like the GEO Group. The same sort of organizations that are involved with private prison detention. And then yesterday, we found out they’re all going to get gloves that can electrocute you on top of it all.

Jenn: I know. What the hell?

Mo: We’re going to spend $20 million on gloves to electrocute people. And you know somebody’s going to get electrocuted, have a heart attack, and die, or more people - I mean, it’s just—

Jenn: And they’ll say, well, he had a pre-existing condition. It’s not our fault.

Mo: And so it is, I think somebody just mentioned, it’s capitalism run amok where, you know, all we can do is try to keep profiting off of these people in different messed up ways. Now, the thing that’s really horrible is – I mean, as if it couldn’t get any worse, I have clients that would much rather be wearing a GPS monitor on their ankle than sitting in detention. And what they’re doing right now is they’re denying - I mean, I can’t tell you the numbers, but a mass majority of people in front of these immigration judges in detention right now from what I’m hearing from my colleagues and what I’ve seen firsthand -they’re finding them all to be flight risks.

Jenn: Uh-huh. That’s what I’m hearing too.

Mo: No matter whether they have ties to their community, no matter how long they’ve been in the country for, they’re like, you’re not going to show up in immigration court, which we know statistically speaking, people do show up in immigration court.

Jenn: If they think they can get a fair hearing, yeah.

Mo: Yeah. Or they, you know, they know that there’s a benefit. I have a guy right now who’s in detention, who’s been here since he was seven years old. And the only thing he did wrong was he committed misrepresentation on one form. Otherwise, he’s lived his whole life here. He went to high school. He’s basically a dreamer. And we were trying to get his green card. USCIS denied the green card. Denied the waiver that we filed, and then ICE showed up at his house three weeks later and arrested him.

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Jenn: Isn’t this because of the Laiken Riley Act that said that even if they’re suspected of anything, not that they had to have a conviction, not that they had to have a charge, just a feeling from the immigration agent that they’re not going to show up or that they might have committed a crime and therefore they can be held in detention. And a lot of Democrats voted for that act, did they not?

Mo: Yeah, they did. This specific scenario I mentioned is not Laiken Riley related.

Jenn: Okay.

Mo: But, it’s all interrelated. And at the end of the day, this all ties back to, I mean, you can go as far back as we go in the history of the United States, but what we’re seeing right now, as far as a more contemporary ideology, this ties all into the attrition through enforcement mentality that was brought on by the likes of... what’s his name? the Secretary of State from Kansas?

Jenn: Kris Kobach.

Mo: Kobach and FAIR and all these organizations that said, you know what, let’s just make it so difficult and so restrictive that everyone just gives up and gets out.

Jenn: It’s funny because one of their biggest arguments, and I want to do something about this, one of the biggest arguments of those groups was how much money undocumented people cost American taxpayers and stuff, which is not true. They contribute far more than they cost us. But what do people think that all this is costing us right now? I mean, we’re going $40 trillion in debt, and it’s all going to, well not all but a fair amount is going to ICE, CBP and Border Patrol.

The last thing I want to get you on as we get to the top of the hour is the airports. You were the first one to put out and asked me to put it out that, oh, they’re in the airports and they’re obviously, I mean, DHS always has had access since after 9-11 - they set up a system to have access to who’s on the planes and stuff. And they’re using that information to determine whether or not they think that you’re a citizen, and then lying in wait at the airports for you. I advise people, and I’m not an attorney, but I advise people, if you don’t have to be flying, if you think your status is even remotely questionable, if you were brought here as a baby, two-month-old baby, and you have DACA, do not get on a flight. What’s your advice? What’s your thoughts on this, Mo?

Mo: Yeah, avoid the airport, because going back the last couple, at least the last month, we saw a huge increase in people getting arrested and detained at airports and taken in. I mean, the first time it came across my desk in the last several months was in February where a guy was flying from New York to Phoenix. And when he got to Sky Harbor, and mind you, he had protection under the Convention Against Torture from an immigration judge, ICE was waiting for him and arrested and took him to Florence and then held him and held him and a habeas was filed and arrested. The story, if we had another hour, I’d tell you all the story, but that’ll be for another day, how he wound up getting deported. I think I talked to you about it, to an African country that he has no connection to.

Jenn: We should talk about that next time, because I do want to have you on more frequently.

Mo: I had a guy yesterday, he was like, yeah, I want to go to Disneyland from New York, and I’m like, I’m like, no, you’re not going to Disneyland. I’m sorry, bro. Like, you know, that’s, you know, first of all, don’t go to Disneyland because you’re going to spend a lot of money, you know, and you’ll regret it. It’s like going to Vegas. (laughs)

Jenn: It’s worse because there’s children. (laughs)

Mo: But also TSA is going to, you know, to figure your situation out and you’re going to end up not in Disneyland, but you’re going to end up at Delaney Hall in New Jersey.

Jenn: But did you see that one story of a U.S. citizen who made it through TSA, made it through all the checks, made it through the gate and was walking down the thing to get onto the plane and all of a sudden ICE agents came out of nowhere and tackled him and threw him against the wall and put him in handcuffs and he was a United States citizen? So that’s kind of like I don’t know how that happened. And it made me wonder, are they now just eyeballing people? But then they would have to be doing that to everybody. So I’m not sure why. It’s kind of like these AI cameras and Flock cameras, I saw the other day they stopped somebody and said, oh, your car is stolen. And they’re like, no, it’s not stolen. And they get handcuffed and they have to deal with an hour of them going back and forth before they realized that the Flock camera misread one of the letters on the plate. And then they apologized to them, of course, and everything and this and that. But, you know, meanwhile, you miss your flight and you miss whatever you were going to and you’ve gone through this traumatic experience with your children being in the car and all this other stuff. So I don’t, I don’t know how that happened, but I imagine it’s going to get much worse in the airports. It’s going to get much worse. We’re seeing that they’re taking, uh shutting down all the unaccompanied child legal counsel and sending the unaccompanied kids to Texas and are giving it all to this one law firm who doesn’t know anything…

Mo: That law firm has, at least I just read, turned down the contract.

Jenn: Oh, they did? Okay. Good, good.

Mo: I mean, public pressure was not good.

Jenn: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mo: I just read that through a reliable source that they did not take the contract. Because frankly, that money should be going to one of those nonprofits, you know, that like Acacia or Raises or Florence Project or one of those projects that know what they’re doing. Not a small law firm in Texas that has no footprint on helping undocumented unaccompanied children. But then I just saw that there’s a contract being given to the organization that Tim Ballard founded. Do you know who he is?

Jenn: Who’s Tim Ballard?

Mo: He was the guy that they made that film about… somebody will type it in the chat.

Jenn: Anybody in the chat know? Tim Ballard?

Mo: Tim Ballard. They made that movie and they tried to make it go viral about human child trafficking. And it was like big amongst the MAGA crowd. They kept saying, go watch this film. And then he got like some allegations brought up against him. It was, yeah.

Jenn: Sex predator.

Mo: Yeah, but apparently his organization just got a huge contract from the Trump administration to work on like.. Sound of Fury, I think that’s what it was. I just remember because they kept saying that all these theaters were sold out and then people would go to the theaters and no one was in there watching them. So like people were buying the tickets. Buying the tickets. I thought this was what Melania was going to be like. So I infiltrated Melania. I went to the film. And when I walked in, it was packed.

Jenn: Really?

Mo: There was not a seat open. And I was like, what the hell? I thought I was going to walk in, it was going to be sold out and there would be two people in it. No. All the cultists were in there. It was crazy.

Jenn: Wow. I was hoping maybe they were all sitting there with tomatoes quietly.

Mo: And by the way, I did not pay for the Melania movie.

Jenn: Okay, that’s good.

Mo: I paid for a different film and snuck in. And snuck in.

Jenn: And snuck in. (laughs) Like the juvenile delinquent you are. (laughs)

Mo: (laughs) Oh, Sound of Freedom. That’s it. Yeah. Sorry. I don’t want to promote this film. By the way, I went in. I felt like it was my civic duty to go watch Melania and report back. I lasted 30 minutes. I could not….it was…. honestly, I tried to give it a chance. It was not good. I mean, and I’m saying that from a completely biased perspective. But shit, it was bad, dude. Don’t… save yourself. Don’t watch Melania.

Jenn: Yeah. All right, well, you’re just going to stay in the fight and keep working at it huh Mo?

Mo: It’s the only, the only way I can stay in the fight is through mental health breaks, like going to see really horrible movies like Melania. (laughs)

Jenn: Yeah, well, I’ll be over in Tucson in a couple of weeks and we’ll take some breaks together, so.

Mo: We’ll find a movie. Definitely something fun to do.

Jenn: We always find fun stuff to do when we’re over there. Are you getting harassed?

Mo: No.

Jenn: Because you’re an immigration attorney? Is anything happening to you in the immigration courts? It’s still just normal business?

Mo: Can somebody fucking harass me, please? (laughs) I mean, I drive a car where my license plate says, I am Mo. I don’t need Flock cameras.

Jenn: Everybody knows Mo. Everybody in Tucson knows Mo.

Mo: My wife doesn’t like that very much.

Jenn: I appreciate everything that you’re doing and coming on and informing everybody and stuff. Just cause we see so many reports and stuff. I think it’s really important to have an attorney come and say this is what’s going on and this is what it’s like because we only hear about, well, the politicians only want to talk about the kids because that’s a real, you know, story that people want to listen to. But just ordinary everyday people, you know, they don’t have to be doctors and lawyers, but although those things matter too, but just ordinary everyday people who have done things the immigration system tried to do it the right way, followed the rules that they were given, and are now simply being targeted because ICE is lazy, and they don’t really want to go out and get criminals because they’re a-scared. I personally think we should all put them on a plane and send them all to Iran to fight Donald Trump’s war since they love him so much. Go fight for your country over there because we’re fine over here. We like our immigrants and we want to protect our neighbors and stuff. But you’re really fighting the fight and it’s got to be really hard on you emotionally too being with your background and everything and your family history and stuff. So I appreciate you.

Mo: Thank you. I appreciate it. It’s an interesting life. Yeah. And now I have all these subscribers on Substack. I might have to start using it.

Jenn: You’ll have to put your face up there and you should start using it, actually.

Mo: I know. There’s so many social media platforms. I’m like, how many more can I do? But I’ll do Substack. What the hell?

Jenn: Yeah, I know. And Substack, kind of like, I piss and moan about it. I was pissing and moaning about it like this week because it just, I don’t like the investments of it, but somebody pointed out like all the platforms have investments from these billionaires that are, you know, and so we just got to use it and do what we can to get the word out there.

Mo: Can’t avoid it. I met you on Elon’s X when it was Twitter before he turned it to X.

Jenn: That’s true. You should tell people real quick how you met me.

Mo: I slipped into her DM. Or is it slipped? No, slid, not slipped. I slipped. No, I saw you were coming to Tucson and you were going to speak at a church. And I, like a stalker, I sent you a message and said, hey, before you go to that church, let me take you to the most MAGA bar in Tucson and get you a beer there so I can trigger you because we’ll be surrounded by Border Patrol agents. (laughs)

Jenn: Okay, the truth is, he said, I’m going to take you out for a drink. And he did not say it was a MAGA cop bar. And I walked in and I go, is this a cop bar? (laughs)

Mo: It was a cop bar, yeah.

Jenn: It looks like a cop bar. Did you just invite me to a cop bar?

Mo: Yeah, I did. So that’s how we met, and the rest is history.

Jenn: Yeah, and we’ve been buddies ever since, so yeah. All right, Mo, I’m going to let you go. I know you’ve got other things to do. I appreciate you. I love you. Tell your family I said hello, and I’ll see you in a couple weeks.

Mo: See you guys. Thanks.

Jenn: Bye, everybody.

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