[00:02:46] Host: I want to look at incarceration and deportation of immigrants as that's kind of the du jour of my newsfeed right now, and immigrants, permanent residents, potentially citizens. And I want to focus our conversation on the work the ACLU is doing to protect and defend these people and their rights. So first, let's look at an issue that's very important to you, Birthright Citizenship. Let's give a little history of birthright citizenship and the 14th Amendment and its connection to the abolition of slavery.

[00:03:31] Abdi: Sure. So Birthright Citizenship is something that I've personally been really interested in, and I've taken a lot of time to read about and learn about its history. Every one of us who's born in the United States, within the territory of the United States, is born a citizen of the United States, and that includes a person like me. My mom and dad came to the United States in 1973 from Iran, and I was born here. They were here on a fellowship, and I was born as a citizen of the United States. I grew up in Iran, and then we immigrated later when I was nine years old, and I returned as a citizen. Now in my story, it's very apparent that it's Birthright Citizenship that made me a citizen, but every person who's born here as a citizen has that certainty that regardless of the station or status of your parents, if you're born in the territory of the United States, by virtue of that, you're a citizen of the United States. That idea is enshrined in our Constitution in the 14th Amendment, Section 1, that says all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside. Prior to the 14th Amendment, there's a long history of citizenship that I'll talk to you about, but that concept came about after the Civil War. So what preceded the 14th Amendment has been something that has really kind of blown my mind as I've read about it and learned about it.

First, we have to address the history of slavery and racial exclusion. In the United States, children born to an enslaved mother were born into slavery, right? So you were not born into citizenship, you were born into slavery. And for a nation that had distinguished itself from the aristocracies of Europe, where so much was transmitted through heredity, we passed the status of slavery through birth. That history of slavery is essential to understanding the exclusions from citizenship. But there were other exclusions from citizenship through the naturalization laws enacted immediately after the American Revolution excluded from citizenship anyone who was not white. Only white persons was written into the statute of the Naturalization Act, you know, right at the time of the founding, only white persons could naturalize as citizens. This is kind of like the origins of these debates about citizenship in the United States. On one hand, we had very rapid access to citizenship for white immigrants. And then we had this permanent exclusion from citizenship for non-whites. And you had the exclusion from citizenship and the lockdown in slavery for African Americans born into slavery.

Now, one of the things that has really kind of been revealing to me is that the 14th Amendment did not create the idea of Birthright Citizenship. Birthright Citizenship is a really old concept. It has its first roots in English common law, under the idea that you're born a subject of the King. And going back centuries in England, like almost 1,000 years, that was the practice, that if you were born within the dominion of the King, including if you were born a child of an alien, as was the term in England, you were born a subject of the King. Now, we think of that in terms of despotism, you know, that the King ruled over you. But it was actually a relationship of allegiance and protection, that you were born within that relationship to the king. So that concept of being born a subject became part of American, kind of before the American Revolution, that was part of our idea as well. If you were born in the American colonies, you were born into that same subject relationship with the King.

[00:07:30] Host: Were there racial caveats in England?

[00:07:34] Abdi: It's a great question. If you go and read Blackstone's Commentaries on English law, which were published just on the eve of the American Revolution, there are no written racial exclusions in their concept of being born a subject to the King. What's really perplexing about English common law is that on the one hand, England had pretty robust principles of civil liberties that had come from the English Revolutions. And yet, England was expanding slavery throughout the world with its slave trade. There's a famous case called Somerset, where an American enslaved person was taken to England, and with the help of local abolitionists in England, went to court. And the English courts ruled that he was now a free person in England, that on English soil, there's no slavery permitted. That Somerset case preceded the American Revolution, and not just the Civil War, it was during that revolutionary period.

So the point being that English common law had this idea of the birth into being the subject, even if you were born a child of an immigrant within English territory or the territory of the King. That idea then came into the American colonies and got supercharged because the American colonies encouraged immigration. Some of our colonial charters literally say in them that if you're born within the territory of the colony, you're born within the protection of the colony, you're a subject within the colony. The word citizen, though, wasn't yet used until the American Revolution. During the American Revolutionary period, the concept transformed from Birthright Subject to Birthright Citizen. And even though there was no national law to this effect, Jon-Barrett, it's amazing, the court cases of the era of the American colonial period and the early American Republic all affirm, if you're born here, you're a citizen of the United States.

A lot of the cases were in property disputes, because property ownership was often tied to citizenship. So there's a case of this girl who's born in the United States to parents from Europe who were only sojourners, they did not intend to reside here, and they established that she was a citizen and she could inherit property in a dispute with her uncle. These cases are part of what's called American common law. So you have English common law, you have American common law, but then you have the exclusion of Black people from citizenship, and that's the Dred Scott decision prior to the Civil War. The Dred Scott decision said that a Black person, even a free Black person in the United States, is not born into citizenship. So the Dred Scott decision is an exclusion from that principle. So that brings us to the American Civil War and the aftermath of the Civil War.

In 1866, two really important things happened. Congress passed a law, the 1866 Civil Rights Act, that in part said if you're born here, you're a citizen of the United States. But this is one of my favorite, favorite parts of American history. Those members of Congress knew that such a law could be challenged, and so they wanted to put it on even-sure footing. So they drafted the 14th Amendment the same year, and then the 14th Amendment was ratified two years later in 1868. What were their reasons for putting into a constitutional amendment something that Congress had just passed through statute? First, they didn't want another future Congress to just repeal that. They wanted to give it more protection than even an act of Congress from a future Congress. Second, they wanted to make sure that no single president could undo that principle. And they were dealing with Andrew Johnson, who was a terrible president at the end of Reconstruction. They knew what a single president could do to diminish the rights of persons and citizens. It's almost like they could predict into the future that we're living in now, and know that it wouldn't be enough to protect something like that from just a president. The stronger the better would be the principle. Then the third reason was because they wanted to put it on sound Constitutional footing, so that no one could then challenge them and say that the Constitution didn't permit this type of law. That's how hard they wanted to lock down this concept. And then that concept has then since prevailed in subsequent decisions of the courts.

[00:12:43] Host: And after the 14th Amendment, were there any exclusions to Birthright Citizenship?

[00:12:48] Abdi: There are several, and they're very interesting ones. So the first exclusion from Birthright Citizenship is written into the Constitutional Amendment is born within the jurisdiction of the United States. So you have to get into the question of what is that jurisdiction? Who's within the jurisdiction? Who's outside the jurisdiction? So the first major issue is around Native Americans. And this was debated within the debates of the 14th Amendment. Native Americans were understood to be born within sovereign tribes, and tribes were considered outside of the direct supervision or direct jurisdiction of the United States through the Congress's kind of treaty relationship with tribes. So Native Americans who are born within their tribes were understood to not be affected by the birthright citizenship clause.

There's a famous case called Elk v. Wilkins that I would just really encourage us all to go and read and learn about. It's the case of a man who leaves his tribe, goes to register to vote in Nebraska. Under the statutes of registration to vote at the time in Nebraska, immigrant men who only had declared an oath to become a citizen would be permitted to vote. But this gentleman, John Elk, was denied the right to vote on the idea that he was not a citizen. He lost that case at the Supreme Court because there had been a longstanding kind of principle that the tribes are outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Congress changed that in 1924 with the Indian Citizenship Act that said that all Native Americans born in the United States are citizens of the United States. So that's one exclusion.

So a few years later, we're in the era of the Chinese Exclusion Acts. The Chinese Exclusion Acts literally do what they say. They exclude Chinese people from entering the United States. But remember, that Naturalization Act that I was speaking about earlier from the time of the founding, it already excluded anyone who wasn't white from citizenship. So the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese people from entering the United States. And on top of the existing exclusion from citizenship, they threw in an additional further – just to be clear, they wanted to add yet another exclusion of Chinese people from citizenship – but that had already been covered by the prior law. In that climate, there were already large numbers of Chinese in the Western United States who had come around the time of the Gold Rush and the building of the railroads. So in this very anti-Chinese period, there's a case that goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, Wong Kim Ark. It's a famous case out of San Francisco. At the point of trying to re-enter the United States from a trip to China, Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco, is denied entry into the United States on the idea that he's not a citizen, even though he was born here. The case goes up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Jon-Barrett, what I love about this decision is this is at the height of Chinese exclusion. This is at the height of – we're in the era of the rising racial segregation, Plessy versus Ferguson, we're approaching – that's the mindset of the United States at the time. This is not the optimistic era of Reconstruction. And even so –

[00:16:18] Host: Yellow peril, I imagine, yeah.

[00:16:20] Abdi: Exactly, yeah. Even in that era, the Supreme Court ruled on the side of Wong Kim Ark that he is a citizen of the United States. What's amazing about the decision is it's a comprehensive history of American citizenship. For anyone who wants to geek out on the subject like I have, I would really encourage you to go read the decision because it gives you a really fulsome history of Birthright Citizenship, its origins in English common law, in American common law. What the decision does is it sets the parameters of the definition of jurisdiction. Who is in the jurisdiction? Who is outside the jurisdiction? And then it answers the question for Wong Kim Ark that he is a citizen. When you asked earlier who's excluded, that case names again who's excluded. It reaffirms Native Americans who are born within their tribes are not in the jurisdiction of the United States. And then during an alien invasion during wartime of another nation, that's an exclusion. That is not what's applicable today.

[00:17:31] Host: Before this year, has there been an administration that tried to or wanted to end birthright citizenship?

[00:17:41] Abdi: That's a great question. To my knowledge, for long periods of time, there would be bills introduced in Congress to try to limit the definition of Birthright Citizenship, and that's never gone very far in Congress. To my knowledge, there's not been a president who has tried through executive order like this to directly change the meaning of citizenship like this. There are long, long periods of American history where the executive branch has sought to use all of its power to push people out of the country. And during the 1950s under Eisenhower, there was a big push for mass deportations that resulted in large numbers of children who were born in the United States to be deported without due process alongside their families out of the country. And there's these haunting letters that you see, like families who wrote back to the county of Los Angeles where a lot of these deportations happened saying their children are American citizens. And that's just kind of lost to history. So have there been periods of exclusionary, anti-immigrant, anti-citizen policies? Absolutely. Has there been something like President Trump's executive order to single-handedly undermine the Constitution and defy the laws of Congress? To my knowledge, no.

[00:19:15] Host: What would an administration or Congress, what would need to happen to legally repeal the 14th Amendment and end birthright citizenship?

[00:19:27] Abdi: Birthright Citizenship as a concept is the idea that if you're born in the territory and jurisdiction of the United States, you're born a citizen of the United States. That's the core idea. It's called jus soli, like the law based on soil. That's in contrast to an idea of law of birth through blood or heredity, where if you're born the child of a citizen, then you're a citizen. And we kind of have a hybrid of the two right now. If you were traveling as a U.S. citizen and residing in another country for a few years, and you were to have a child in that country, that child would be a citizen of the United States. That's logical to us. We would want you as the parent to be able to have a child who's a citizen of your country, even if you're living abroad from the United States. That is also true as a citizen if your child is born in the United States. But Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment says you're born a citizen regardless of the status of the parent. I should have said earlier on your question about exceptions. Another exception is the children of ambassadors, but that's a side story. It's a pretty small and narrow exception. So, if someone wanted to end that concept, they would need to amend the Constitution of the United States, full stop. Congress can enact laws that further the 14th Amendment, but Congress itself has limits to what it could do even to remove that principle. There are a million questions that come up. For example, American Samoans or Puerto Ricans, like these areas of the United States that are territories of the United States, to get into these really complicated questions of jurisdiction that Congress does address those through law. But, Jon-Barrett, I think the core thing is for an idea this big that has lasted this long in American common law prior to the Civil War and then was written into the Constitution, you would need to amend the Constitution.

[00:21:36] Host: All right. We're going to take a little shift, and I want to look at another way the administration is targeting. On March 15th, the Alien Enemies Act, as we mentioned before, was invoked, which has allowed hundreds of people to be sent to prison in El Salvador. Now, in this series, I've talked about the Alien Enemies Act with regards to World War II and the incarceration of Japanese Americans. But this is another old, near-the-beginning, right after the Revolutionary War act that has hardly been used in our history. Can you give us just a little brief history of the times that this act has been used?

[00:22:26] Abdi: Yeah. The Alien Enemies Act, like you said, Jon-Barrett, it goes back to early American Republic, and it was part of a package of bills that we know of as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Sedition Acts were repealed soon after because there was this climate where those laws were being used to target political opponents of the president. That issue was never challenged through the courts. In hindsight, you can look back and say we would have challenged the Sedition Acts through the First Amendment and the like. There was an expectation of dissent in this country. There was an expectation that people would speak out in this country. We were just out of a revolution. But the Alien Enemies Act was not repealed at the time in that package, and it's unfortunate that we have to deal with the abuse of this law and the way this law is being handled today. So the Alien Enemies Act has been there throughout American history. Its language is clear that it allows the government to remove people from the country during wartime, like during declared wars. And here's Donald Trump invoking this law that has only ever been used during wartime, during actual declared wars, to deport en masse Venezuelans and then taking them to El Salvador and locking people up in another nation's prisons. So, you know, I...

[00:24:03] Host: Right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not at war with Venezuela. We're not, yeah. Or any Latin American country. Or really, we're not at declared war with anyone currently.

[00:24:17] Abdi: You know, this is where, you know, as we've looked at every possible way during the last year before Trump got re-elected, we were preparing for what are the laws they might invoke? What are the strategies this government might pursue? And so the Alien Enemies Act is one of the major places that the ACLU is in court challenging the Trump administration. With regard to Birthright Citizenship, on the first day of Trump's second presidency, he issued this executive order that he called on the meaning and value of citizenship. And that executive order seeks to end Birthright Citizenship by defining citizenship in a completely different way than is done in our Constitution or in our laws currently. And on that first day, the ACLU went to court same day to challenge that executive order, and we're litigating that case. It's in New Hampshire. And there are a number of other cases that have been brought by other states and other advocacy groups as well. There are some preliminary parts of this case that are already at the Supreme Court that deal more with the procedure. But the merits of the question are one that we expect will be fought for and litigated for some time that we'll be very vigilant on.

The Alien Enemies Act cases are ones that are, you know, as we're speaking today, John Barrett, this is a very active area of litigation. And I would encourage people to follow this. You know, after you listen to this podcast, there will be major developments in that. Within the last few weeks alone, we've had many court filings. And the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration at midnight one night that they could not proceed with deporting a group of Venezuelans who were detained in Texas. It's not normal or usual that the Supreme Court is issuing executive orders at midnight.

So this is going to be a huge battle for us. We believe and know that the law and the Constitution are on our side. We will advocate vigorously. The reason behind this, Jon-Barrett, comes down to this, is that every person is protected under our Constitution with fundamental rights. These rights include the right to due process. It's in the Fifth Amendment, as it relates to the federal government, and the 14th Amendment was added. The due process is specified in the 14th Amendment with respect to protections we have from our state governments. I think the Fifth Amendment was enough to say that it would apply to the states, too. But the 14th Amendment makes it clear. So due process is a fundamental idea. It protects every person. So you cannot short-circuit the Constitution's due process protections and our immigration laws' due process protections and just grab people under some banner of Alien Enemies Act, detain them, deport them, send them to a different country. We're in a red zone here. This is liberty. This is liberty we're talking about. These issues of liberty are ones that go back to the English revolutions, for example, that even preceded our revolution. These are expectations that existed even when you have a king. These are basic concepts of liberty. These are red lines that we will not allow to be crossed.

[00:27:59] Host: In World War II, when Japanese immigrants and Italian and Germans, when the Alien Enemies Act was enacted, they were just put in detention centers or incarcerated here in the United States. But this shipping to a foreign prison seems like, and this is going to lead into my next series of questions, I mean, that just seems like-- what happens to those rights when they're not here? It seems like people are disappearing. This is where we're seeing these challenges of the wrong person was taken, but they can't even find them.

[00:28:45] Abdi: You know, when you violate these due process protections, it's a red, glaring sign for everyone. And there are reasons for this. First of all, any person, if they're not afforded due process, can be caught in this. Because then how can you challenge it? How can you make a claim that it didn't apply to you? How can you make a claim under the rights, under the laws or the Constitution for any person? And that can include literally any person. If you can be grabbed and there's no way to challenge it, to go to court, to assert your rights, any person can be grabbed in that situation. But second, whatever precedent we set, however deep the hole we dig and allow a person to be thrown into, that's how far a citizen can also fall. That's how far any person can fall. Because it reflects the culture and the attitude with respect to the dignity and humanity of people. So that's why it's like no coincidence that at the same time that these Venezuelans are being shipped out through the Alien Enemies Act, legal permanent residents who are speaking out about Gaza or Palestine are being detained and deported. That's why, at the same time, a person who's called in ostensibly for a citizenship hearing gets detained and deported. And that's why, at the same time, citizens are also being punished and threatened for their political speech. I think we have to all understand that we are all in this together. And the defense of fundamental liberties, that's why it's so universal and fundamental to protect the rights of all people.

[00:30:38] Host: I want to explore a little what happens when a person is deported, whether it's to the El Salvadorian prison or just out of the country. Typically, nothing is typical these days, but what is the first thing that happens to a person when they're picked up by agents? And what legal rights do they have at that point?

[00:31:02] Abdi: So the subject of immigration, immigration law, it's a huge field, and it's a really vast field. And there are a lot of different kind of contexts and situations. So I'm going to just speak on very general terms. And the ACLU lawyers and immigration lawyers who work on these issues, they have to deal with every facet. More importantly, the people who are within the communities that I'm speaking about have to navigate this every day. So broadly speaking, there are basic and fundamental rights with regard to if you're going to be stopped, detained, deported from in the United States. First, every person is still protected by the Constitution. So the ACLU here in California, we have a lawsuit against these raids that were done on the eve of Trump's inauguration in Kern County, where people were racially profiled, they're stopped with no reason, farmworkers, day laborers, etc., and racial profiling, not telling people their rights. These are fundamental constitutional principles that affect everyone.

So even within the realm of immigration enforcement or deportations, we have this kind of basic set of constitutional rights that apply to every person. Then you get into the immigration law part of it, and there are factors affecting asylum seekers. For example, there's a process by which people can seek asylum in this country. The Trump administration is trying to shut down even those doors. Asylum is lawful. It's permitted under the law that you can make a claim to asylum. This is part of that legacy of World War II. The idea that the United States is a refuge. George Washington actually called the United States an asylum nation. So there's different pieces here. And then there's people who are undocumented. We have folks ACLU is representing who have temporary protected status. These are declarations made under the law by the executive branch that says that if there's a situation in your country like right now in Venezuela or Haiti, you're temporarily protected from deportation because the country is not one that you can safely return to. There's so much going on in this space, and then you get into the question of how can people be stopped? How are people detained during the immigration proceeding? Their right to go before an immigration judge. All of that plays out in the immigration and deportation proceedings.

[00:33:48] Host: Goes back to the due process that we were talking about before of being in this country, you're awarded the right to due process.

[00:33:59] Abdi: And the immigration procedures have built into them that constitutional principle, then gets written into statutes that specify how do you afford that due process? Unfortunately, in the last few years, the Supreme Court has ruled in certain number of cases reducing some of those protections that we had. And that's a whole other interview. But just to say, but there are fundamental protections in the constitution, even under current Supreme Court, as well as under our immigration laws that have to be followed.

[00:34:36] Host: And once you are deported, once you are out of the United States, whether you're in an El Salvadorian prison or just on the other side of the border in Mexico, do you have that constitutional protection anymore? Or does it just exist when you're here within the borders of the United States?

[00:35:00] Abdi: I think that's a great question, Jon-Barrett. And I'll give you kind of two examples. Among the cases that the ACLU has filed, one that comes up from time to time is American citizens who were deported. When you violate those due process rights, American citizens can be deported. Once they're deported, they're still citizens of the United States. So they have a higher legal ground on which to reenter or to seek a remedy. But when the government violates people's constitutional rights, or when the government violates their laws under the law, and this is what we're seeing right now in this dispute that we have and the courts have with President Trump, is they have deported people in violation of their rights. And the court has ordered them to facilitate the return to the United States. And that's where we're really pushing the edge here of the executive branch, the Trump administration, denying and defying an order of the court that's playing out as we speak. And again, after people hear this podcast, a lot will have happened since this interview where that story will continue to be fought.

[00:36:12] Host: But this leads me into our ending here. It seems like the courts and litigation are the strongest weapon we have right now against the rapid fire orders of the current administration. And we hear about Trump being sued by the ACLU, by the state of California. But what does that actually mean? And what does that actually do?

[00:36:41] Abdi: Yeah, so the core system of government that we have is that there are different branches of the government, Congress that passes laws and enacts budgets, the executive branch who implements the laws and follows the law, and then the judicial branch that enforces the law and interprets the Constitution in these disputes. Within this system, Jon-Barrett, every entity, every actor needs to kind of work within that set of principles. And when some defy it, then the other branches need to be the check on that branch. So then at the base of it all is the people. And I think that in the way that this story is going to unfold over the next few years, the ultimate residual foundation that is going to protect this set of principles and the rights of the people who are in this country is our own response as the American people. The stronger our response as the American people, the clearer the voice with which we speak, the stronger our protests, then that also emboldens and strengthens the courts to hold their ground as well. But that said, the courts are critical, and it's essential that the Trump administration follow these judicial orders.

But I will say, going back to where we started this conversation, is that there is also a way to respond to court decisions that violate people's rights. If this country had ever stopped when courts had made a decision in the Supreme Court on the Dred Scott case or in Plessy versus Ferguson on segregation, we need to mount a response when the courts make decisions that take away rights, and we need to expect the executive branch to follow these lawful orders of the court that are telling them to follow the Constitution or follow the nation's laws. I don't want people to think that the court is the end of the story. If you take the issue, for example, of abortion rights, the Supreme Court has made a decision that takes away a fundamental nationwide right to abortion. That is not the end of that story. We're going to continue to fight and organize to secure abortion rights in each state and ultimately, again, nationwide. I don't want to confuse these two issues because they're different issues, but as people are thinking about how do we respond to the political and legal context that's ahead of us in the coming years, absolutely, we have to hold the Trump administration accountable to follow the law, including these orders from the courts. We have to hold Congress accountable to actually follow through on laws that are already on the books that they should be insisting that the executive follow, and we also need to have a strategy to deal with the legal system in the long term to make sure that we are upholding and defending a Constitution that upholds the rights of all people.

[00:39:57] Host: So, California sued Trump over the tariffs. So, what is that? I am definitely not a legal scholar at all. Is that posturing, or is there an actual case that will be heard? California versus... or when the ACLU files a suit, what happens in those court cases? Because I think we hear about the suing or the suits, but we don't really hear the aftermath.

[00:40:33] Abdi: Right. So, when you're filing a lawsuit, whether it's a federal case or in state court, you have to have a dispute. You have to have a party that's harmed and impacted by the issue that you're addressing. You have to have either a claim under the Constitution of the United States or under a statute, a law of the United States. You have to assemble facts that connect your argument of how the Constitution or the law was violated. You have to ground that in facts. And you bring that before a judge. The judge then reviews that, and I'm going to stay in the federal courts for this question. Sure, please. And the judge can reach a decision. Then the other party can appeal that, and then that'll go to the appeals court, like one level up. Throughout the United States, there are multiple appeals courts. They're called circuit courts also. Sometimes, then, the circuit court in one part of the country has reached a different conclusion than a circuit court in another part of the country. Or even without that, the case can still get appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court only takes a small fraction of all the cases that are coming before it in a given year. And the idea is that the Supreme Court, when it reaches a decision, then that is a binding on all the lower courts through the precedent that has been created.

And it's also understood that over the course of the process, when the judge issues an order or reaches a decision, whoever is recipient of that decision, you can't do this or you must do that, follows that, and they can appeal to the next level up during that time. And the question of whether you follow the judge's order during that time or not is usually decided in that process and by that appeals court. Without getting too far into the weeds of it, that's the process, right? And so, I think that right now what we're seeing is the Trump administration really, really pushing the edges of what those judges are telling them to do. There's a level of this, Jon-Barrett, that's normal. Judge issues a decision, the city or the federal agency pushes back, there's a back and forth to clarify it, but there's a level of this which is not normal, and we're in the not normal range. And nobody should kid themselves that this is anything resembling the normal process of clarification that happens between courts and parts of the government that they're ruling on.

[00:43:21] Host: And what happens when the administration blatantly ignores or denies court orders? What power is left to defend rights? David Tenenbaum

[00:43:33] Abdi: I think that this is a great question, Jon-Barrett. And I think that at the base, I go back to the base, that power resides with us as the people. At the base, that's where it resides. I will say to the founders of this country and the debates they had about the design of its government and the huge flaws that were built into this country at its founding, I will say to their credit, the House of Representatives elections happening every two years is one of the most important, fastest checks on power. And I think that there's a process that will unfold through the courts, but the public response is at the heart of it. The First Amendment right to speak, to protest, to assemble, to organize is the beginning, the base of it. The expression of our views through our votes in elections is the next level up. And so I think for the folks who are listening to this, absolutely, we will push as hard as we can in the courts. We also credit judges who stand by the law and who act with courage despite very harsh threats from this administration. It's one thing to disagree with a decision. It's another thing the way this Trump administration targets these judges who disagree with them. So I think at the end of the day, Jon-Barrett, the power resides in us to hold the ground of the Constitution and our vision of liberty and freedom on which we want this country based.

[00:45:07] Host: Are you hopeful?

[00:45:10] Abdi: Absolutely. I will say I would call it clear-eyed hopeful. I'm not going to be like a Pollyanna hopeful. The reason we have to be clear-eyed is we're up against a lot right now and looking ahead. You know, the way that the first term of the Trump presidency ended with both the insurrection but also the machinations that were happening with respect to trying to challenge that election, we shouldn't lose sight of that. We shouldn't lose sight of both the political violence but also the undermining of like a legal transfer of power. I think the way in which this residency has been using and abusing power is really extreme. And we should be very watchful to any of the ways in which they're going to try to attack the right to vote and like the protection of systems for voting. But even with all of that, I am hopeful because I know that the American people have enough faith in the American people that we will respond and we will grab our arms around fundamental principles of equality, freedom, liberty, due process that I think are essential to who we are. And I think that that response will prevail.

[00:46:32] Host: We'd like to thank Abdi Soltani and the ACLU of Northern California. I want to offer an update since the recording of this episode. U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. has ruled Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act as illegal, as we are not at war with Venezuela. Chapters podcast was produced by Passed Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit PassedForward.org, Chapman.edu, and Library.ca.gov.