David Bier, director of immigration studies for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, goes in depth on what really happened to the U.S. immigration system during President Trump’s first administration and President Biden’s administration. In his January testimony before Congress, Bier noted that more than 30 times the courts found that Trump was enacting immigration policies illegally and noted that the “assault on the rule of law was so relentless that many changes were not stopped.” Biden led the immigration system out of an “unprecedented calamity,” Bier said, but often moved too slowly and with lack of focus on reforms. And despite being labeled “Biden open borders” by Trump and his MAGA allies, Biden vastly expanded deportations and border-detention capacity, said Bier, illustrating that the detention and deportation system is a bipartisan project that Trump is now transforming into a massive deportation machine.

Bier, a former senior policy adviser for a Republican congressional member, also talks about what it’s like in Congress right now, and how the unfettered push to build Trump’s mass deportation machine will lead to unbridled corruption. “Republicans still think this [mass deportations] is a winning issue and that they should lean into the messaging about an invasion … And Democrats are running from this issue still. … It’s incredible how Democrats have shrunk from this moment,” Bier said.