On today's show, President Trump sends a massive message over the weekend to world leaders. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments, or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. We are going to be taking your calls.
As I said, 1-800-684-3110. It was a busy weekend in the news. You kind of kicked off with the hostage releases in Israel. We're going to discuss that a little bit later on in sort of the show that happened from Hamas, as they tried to razzle dazzle the crowd to say, look how good we are.
And of course, all of it was just a performative mess, but we'll discuss that. But of course, we've got to kick off with the news that dominated the weekend, which was the very short-willed tariff war that broke out between Colombia as planes that were scheduled to be filled with... These were not just people who were here illegally. These were also criminals, essentially.
Right. So this is what has begun since the President took office, was going in, and most of the immigrants that have been picked up are those that ICE knew very well, that they had clearly known their names, locations, where to find them. But most of these are migrants that have criminal history within the United States even, not just from their home country. But all of these repatriation flights started happening.
They started going to many different countries in South and Central America where these migrants were originally from. And President Trump was informed that two of these flights headed to Colombia were not going to be accepted by the government of Colombia because they are on military transports. They are being sent there. They have to allow them to land.
Right. This is sort of a normal way this is done. Now, it not necessarily hasn't been happening because of the last administration, but previously, this is sort of standard protocol, which is you work with the countries. There are a return to, essentially, a return to country for people who are committed crimes. It's sort of almost an understood situation.
But Colombia said, no, we don't want them. And it really broke out there for a few hours, and it got pretty intense. What I would like to hear from you, though, and we'll discuss it, I'm sure you've heard some of what went down, we'll go through all the details, the posts on Truth Social, the posts on X, the press releases that went out, the back and forth that very quickly turned to calm, but the chaos that ensued in between. Did you like it? Is this what you voted for? Did you think it was too much?
Did it stress you out? Did you think maybe your coffee was going to go up in price because the tariffs that were going to hit were going to be too high? My son said when that happened, he goes, you know, historically, you don't mess with Americans in terms of coffee and tea. So, you know, that was a good line from him, and I do feel like that's true. We had a pretty quick resolution.
But I'd love to hear from you about that at 1-800-684-3110. You know, these are the kind of issues, Will, that we have been discussing for years, and now we are seeing, in just a few short days, all of it kind of come to a head. You know, maybe just a couple of years ago, we had out of a foyer, we found out that there were terrorists, you know, people that were on the terror watch list that were allowed into the country, or that were caught at the border, caught crossing borders. We know that was happening.
The ACLJ was part of that. And now we have an administration that is supporting the work we have been doing for years, and you see very quickly how things can get done. Of course, we're going to discuss in detail all of what happened there, but I'll give you a little tease.
If you didn't pay attention over the weekend, you should have, because it got very interesting very quickly. But we are involved in a lot of these lawsuits right now. We're involved in lawsuits for Doge. We are involved in new cases for federal employees, where they had to have some bad actors removed, and how we were able to help make sure they get taken care of. But also, to do all of that, and to do this broadcast each and every day, we need your help. I'm going to encourage you right now. Go to ACLJ.org slash champions, if you want to become an ACLJ champion, or become a one-time donor, and that is totally fine. Make a one-time donation right now at ACLJ.org. As I said, phone lines are open.
I want to know, is this what you voted for? And of course, we saw some of the first confirmations go through as well, including Pete Hegseth, and then we'll have a busy week on confirmations, including the confirmation hearing of our colleague, Tulsi Gabbard. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. If you're watching on YouTube or Rumble, hit that subscribe button. If you're on X, follow us. You know what to do. Throughout the rest, if you're watching on the Salem News Channel, call us too, and make sure you tell that to our phone screener.
We'd love to hear that. Again, 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to SetKillo. Phone lines are jammed right now. We've got one open, 1-800-684-3110. Call in if you have a question or comment related to what happened over the weekend, whether that was the tariff battle, the quick tariff battle that happened with Colombia, or maybe even the IDF soldiers being released, the women who were released, the hostages over the weekend. We'd love to get your thoughts on that.
Again, 1-800-684-3110. I wanted to spend this segment, though, breaking down a little more detail of what happened and what we can expect going forward. Harry Hutchison is joining us in studio, obviously as well as Will Haynes. Will, I know you wanted to kind of just lead people through sort of the events that happened over the weekend, and then we'll get some thoughts.
That's right. So, over the weekend, early on Friday, two Air Force planes carrying migrants that had been caught by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE and were being repatriated, sent back to the country where they had originated from, where their citizenship is, were headed towards Colombia. And then, shortly after an error, they were notified by the Colombian government that they would not be received by the government. So they wouldn't have the ability to land and to transfer these detainees back to their country of origin.
So they turned around, one went back to Texas, one went back to San Diego. President Trump was in the middle of a round of golf, but always working, sent out on true social an announcement that he was going to take retaliatory measures, 25 percent tariff on all goods coming into the United States, and after one week, those 25 percent tariffs would be raised to 50 percent. Travel ban and immediate visa revocations of Colombian government officials. Visa sanctions on all party members, family members, and supporters of the Colombian government. Enhanced custom importer protection inspections of all Colombian nationals and cargo. And a treasury banking and financial sanctions to be fully imposed on Colombia.
Professor Hutcheson, between that golf round, I believe some said he was on hole six and then hole eight when Colombia caved. First, Colombia pushed back and said, well, fine, we're doing retaliatory tariffs as well. But then within a matter of minutes, this was resolved. We talk a lot about the use of tariffs and how they can be a tool to get American foreign policy and those that we do business with to get in line with American policy. What's your take on what happened over the weekend in this very brief but very important signaling tariff war?
Well, number one, it's a very important signal. It says several things simultaneously. It says that President Trump, unlike his predecessor, can do several things at once.
He can play golf. He can sign 200 executive actions and simultaneously hold a press conference. And he can impose tariffs on countries that are opposed to American interest. He also sent a signal both to illegals that are in the United States and they now have an opportunity to self deport. But he also sent a signal to Panama, to Mexico, to Iran, to Russia, to virtually every single country in the world that the United States will not accept policies that are contrary to U.S. interest. And so lastly, but perhaps most importantly, Donald Trump has signaled that there is a President in the White House who is actually awake.
And I think that's an important statement for the rest of the world. It does feel like a different time. I mean, we're only five or six days now. We're headed towards a week, around a week of the Trump presidency.
But over the weekend, it felt like a totally different tone. Enough so that I haven't told you, with this situation with Colombia, my initial reaction was a bit nervous. Like it was a bit chaotic to be like, oh, we are going to battle very quickly with these countries. And again, it's so not the diplomatic classic way we've been used to seeing things, which again is sort of almost a government corporate structure of it takes forever, things never get done.
It goes on and on and on. Then eventually there's a resolution. But we've seen now in Israel, multiple of the hostages get released from Gaza. We have seen moments like this. We have seen Vladimir Putin come out and say, you know, if Trump had won last time, there probably wouldn't even been a war in Ukraine.
He's saying that himself. It is, you know, the guard has changed and it is very intense. And again, I was curious from you who are watching, does this intensity excite you? Did it stress you out? Give me a call.
We do a few lines open at 1-800-684-3110. Because this got resolved so quickly and maybe even didn't get, I mean, it's obviously still one of the top stories right now, but this is that sort of warning shot to a lot of nations. Well, and to your point, Logan, a lot of people have been commenting on the difference of not just how between Trump and Biden, but President Trump and basically every administration over the past 30, 40, 50 years. I'd even say the first Trump administration.
This is very different. And so what you typically have in a situation like this, there'd be a crisis at the State Department. We do have a Secretary of State, excuse me now, who has been confirmed and they were already starting to take the steps to implement this. But when you think about what a State Department, okay, then go to a committee, how do we respond to Columbia, their defiance, and they come up with plans. And then those plans go to, you know, the Department of Homeland Security and the Treasury, and then they give their input and then it gets watered down.
And then at the end of the day, six weeks later, they announce, you know, and someone on this on Twitter said basically like, Columbia has agreed, it's a big victory to send less criminal migrants to our country. But you have to also look at what President Biden did in the first term, Professor Hutchison. To address the crisis, he said, I'm making Kamala Harris the border czar to study root causes. That was the very beginning of his administration.
What happened to those root causes? This study, that's how the bureaucracy bogs down an issue and never does anything. This is showing how a President can operate outside of the bureaucracy, pushing the deep state aside and actually get stuff done, instead of studying things like root causes for four years. In all the meantime, the crisis getting much, much, much worse.
Absolutely. So one of the root causes of the border invasion is that the border was wide open. The border was not secure. President Trump immediately recognized that and has taken affirmative steps to close the border.
We don't need a commission. We don't need bureaucrats to get involved. What we need is swift and decisive action and President Trump has done that. And as I pointed out earlier, he has sent a dramatic signal to the rest of the world. If you want to deal with the United States, you must realize that there is a competent person in the White House who can respond and who can respond swiftly.
Right. What you hope is that this is an early stage effort to really show strength, show what we're doing here, so you don't have to continue to have these battles. That things will quiet down a little bit because the country and the world will feel safer.
We will have a resolution to a lot of these problems. There were reports and I don't think they've been fully confirmed that over the 300,000 undocumented, underage people who had come over the border, people who are minors, undocumented minors, that of those 300,000, almost 80,000 have already been at least located and known where they were. And these were people that had gone missing, who were no longer in our system. So you may look at it as this heartless, you know, how are they doing this to people? But you're talking about kids that now we're locating. We're locating tens of thousands of kids very quickly. Again, that's just some reports that have come in over the weekend. So I think you do need to, people need to reframe it.
It is hard. There's sometimes where you look at things from a humanitarian point of view and go, this doesn't feel very Christian. This doesn't feel very American. But when it comes down to it, if you look at really the, again, maybe, well, you said the root cause. The root cause is there are undocumented, 100,000 undocumented children in this country for who knows what reasons.
Nothing good. That point as well, when you have the left freaking out about the tariff war saying that, you know, AOC was talking about good job. Now we're going to have to pay 25% more for our coffee.
This was in the brief period between hole six and hole eight on the golf course when it all got resolved. But you know what many people are saying? You know what I would rather have?
I'd have to pay 25% more on specifically Colombian coffee as if that's the only place in the world that we get coffee beans from. But to not have the list of these people that they have been putting out who they're rounding up. It's not the families and the children. It is specifically MS 13 gang members, the Haitian migrant that had 18 criminal offenses in the United States was still here and basically said, I'm not going back to Haiti.
And all the list goes on. It is a litany of people that are the bad criminal actors. When you see things like the Lake and Riley act being passed in the Senate and hopefully being signed by the President soon.
It's because she was killed by a migrant, an illegal immigrant that was here that had already committed and been charged with crimes in America and was still here. That's who they're getting rid of to make America safer. And if it takes a very short-lived tariff war to make the country of origin take their citizens back, then so be it. Yeah. I think these are kind of the, again, the Swift actions being taken.
It may make you feel uncomfortable occasionally, but if the, if it gets the deals get done and things actually happen and good on you. I'm excited. You know, Hey, whoa, we got a lot of phone lines full right now.
We too open 1-800-684-3110. And a lot of you watching right now on YouTube and on rumble. If you are brand new to our YouTube channel, by the way, which we know about 50% of the people who see us discover us.
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If you can right now at ACLJ.org, we will be right back. Welcome back to secular. There we go. There I am. Sorry about that. If you're watching online, give us a call. I said 1-800-684-3110 want to pivot a little bit. A lot of you are on hold right now about the whole situation that happened with Columbia over the weekend. We're going to get to your calls.
I promise to stay on hold and we will get to you, but we do want to pivot a little bit. We have CC Heil joining us right now, senior attorney here at the ACLJ to talk about some of the moves that have happened just over the last five days to protect life and life of the unborn. We saw some major developments, obviously the pardons that came out, and we'll show that a little bit later. And actually we do have that.
I just want to show it real quick. This is just a converse of what we had in terms of, remember, they had Kamala Harris on a pro-abortion tour, going town to town to talk about the benefits and the love and support for abortion, and now you're President Trump in office and you have moments like this. Next we have a set of pardons for peaceful pro-life protesters who were prosecuted by the Biden administration for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Do you know how many? I believe it's 23, sir. 23 people were prosecuted. They should not have been prosecuted.
Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this. Great honor to sign this. That's coming from President Trump. So you get pushback from some of your Christian friends who are like, how dare you?
How did you vote for President Trump? I get he sometimes can be a character that you may be, you know, it doesn't necessarily put off the most Christian worldview, conservative Christian worldview approach to things, his language, some of the stuff he says. But these are moments I don't think you would have even seen from most conservative Presidents. Remember you saw Roe versus Wade overturned. You would not have seen those things happen, even from people like George W. Bush, who were very strong pro-life advocates, who, you know, limited stem cell research, those kind of things early on. But you see President Trump actually do it, and we have our own cases that are similar to this, and you saw more action from the Trump administration already on the protection of life.
Yeah. So, you know, it's important to note that, yes, we do now have a pro-life administration, which is wonderful, but they can only do things on the federal level. So you just saw that President Trump pardoned 23 peaceful protesters that should not have been prosecuted under the FACE Act. That's a federal act, but we have a case. As he says that in the next thing, many elderly people, I mean, a lot of them were, again, protesters in front of these pro-life pregnancies, or in front of these pro-abortion centers.
Right. They didn't have any charges brought against them, but then the FACE Act was brought against them, prosecuted, put in jail. But you also have the flip side, and this is where the American Center for Law and Justice does step in and help. So, yes, we have a very pro-life administration, but in Ohio, which, again, you would think is a conservative state, they did vote. They did a constitutional amendment that actually secured the right to abortion, and so now you see things like we have a client in Ohio who was arrested for disorderly conduct. So that's what they came after him for. He was, once again, peacefully protesting in front of an abortion clinic, and he has the right to do so under the First Amendment. And he is targeted by the police and arrested for disorderly conduct. Now, it's important to know that at the very same time, there were abortion escorts there who were shouting and yelling and blowing kazoos at the same level or even higher than our client was literally simply just telling these women they have options. But only our client was arrested.
So we have to fight these battles now in the state because, yes, we do have an administration that is helping us on the federal level, but it's at the state level that we're still going to be fighting this. We had a motion to dismiss, and that was heard. Actually, there was supposed to be a hearing last week, which there was, and the judge changed the timeline. There was a trial, actually, that was going to be February 3rd on this case, and we've turned the trial now into a hearing on our motion to dismiss. Explain that.
How does that affect people? A motion to dismiss is basically a pretrial motion. So we're saying, look, this case should be dismissed. This is an unconstitutional ordinance, and therefore our client cannot be charged under it, and it's dismissed completely. The trial, which was actually the full-blown trial where you have witnesses and the case goes to court, that was scheduled for February 3rd, but the court, the judge changed that now to have, again, a pretrial hearing on our motion to dismiss, which, if granted, will end this case in its entirety.
And, Cece, I think it's also important to point out, as you mentioned earlier, I mean, Congressman Chip Roy has legislation now to repeal the FACE Act. All those federal government actions, too, the prosecutions will not be as heavily weaponized against pro-life advocates as they were for the last four years, as we saw. But this currently misdemeanor charge that we are fighting, the courts aren't used to a big law firm coming in, helping fight on something like this, so the states feel like they can get away with it. But I have a fear that these types of charges, especially in places like Massachusetts, where we are fighting aggressively through our advocacy campaign to let people know about pro-life resource centers and to completely push back against the state government there attacking and targeting pro-life advocates in their state, that these misdemeanor charges, like we see in Ohio, the states will find ways to be much more aggressive to try to pick up the slack from the federal government that was carrying water for these states for four years by prosecuting these people. And that's why our work, like we're doing just next Tuesday, February 3rd, hard to believe, is next Tuesday, where we're fighting for this one, our practice in this area at the ACLJ is going to pick up exponentially. It takes a different set of expertise because it's not just fighting the federal law, it's fighting at this local level that we're going to have to do all over the country to push back against states and municipalities even that try to target people that are pro-life simply because they are pro-life and turn a blind eye to the entire abortion industry.
Right. And you make a good point, too, that the ACLJ, no prosecution is too small. So this is a disorderly conduct claim in Ohio.
And you might think, oh, the ACLJ is not going to be concerned about that. But we are concerned about that because it affects our clients' First Amendment right to speak a pro-life message, and we're going to protect that. And now, again, we have a pro-life administration at the federal level. We're going to continue the fight on the state levels, which we told you was going to be the issue all along, even with the Dobbs case. It's going to be the fight in the states, and the ACLJ will be protecting life at the state level.
That's our guarantee. And one of the other changes that happened was the Mexico City policy, which is the biggest flip-flopping policy that happens every time there's a Republican or Democrat within the first couple days. This goes into effect. And what that is, if you don't know, if you're not familiar with the Mexico City policy, it essentially is the decision-maker whether we should be funding abortion outside of our own country.
So maybe give a little brief history. The Mexico City policy is basically international funding. So it goes into effect that we will not give any kind of funds to NGOs that do abortions anywhere overseas. So we want the Mexico City policy.
That is correct. Mexico City policy is good, and that's been implemented. And the Hyde Amendment, which has been the law on the books for almost 50 years. The Trump administration- That Joe Biden was one of the main people who championed it so many years ago. Of course, only in the last eight decided, wow, I'm not really for it. Yeah, I'm just going to disregard it, basically. It's a law on the books, and so Trump once again said, we are enforcing that. So again, two great pro-life policies back into place.
Absolutely. Hey, phone lights are completely jammed, but we're going to take some coming up. And again, as we head into the second half hour of the broadcast, if you don't get us on your local radio station, we are broadcasting live for the full hour on ACLJ.org, YouTube, Rumble. You can find us on Facebook. You can find us on X. Wherever you get media, we're there. We're also live now on the Salem News Channel, which you can find on Pluto and on Samsung Plus.
Check it out. Great lineup of shows there. But again, if you can, we're involved in so many of these issues, and we've been championing them for years, and we need your support right now to make sure that they get pushed through. Go to ACLJ.org. If you come to ACLJ champion, we really appreciate that.
Hey, if you were a champion, you get bumped up to the list on the phone call. So ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are completely jammed, most of them talking about the news over the weekend.
They went on with the sort of brief tariff battle in the war against criminals, essentially, here in America, trying to return criminals to their home countries that started with Colombia. Let's go ahead and take some phone calls. We got a lot of good ones coming in from all over, from YouTube, from ACLJ.org, from the Salem News Channel, from radio, and from a bunch of different states. So let's go ahead and start off. We'll just go in the order they came in. Let's go to Robert in Alabama Online 2, who is watching on YouTube.
And again, if you're brand new on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. Go ahead, Robert. Yeah, I can do without coffee. I'm on my first pot this morning. And I can tell you, if they don't take them in Colombia, they need to drop them off at the nearest airport that the country they came through, and probably is Mexico.
And they got good airports down there just as well. Yeah, Robert, I don't know if they take my coffee. I'll be pretty upset.
I don't know how I'll be able to do this show. But other than that, it would be pretty upsetting. But no, I don't think that's the nature of what's going to happen here. What you saw was, you'd say, peace through strength, a push where, all of a sudden, President Trump made these demands, and it was quickly taken care of.
Why? Because, one, they know the threats are real now. That's right. I mean, that's a big part of it, is they know that, yeah, he is going to put these tariffs in. They're going to happen. And now, he said they just sit unsigned, ready to be signed, by the way, if anything was to come up. Well, and I think it's also important to point out that, initially, the President of Colombia tried to project Bluster back. He tried to say, I won't shake hands with this man. We're going to do retaliatory tariffs as well.
But very quickly back down. I think that's even more important than just him threatening the sanctions, they cave, and then they move on. It also showed that when he tried to push back, he still lost. He still lost this battle. And we're not going to be pushed around by countries that are much smaller economically, developmental-wise.
And we're going to continue to show, as you said, peace through strength, through economic measures, through all of these tools that the U.S. President has. And back to the coffee thing, it is also so naive to think that, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, that he's about to make inflation worse for working-class Americans, not better. He's lining the pockets of himself and the billionaire class. It's just so absurd to even think that that's where her mind went. But also, Colombia's not the only place we get coffee from.
Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, arabica beans that come from Egypt and other places around the world. And it is very fascinating to see that they have all of a sudden thought that Colombia is the only place that we get coffee, and that's going to drastically change the entire consumer economy of coffee. It's quite laughable, but they also noticed they didn't go after he was playing golf when there was an economic crisis. He handled it.
They had to go after, he's going to make coffee more expensive. We got to fix this really quickly. Are you good?
Yeah, I'm good. I just had to get that off my chest. I mean, there was so much information in that. That was so much coffee. I mean, look, I think what it is is that AOC, probably like a lot of us millennials, grew up in an era where all we can think of is the commercials for coffee from Colombia. So we're just like, that's the only place that it exists.
You can't get coffee anywhere else. Also, again, I don't want to say these weren't real threats. They are real threats, but they are such big threats that they get taken care of. Let's continue on with some phone calls. Let's go to Susan, who's calling in Tennessee, watching on ACLJ.org.
Susan, you're on the air. Guys, I just love having President Trump in office. He is calming and exciting all at the same time. I feel safe and protected because he is there.
Thank you, Susan, by the way, for your comments. I think there is a lot of that. I think a lot of people feel that way right now. They have this sort of sense of relief, knowing that we're not going to get pushed around. But again, sometimes that sort of chaos, it makes you feel uncomfortable because you're not used to it. You're not used to seeing the peace through strength model.
That hasn't been how we've been doing it the last few years. So here's what happens. And things get done.
It's pretty wild. ACLJ.org, again, to support the work. We now have, because Susan was on, we now have two lines open. 1-800-684-3110. We're going to continue taking your calls. So many of you have been on hold for a little while, but we do have a couple lines open.
Oscar, Mike, Mark, Ronald, stay on hold. We'll get to you. Again, we've been involved in all of these issues for so many years now, and now is the time to take action because we can get it done.
So go to ACLJ.org, make your donation to us. Hey, welcome back to Secular. We're going to take as many calls as we can. A lot of people are calling in right now, and we're going to definitely talk about some of the movement in Israel.
We may push some of that to tomorrow because there's just a lot going on, and we'll have Jeff Balaban joining us from ACLJ Jerusalem. I want to continue to take your calls on this. Let's keep going. Let's go to Oscar who's calling from Florida, listening on the radio. Oscar, I appreciate you calling in. Go ahead.
Thank you so much for taking my call. As a little intro, I am Hispanic. I grew up in New York City back in the 70s, 60s, 80s, and I've met a lot of undocumented people throughout my life. And I was telling the rep a few minutes ago that there's something that we need to be very careful about. A lot of innocent people are paying for the sins of the bad people, and they are being deported together. And I understand that. I voted for Trump, and I voted for cleaning US streets and everything else. Nevertheless, I believe our government, Trump's policy, should embed a line. Whereas, I'm very sorry for you guys. I know many of you are honest.
I'm sorry you're paying for the sins of the bad guys. But at this time, we just cannot accept everybody. And Trump needs to kind of let the audience know that he's not doing this to harm everybody in the same boat.
He's doing this to defend the country and not to hurt the people who are innocent, immigrants, innocents that were kind of desperate to leave their countries and looking for good life. Oscar, I totally agree with you. I think there is a sense of humanitarian and heart and asylum for people that need it. There are ways you can go about that. There are ways they can assist in that.
Of course, right now, the focus is controlling what's happening at the border and getting mainly criminals, a lot of people who have been charged in America for crimes off the street. But Oscar, I understand. I understand the real look at this and to say, I feel the same way. I know many people as well who maybe came here with their families in ways that weren't the cleanest of ways to get here, but now they are here.
And how do you deal with that? Like you said, good people, hardworking people who really want a better life for themselves. And I think what we have to do is, by controlling what's happening at the border, we can start changing the way people are allowed to immigrate in. Well, and I think to Oscar's point as well, why a lot of people are afraid or thinking about this, maybe not in the truthful or straightforward way, is that when you have people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warning that your coffee price is going to go up, when you weigh that against what we're actually talking about here, when you look at the list of arrests that ICE has made, they have been very targeted.
The media is not necessarily reporting that. But they are going in, they are getting people that have murder convictions in the United States, people that are in prison currently, are being rounded up from the prisons to start the deportation so that we as taxpayers aren't paying for that. So much havoc happened over the last four years in just this free-for-all at the border, that ICE knew where these people were and they have record of what was going on. And the sanctuary cities that were just releasing them back into the population after they served some time or they got charged and awaited a hearing and a backlog of their local court systems, that's the majority of what's being picked up. MS-13 gang members that are doing gang activity and violence and people that are on terror watch lists, people that are committing, as you mentioned, there was that one, the Haitian migrant that came here, has committed 18 crimes in the United States and nothing happened to him. They're coming here and violating laws even here, not just the law of coming here illegal.
That's the priority. That's the priority to clean up before you can get anywhere to try and reform a system because it is so overwhelmed by the criminals that are here that came here illegally. We even talked about the people that were trying to abuse the asylum process last week that were picked up three asylum program claimants that are there that were caught with 30,000 rounds of both.50 caliber BMG and AK-47 rounds that they're transporting in the country. They aren't here for good purposes even though they're even trying to use the asylum claim.
So you have to fix it first. You have to get to that route and get the bad actors out to keep Americans safe and to keep other migrants that are here, whether legally or illegally, that are easily pushed around having crimes committed against them and they can't go to someone like the police because they may not have status, but there is violence and criminal activity taking place in the country that you have to clean up immediately. And I think to Oscar's point, the narrative is so focused on you may have to pay more for your coffee because he's going after migrants. No, what you're going to have to do is hopefully pay less for your police force or emergency responders because of all of, and your prison system through your taxes because of all that is going on that is creating this chaos in the country. So yes, a cup of coffee from Colombia may be a little bit more expensive. It's not going to be because that tariff war is over.
But those are the kinds of things you have to think about is that your minor inconvenience to try and fix what was so desperately broken over the last four years and decades before, that would be a small price to pay to save people's lives in the cities, their property and their dignity in this country. All right, we got a call related to that. I think it's pretty interesting. Ronald's calling South Carolina, who is watching on Rumble, one of our favorite free speech platforms. If you're looking for a way to stream our show, you can always do that on Rumble on our channel. Ronald, you're on the air.
Yes, thanks for taking my call. And I just wanted to comment that all that President Trump has done in literally just a short time, he's literally proving himself a man of action. And I was wondering why the previous administration, the Biden administration in the entire four years, literally, literally, what were they involved in? Because it seemed like there was no progress being made.
The country was just getting worse and worse and worse. I mean, I think to Ronald's point, this is the difference in having an executive in office that takes action versus an executive who allows the entire country to be run by bureaucrats. When you're run by committee or you're run by bureaucrats or appointees, then nothing's ever going to get done because they're all on the same level playing field and they're all bickering about what the right path forward is. True leadership is saying, here's the direction we're going, implement my plans. And you did not have that under the Biden administration. You probably didn't have him giving any directive at all. When you look at how many full cabinet meetings he had, how over the course of the four years he was having less and less meetings, you were probably having a country run by Jake Sullivan, national security advisor, who is not appointed and confirmed by the Senate. He's just an advisory role. And that's an unelected appointment, completely running things.
And I think that's the biggest problem as well. I think when you look at the situation at hand, what's changed is obviously even access to the President, access to the White House. And I mean that from the press and from the American people, because all of a sudden it went from a time where you never really were in the Oval Office, never really in the White House. So now we see videos uploaded, but it feels like every day we see live press conferences. We see the President making speeches, going to Las Vegas and talking about getting rid of the taxes on tips, the things that people want.
You have J.D. Vance doing big interviews over the weekend, discussing everything from bringing grocery prices down to all the topics that we want to see actually happen and get done. We've seen them out there. We've seen a President and a vice President who are not afraid to talk, who are not afraid to get on a microphone, to get on a stage, to do an interview. And remember how long it was between times we saw interviews with Kamala Harris? Remember how long it was between times we see press conferences and interviews with President Biden? That is something we have to get rid of in this country.
We did not get that become the norm. Sure, it's nice to have the President be able to run things and you trust them and they go. And maybe it will slow down for Trump. Maybe this is just to show we are back, this is what we're doing, and you have access and we're going to take care of things. And just like it did happen to Columbia in saying, this is a warning shot saying, don't mess with us. We are actually going to be really taking action, unlike what the Biden administration did. Unlike what a lot of politics always ends up being, which is a lot of talk. Now there are some big confirmation hearings happening this week, including our friend Tulsi Gabbard.
You have RFK coming up pretty soon. And look, they need your help too. So say a prayer for them, say a prayer for Tulsi. I know it's going to be a hectic time in Washington, D.C.
But of course there have been some confirmations which have been good as it starts to roll out. We're going to continue to take your phone calls in the next segment, so stay on hold. If you are Mike, Royce, Mark, Sherry, Adam, and we have one line open.
1-800-68-431-10. And folks, you've been watching this show, even if you're brand new. We've been involved and engaged on all of these issues at a really high level for years and years and years. Now you have an opportunity to really take action even further, because now for the first time in many years, we have a President, you have a House and a Senate, who are more inclined to support your values and what you believe in. So this is the time for the ACLJ to take action. And again, the state battles are going to get more and more. You heard about a pro-life activism that's happening. We have to do that at the state level because we know that it's needed more than ever. So right now I encourage you, if you can, to support the work of the ACLJ.
A couple different ways you can do it. If you're brand new, never seen my face before, never seen the work of the ACLJ, hit that subscribe button. It's a free way to do it if you're watching on YouTube or rumble or Twitter or however you're watching. But if you like this show and you like the work of the ACLJ, you like the legal help, and hey, you want us to be there when you need it too, because remember, we represent all of our clients at no cost because of generous donors like you. ACLJ champions that give monthly recurring automatically and people that give a one-time gift. And you can do that either way. They're all tax deductible.
Go to ACLJ.org. Do it right now. Phone calls coming up.
Stay on hold. We'll take more. Welcome back to Secula.
We just played a clip in the break if you're watching on YouTube or rumble, and it's just true. I think that a lot of this is the first few weeks getting things under control and showing people that we mean business, including when you have these situations like what happened in Columbia. Hopefully, this is not how it always is going to have to be. Hopefully, they'll take it seriously and we can move forward as a country. Let's go ahead and start with phone calls because we have so many coming in. Let's go to Royce, who's calling, who's watching on the ACLJ app, which is cool. You can download that as well in Colorado.
You're on the air. Well, you know, if Trump puts tariffs on this coffee over in Columbia, it's only going to get expensive for us if we keep buying it. Hawaii has great coffee.
I ordered mine from Pua Lale, and a shameless plug there. Is that your company? Because, I mean, there you go. That's the name of the company. But there's other brands that come from Hawaii also. So, you know, we should be buying it from America anyway.
Royce, that's a good point. There may be some validity to that, I'll be honest. I don't buy the coffee in my house. I have no idea where it comes from.
All I know is that it's there, and I need it in the morning. So, it just happens. So, I understand. But maybe there is some great options, but I appreciate you calling in. We're going to continue on, take some more calls. Let's go to Mike, who's calling in Texas on Line 6, who's listening on the radio, on Terrestrial Radio. Go ahead, Mike.
Thanks for taking my call. It refers to deporting illegals who have committed crime, criminals. I can see that if the illegal committed a crime in the United States, we'd have a record of it, but I've heard so much that the foreign countries have sent the illegals over, criminals over here. How would we know if they committed a crime in another country?
If you contacted them and asked the authorities, they're going to say, no, no, that guy, he's a scoutmaster, a deacon in his church, he's a good guy. Well, Mike, not necessarily, because sometimes they want their criminals back who've escaped. That's very fair. In theory.
And this is a large mix. When you're talking about, I mean, they had about 1,000 in the first day, so you can only extrapolate that forward that they've been going through and systematically going through roles that ICE had and knows where people are, is probably a very big mix of both. I think to Mike's point, he's concerned that someone that may not have committed a crime here yet may be a dangerous criminal where they came from. I think some of that, though, is also going to be the enforcement and the really the ability of these agencies to do their job now. Clearly, ICE wanted to do their job because they had locations, addresses, places to go right away.
Immediately. They just weren't allowed to by the previous administration, by Secretary Mayorkas and the President himself. So they want to do their job. I have a feeling that it is going to be much easier for them to do that going forward now that there is a new sheriff in town, as they like to say. Yeah, absolutely.
Let's continue on and take more calls. I think it's important that we focus on these real issues right now and what's actually happening. I see right now on Fox News, we have all the networks up, they're talking about should we be adding President Trump's face to Mount Rushmore.
I don't like that that's a news story right now. I think right now, those campaign promises need to be reached. The border needs to be safe. We need to make sure that we feel safe in our own country and around the world even. The United States has a large portion of that. We need to see if we can get, like you said, your wages up or grocery prices down.
The things that are really affecting everyone, gas prices, how we live our lives. And sure, that's fun and it's on sort of their more entertainment show, but I just want to make sure we keep focused on what is important right now in reshaping this country. Let's go ahead, continue on. Mark is calling, who's watching on the Salem News Channel, which is very cool. Our new home there live on the Salem News Channel, which you can get on Pluto.
You can get it on Samsung Plus or just on their website. So go ahead, Mark, you're on the air. Okay.
Well, first of all, I want to thank you, gentlemen, for allowing me to get on here. The thing with Columbia as of right now, I think it's kind of sort of worked through. It's been resolved for the most part. My concern is what's going on there in Illinois. I just saw Ben Berquam saying that the mayor there in Chicago and the governor are going to basically, it's kind of almost come down to a fist fight with allowing ICE to do their job. He said they're not allowing them to go into the prisons there to take the illegals out of the prisons that were already being convicted of crimes. My question is why doesn't, I guess he has to get his attorney general in there first. I assume that's what he's waiting on. And also that Tom is starting to kind of run out of money or is running in the red with the deportations. But what legal recourse would the U.S. government have if these sanctuary leaders, the governors, or whatever you want to call them, I call them pretty much traders, want to keep... Sure, Mark.
I'm only cutting you off because we have a lot of calls running out of time here, but Will's got an answer. Yeah, so and I think this is mainly Governor Pritzker in Illinois trying to already lay the groundwork for him running for President in 2028. You saw him at the stage at the DNC.
He proudly proclaimed he was a billionaire right after they said we hate billionaires right before. But Governor Pritzker is saying that they are not going to let him go after what he called law-abiding illegal immigrants, which is funny on its face because technically if they're here, they've already broken the law of the country. He does concede, though, that we do have to follow federal law. There's a little something called the Supremacy Clause. You can't make a law that contradicts federal law, and that is what the sanctuary cities would be doing. And the Justice Department has put out a memo threatening cities and states.
I think at the end of the day, you're right. We don't have an attorney general yet, so a lot of those people are still holdovers. But if we look forward, I don't think the governor of Illinois is going to be able to do a ton because the federal government can come in here, get injunctions, lawsuits, things of that nature.
The one thing that states and localities can sometimes fall back on is prosecutorial discretion, saying that we have our resources all tied up in one area, therefore we can't go after this area, and that's hard to prosecute or go after from the federal level. We are running really close on time. Sherry's calling California. Go ahead. Hello, and I just wanted to make a comment regarding the current discussion. I am an immigrant in America as a country of immigrants, but there are legal ways to migrate. I understand that Americans are compassionate and want to welcome foreigners, but America is also governed by its laws.
I waited for 20 years for my citizenship, and if you truly love America and want to be a part of it, don't start by breaking its laws. Sherry, thank you so much for calling. Unfortunately, Adam and James, we're just not going to be able to get to you today. If you want to call back tomorrow, we'll make sure you get to the front of the line here. I know you've been on hold for a few minutes, but unfortunately we're just not going to be able to get to you. I want to thank everyone who supports this show and watches this show each and every day, and thank you so much for that last call.
It was great. I encourage you, if you do like this, know that we are not funded by major sponsors. We are not funded by the ads even that you may hear on your local stations.
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Your mind's somewhere else. These are the months where we need you really to step up if you can. And it's a great time to become an ACLJ champion, something that gives on a monthly basis. If you've been following us for years, you know we're involved in so many of these cases. We've been so involved in even the immigration struggles. And again, from a family of immigrants, there are ways that we can reform how all of this is happening and do it in a safe and legal way. Just a few short years ago, you remember we filed a FOIA request that exposed there was two terrorists on the FBI watch list who illegally crossed our border and were caught when given the opportunity. Now we have an administration that supports the work we've been doing, and we can accomplish so much more. But we can't do it without you. I encourage you right now, we need each and every one of you to stand up with us as we help fight back, make a one-time donation, or become an ACLJ champion today at ACLJ.org. Again, go to ACLJ.org also for all of the great content that's available. And if you're watching on YouTube or rumble, hit subscribe.
