0:03

I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening

0:05

to Here's the Thing. Late

0:07

in the afternoon of January

0:09

two thousand seventeen, Donald

0:12

Trump, guided by Stephen Miller, issued

0:15

the Muslim Ban. Hundreds

0:17

of people had their immigration status

0:20

changed in mid air. They'd

0:22

taken off from their home countries with

0:25

permission to migrate, or to visit

0:27

friends or have a business meeting.

0:29

They landed essentially as illegal

0:32

immigrants. Those

0:34

travelers needed the rule of

0:36

law, needed a savior. They

0:39

found one in my guest today, Becca

0:42

Heller. Her organization,

0:44

the International Refugee Assistance

0:46

Project, deployed an army

0:49

of volunteer lawyers to the airports.

0:52

One of them obtained a court order

0:54

forbidding deportations. As

0:56

Trump's court troubles grew, he

0:59

essentially gave up for a while

1:01

the good guys had won. Heller

1:04

was an overnight celebrity on

1:06

every nightly news show. She got

1:08

a New York Times profile, a Daily

1:11

Show appearance, and a MacArthur Genius

1:13

grant. I WRAP tripled

1:15

its budget in a year. Now,

1:18

almost two years later, Heller

1:20

has helped over two hundred thousand

1:22

migrants and refugees stay

1:25

in the United States. It

1:27

would be heroic work for anyone,

1:29

but especially so for someone in their

1:32

mid thirties with a toddler and

1:34

a pile of student loans. Where

1:36

do her energy and courage

1:38

come from? As it turns out, the

1:40

answer is suburbia. My

1:43

dad was a cardiologist. My parents

1:45

are both still Have'm using past tense just because they're retired,

1:48

not because anything tragic happened. But I was a cardiologist

1:50

in my mom todd Public School where I

1:52

grew up in the Bay Area. I have many

1:55

siblings. I have one younger brother. And

1:57

what's he doing now? He's not solving

1:59

the immigration problem he is. I

2:01

think he's day trading, is how you would describe.

2:04

Okay, school, someone's got to do that. Yeah, someone

2:07

gonna take the money that you have in your budget and invested somewhere.

2:10

He's not trading our budget. He's not

2:12

helping your budget. He's not even hoping

2:14

me personally. I've asked him what I should do with

2:16

my money, and he doesn't want to be responsible if I lose

2:18

it all. I had a dear friend that might say the same thing to

2:20

me. I said, what should I do in terms

2:22

of the business manager to invest my money? He goes what

2:25

he goes, What would I do? Or what do I think

2:27

you should do? How different? He said,

2:29

I would never tell you to do what I did.

2:32

I don't want that responsibility. And now, so

2:34

you grew up in the Bay Area and through

2:37

high school were you an activist to what

2:39

were you doing? I was like, I want to be

2:41

activist, Like I had all these ideas for

2:43

things all the time, and I felt sort of very empathic

2:45

towards especially homelessness is a very visible

2:49

manifestation of area in the Bay Area,

2:51

you know, because the weather is good, right, it's a tolerant

2:53

community to like, there's a there's

2:55

a level of homeless and you just don't see on Park Avenue

2:58

in the seventies and I live in the village

3:00

and you see quite a bit of it because that community down is a

3:02

lot more tolerant, right. And you know, we'll

3:04

see if tech changes that for better,

3:06

right. But I think, you know, that was

3:08

so visible, and I remember always being really

3:10

worked up by that and having these big ideas

3:13

of you know, when I was ten, I was like, I'm gonna do a blanket drive

3:15

and then just not doing it because I think

3:17

I don't know if I felt dis empowered, or

3:19

I just felt scared or I didn't know my own You

3:21

had the passion, but you didn't follow through. Yeah, pretty

3:24

like many people, I think. And then

3:26

you go to Dartmouth, y u S.

3:29

Darmouths like of all the IVS is like the most

3:31

animal house of the ivs. Is that is

3:33

that fair? You think I can't roll with animals?

3:36

No, I'm I'm closing my eyes. I'm

3:38

thinking about you like having a blanket drive

3:41

up there, and and well, here's

3:43

the thing. I never did the blanket drive, right, I'm the person

3:45

who wanted to and then went to Darmouth instead. No, I actually

3:48

I had an amazing time at Darmouth Dartmouth.

3:51

I messed up applying to college the first

3:53

time around. Um. I applied

3:55

to two schools early, and

3:57

one of them found out and told the other, and they

3:59

both rescinded my offer of admission, and

4:02

I took a year off and I did AmeriCorps

4:05

Um, which I would pinpoint as sort of like

4:07

the turning point of when I realized that

4:09

I need to re say that, because I dropped that on the table and it

4:11

made a weird echoing. I think people can tell, right, away.

4:13

This is going to be a very bumpy interview, Aracor.

4:18

It's the kind of domestic peace corps. Where

4:21

So, where did you go? I stayed at home

4:23

because they don't pay you very much, So

4:26

I lived with my folks, and I

4:28

was working at an elementary school in Berkeley

4:30

on sort of broadly equal opportunity education

4:32

stuff. And they just gave us this big budget and they were

4:35

like, do programming to help fight institutional

4:37

oppression. And I was like, I don't know what that means.

4:39

I don't know how to do that, but I'm gonna give it a shot. And

4:41

then I think, much to my surprise,

4:43

it turned out there was a lot of things that that we

4:45

could do collectively. Um.

4:49

Now, when you leave

4:51

school, when you leave Dartmouth,

4:53

you go to law school, you go right one to the

4:55

other. You take another gap. Oh no, I took I took

4:57

two years. What you doing that? Two years? I was

5:00

in Malawi for a year on a full

5:02

bright um and then I actually went

5:04

to Vermont for a

5:06

year, partly for a boy partly

5:09

for a job. I ended up working on the

5:11

Freedom to Marry campaign in Vermont. Did you

5:13

find you had to kind of a peripatetic nature. You

5:15

like moving around, and you weren't married

5:17

at the time, you had no kids, And did you find now

5:19

is the time for me to go to Malawi? For Were

5:21

you were there for like a year? Right? Yeah? I was there for a

5:24

year. I still I

5:26

am pretty peripatetic. Actually, I get

5:28

really claustrophobic if I stay in one place for too

5:31

long. Um. I like to move around. I

5:33

think the world is just completely fascinating.

5:35

I like to see as much as your husband's share

5:37

of that passion with you or he's he has

5:40

like a huge zest for life.

5:42

He doesn't like long plane rides as much

5:44

as I do, but yeah, he loves to

5:46

travel and I'm taking Actually, Um,

5:48

the day after Trump was elected, I

5:50

couldn't really get out of bed, but I went to the Brooklyn Public

5:53

Library and got my kid, who was one at

5:55

the time, a passport because just

5:57

I professionally help people flee UM,

5:59

and I like, if this all goes to ship, I'm

6:01

not going to not be able to get across the Canada border.

6:03

Because she has a different last name from me, but

6:06

she's never actually traveled internationally. But in

6:08

in January, taking her and my mom to Costa Rica,

6:10

which I'm really excited about. I want I want

6:12

her to be equally parapedetic. What

6:15

was your awareness of Malawi

6:17

and what was going on in Malawi before you showed

6:19

up there. Well, I had been in Zimbabwe on

6:22

and off for the year before

6:24

doing what work. On paper, I was

6:27

helping build community

6:29

gardens as a response to HIV related malnutrition

6:31

at public health clinics. But I think

6:33

when you're you know, if you're

6:36

an activist and you're deep in the middle of a problem,

6:38

you're always like, what's the root cause of this? Right?

6:40

And in Zimbabwe, the root cause of this was like

6:42

the ruling party, So I ended

6:44

up getting involved in some political opposition

6:47

stuff um and ended up needing to

6:49

leave the country. What kind of gardens

6:52

community community gardens to

6:54

address malnutrition in the HIV

6:56

community? That sounds pretty benign and pretty

6:58

wonderful. What do you land in Zimbabwe

7:01

knowing that the government and

7:03

the status quo needs to be addressed, or do

7:05

you learn that there land the

7:07

accidental activist or you're predisposed

7:11

both. I mean I didn't. I would say

7:13

that I landed aware of the problems because I

7:15

do my homework, so like I landed

7:17

knowing that ZANU p F, which was the ruling

7:19

party, had said no one can buy maize

7:22

meal, which is the staple food without

7:24

a political party membership card, which

7:27

means that like it doesn't matter how sick you

7:29

are, in order to get food, you have to

7:31

say that your loyalty right

7:33

literally or starved to death. So,

7:35

like I knew that, I didn't go in there

7:37

saying, oh, I'm gonna fix that. I'm going to address

7:40

that, you know, but eventually couldn't

7:42

help yourself. I mean, I stumbled into

7:44

a meeting of the opposition

7:47

party and had some feelings. I

7:49

mean, I think I was primed in a way

7:51

that like, I'm not afraid of

7:54

a good fight on behalf of a good

7:56

cause. But I also I

7:59

think going into on place, especially with like a fighting

8:01

mentality, is usually like really unproductive.

8:04

Tell me about it. Yeah,

8:07

I think historically America hasn't been that good

8:09

at not doing that. Um,

8:11

So I didn't go in saying like, oh, I'm gonna struggle

8:14

for regime change, but I went in being like, there's

8:16

a problem, which is that like really sick

8:19

people don't have access to immune boosting

8:21

foods. And this was before anti retroviral therapy

8:23

was really widely available. And you know, HIV

8:26

doesn't kill you. What it does is weaken your immune system,

8:28

and then you get a secondary infection that kills you. So

8:31

nutrition becomes really important.

8:33

So I had this like theory that I thought might

8:35

work, but I went in knowing that it was just a theory

8:38

and that really, like I didn't know shit about

8:40

ship and so I was open to learning

8:43

that the problem had other facets and there might be a

8:45

better way to Yeah, political

8:48

or not. What kind of facilities did you live

8:50

in? I lived with a family. I

8:52

originally actually was living with a black

8:54

family because I had this weird concept

8:57

of like solidarity that like,

8:59

oh, just because I'm privileged and

9:01

have a cell phone, like doesn't mean I should get to stay

9:03

in a fancy house, like I should stay in the township

9:05

like everybody else. And then one

9:07

night some rocks were thrown in the window and the

9:09

rocks said ma zongu on them, which means

9:11

like, white person, go back to the

9:13

embarcadera. I'm

9:16

from the East Bay, so I don't mess around. Um.

9:20

It was a sort of awakening moment for me of like, oh,

9:22

that's solid aarity doesn't mean that I like pretend

9:25

that we're the same. How much longer did you

9:27

last in Zimbabwe? That was

9:29

the beginning, and so what happened after that? I

9:32

kept doing the same work, but I moved

9:34

in with a white family so that I wasn't like

9:36

putting people in danger with my physical

9:38

presence. So what is the end game

9:40

there? I mean, when did you realize it was time to get out of there? Well,

9:42

I got to report it, like someone comes to your

9:45

going the I got picked

9:47

up by the local police

9:50

and take into a police station and

9:53

uh, they like held me in an office for

9:55

seven hours, and I started out

9:57

really scared, and then by the end, I just

9:59

like had to pee worse than I've

10:01

ever had to pee in my life. And

10:04

then they came in and they're like, you need to leave the country. We're going

10:06

to take you to the airport. And I was like, great, can we stop

10:08

my bathroom please? And that was kind of and

10:10

then they the family ship me my stuff like came

10:13

home. What happened? What'd you start doing? That was

10:15

when I got the full bright to go

10:17

to Malawi. And then I went to Malawi for a year, and

10:19

what was the work in Malawi. I was working for the Malawian

10:22

government. What did the Malawian government want you

10:24

to do? I was working for their Ministry of HIV

10:26

AIDS and Malnutrition, and they wanted

10:28

me to write their like five year HIV

10:31

AIDS and Malnutrition. Probably yeah,

10:34

but you know, I'm twenty three. I still don't know anything

10:36

about these issues. They wanted

10:39

someone who could write fluently in English,

10:41

that they could submit proposals to the World Health

10:43

Organization to get funding. And

10:46

then when you were there for a year, Yeah, did

10:48

you accomplish what you wanted to accomplish in Malawi? Not

10:51

remotely. Should we look back on that year, how do you characterize

10:53

that year? I was bored and you

10:55

learned? I don't know if I I mean, I

10:57

came back opposed to foreign aid. Why for

11:00

a bunch of reasons. I mean, one, I feel like a lot of it

11:02

gets lost to corruption. To I feel like

11:05

it displaces the growth of a real middle class.

11:07

I think that if you know, in Malawi, for example,

11:10

um, some huge amount of their g d P was

11:12

in the form of foreign aid. And if like America

11:15

keeps subsidizing farmers to grow a bunch of

11:17

food, we don't use and then dumps that food

11:19

for free on countries like Malawe. It becomes really

11:21

hard from Allowyan farmers to ever grow

11:24

anything market take care of themselves. Right,

11:26

So it just created infantalize

11:28

the culture there. Yeah, and it it prevented

11:31

any real local economic

11:33

growth. To your board, You're like,

11:35

what do I do? Let's go to Yale law school? Now. Then

11:38

I chased a boid of Vermont because

11:40

I thought I really missed Vermont and i'dywre

11:44

there for how long? For a year? And

11:47

in pursuit of helping gay men and women

11:49

get married? Did you end up getting married to the boy you chased

11:51

it for? Monty? Did you close that deal? I did not.

11:53

We I am married to someone else. Once

11:58

that guy you chased everyone found that he can get married to a guy.

12:00

He wouldn't marry a guy. That must have been

12:02

what happened? Why else would we not be

12:04

together anymore? How long were you in VERMONTI here,

12:06

so it seems like a year or your shelf lest well,

12:09

it was in your youth. Are

12:11

you saying I'm not in my youth anymore? But like in your

12:14

pre youth? You invite me onto your podcast and

12:16

you tell me I'm no longer in my year, in your

12:18

natal stage and your prenatal stage when

12:20

I was an embryo nine months was my shelfy

12:23

Um, No, I did a lot of stuff for here.

12:25

I mean, I think I think most people in their early

12:27

twenties should do that, like a year or

12:29

two. I think your twenties is a time tops

12:32

of issues. Yeah, exactly, you like you don't

12:34

know what floats your boat, like try out

12:36

a bunch of stuff like that's your I always tell people

12:38

that I said, either before you go to college

12:40

in this way of a gap year, which I just love that idea,

12:43

said don't go to college, I said, take a year off

12:45

and work at travel. If you can take

12:47

a gap year is the I mean, I didn't do it on purpose,

12:49

but it's the best thing that ever happened to me. So

12:51

then when when you just said to go to law school and why

12:54

I think I've was kind of known I was going to go

12:56

to law school, did you feel that that was just like that

12:59

was a that you wanted in your chamber. I

13:02

didn't know kind of like which social

13:04

justice just us I wanted to take on. But I felt

13:06

like whatever I was working on like at a certain point,

13:08

you just run up against the law, and I

13:11

wanted to know if a law degree was a way to kind

13:13

of get over that hurdle, and I worried that it wasn't. How

13:15

do you describe your gears in law school? Intense?

13:19

It was a lot. I

13:22

mean, Gale's nice because they don't make you take any

13:24

classes. So I basically

13:26

just did clinics, which is where you work on cases

13:28

directly. I founded I RAP in law school.

13:32

We're gonna get to that, yeah, yeah, But I mean I

13:34

just I did I WRAP. I did like the human

13:36

rights clinic. I did the immigration clinic. I

13:38

got to like depose racist cops. That

13:41

was pretty fun. Uh in

13:43

New Haven in Danburry? How

13:46

did that go over? Oh? I loved it and

13:48

we won the case? Did you get deported from Connecticut?

13:53

So when you found I wrap?

13:56

How does that idea come to you? How does the

13:59

the idea of im ration is the issue that becomes

14:01

your creed decur obviously for the last

14:03

several years. How out did that happen? When I came to

14:05

law school, I thought I wanted to do international human rights

14:07

law, and then I realized that that's mostly pr

14:10

like when when an international human rights

14:12

court rules on something, it's not

14:15

really binding, right, Like they can

14:17

hold that this thing that the US does is

14:19

illegal and the US is free to keep doing

14:21

it. And what happens is there will be an article

14:23

that the like YadA YadA, YadA, court ruled

14:25

that this country is behaving illegally. But usually

14:27

it doesn't actually lead to anything in practice.

14:30

The sort of naming and shaming element

14:33

of the sort of public relations nature

14:35

of human rights law is really important. It just

14:37

didn't interest me as the thing I wanted

14:39

to be doing every day, because I wanted

14:41

something a little toothier. And so I got

14:44

really interested in an asylum law

14:46

because it's people who are

14:49

fleeing international human

14:51

rights violations and then looking

14:53

for a remedy that will actually help

14:55

them kind of restart their lives. There's you know, they've

14:57

fled something really awful, They've gotten to a place where

14:59

they think they can be safe, and they're trying to stay. So it felt

15:02

like a way that I could address the fallout

15:04

of international human rights violations,

15:06

but in a way that had concrete meaning, even

15:09

if it was on you know, a person by person

15:11

scale, rather than like a nation by nation scale.

15:14

So you decided to set it up? How

15:16

and where? What's the physical operation there? There

15:18

wasn't one for a long time. I mean, I have a

15:20

cell phone. I don't even know if I had a self I guess

15:22

I had a cell phone. I didn't have an iPhone. I sort

15:24

of wandered into the issue. I was doing an internship

15:26

between my first and second years of law school, and

15:29

the NGO I was with just sort of didn't

15:31

have enough for me to do. And I really

15:33

hate that, like I hate wasting my

15:35

time. Well, also, you know we're

15:38

all going to die, so the minutes

15:40

are important. To see all the painties in the

15:42

museum before I started with my childhood.

15:45

Yeah, I mean that that's very exciting

15:47

and very admirable. But you've been doing this for how long

15:49

though? Six years, seven

15:52

years, eight to ten, depending on a long long

15:54

time. Yeah, I've

15:57

improved my shelf life by in order

15:59

of magnitude you're

16:01

in. I'm in. I as the Hotel California

16:04

for me, as I thought,

16:06

I go startra or the Eagles, and I want the

16:08

Eagle. I'm always down.

16:10

Okay, I hate the fucking

16:12

Eagles. Man. Know, I was quoting the Big

16:14

LASKI we're

16:18

doing overlapping cultural references. I know, I was

16:20

trying to hang eagles.

16:22

I love it when when when

16:24

law school ends, well here's what happened.

16:27

I am really obsessed with efficiency,

16:29

going back to my mortality thing a little bit.

16:31

But I also just like, I'm not It's

16:34

not about ego for me, right, I'm not like, oh, I want

16:36

to start an organization, like I actually really didn't.

16:39

People go to law school not knowing what they

16:41

want to do, and I actually went to law school wanting to be

16:44

a lawyer. Like I love the practice of

16:46

law. Um, it's just like it's it mirrors

16:49

how my mind works. Really well, I think, yeah,

16:52

I don't do that really, uh,

16:55

because that's not It turns out running

16:57

an organization isn't about like

16:59

doing the programming of the organization basically.

17:02

Like I I met with these refugees in

17:04

Jordan's after quitting this internship

17:07

in Israel, and they

17:09

all just needed legal assistance. Um.

17:12

They were you know, they can't go back to a rock because

17:14

something terrible happened to them. They can't stay in Jordan

17:16

because they have no status, that can't work, Their kids can't

17:18

go to school, they can't get healthcare, they could be deported

17:20

at any time for whatever reason. There's only one direction

17:23

they can go, right, and and the

17:25

process of deciding sort of who

17:27

gets to go in that direction and

17:30

how and then who has to get

17:32

on a raft across the Mediterranean or who

17:34

has to go back to Syria and get killed

17:36

is just incredibly legalistic,

17:39

super arbitrary, really complicated and bureaucratic.

17:42

So I was like, oh, you need a legal

17:44

advocate, Like this is a legal process. Your

17:46

life depends on the outcome. If I were

17:48

in illegal proceeding and like the

17:50

death penalty were on the line, the thing I would want

17:53

the most would be a good lawyer. So,

17:55

for example, to distill this part

17:57

of it down, because I want to think about it, I want to I want to get

17:59

in this theoretically for a minute where

18:02

someone can't go back because that means death.

18:05

Like, I understand them getting all the help they can, But

18:07

do you think that there should be limitations on immigration

18:09

in this country? And

18:12

where do people who are typically line up on the

18:14

opposite side of the issue than you, Where do you think they're

18:16

right? I think mostly

18:19

the problem with how we can suptualize

18:22

of immigration policy in this country is that we

18:24

look at it in a vacuum. I

18:26

think you can't answer, you know, I get asked like, do you think there

18:28

should be an open border? Do you think do you think we should

18:30

let in as many immigrants as possible? I

18:32

think it's an irrelevant question. I think as long

18:35

as we're or I think the answer is yes.

18:37

As long as we continue to overthrow democratically

18:39

elected governments and rape

18:42

countries of their natural resources such that

18:44

there's no political stability or jobs, I

18:46

think we shouldn't be surprised when people have to flee those

18:48

places and show up here where all the

18:50

resources have landed. So

18:52

to me, like, as long as our economic and foreign

18:55

policies are what they are, it seems really

18:57

hard to decouple our border

18:59

policy. Think the United States is responsible directly.

19:03

MS thirteen exists because we overthrew

19:05

governments and then deported people back

19:07

there. M S thirteen was deported from

19:10

l A to l Salvador. I

19:12

mean, it's just you know, and for decades,

19:14

like for the whole the isis of Central

19:16

America we made in

19:19

the sense that we made it sure like how

19:21

many democratically elected leaders did the CIA

19:23

overthrow in Central America in the eighties, like tons

19:25

like we destabilized that

19:27

region. And then prior to that, you know, with like United

19:30

Fruit Company, like we created plantations,

19:33

we enslaved the population, We took most of

19:35

their natural resources and took them here,

19:37

like we prevented the growth of local economies.

19:39

We did everything possible over the last

19:41

hundred years to destabilize

19:43

them. And now you know this whole idea

19:45

that like, oh, people are only coming because there's no jobs.

19:48

It's like, well, the fact that there's no jobs

19:50

is what leads to like drug violence,

19:52

gang violence, murders, domestic violence,

19:55

and that's kind of on up. We point

19:57

the finger there and say it's a mess, and it's us. We

19:59

may it's our mat to a large degree. Yeah,

20:02

I don't remember immigration being

20:04

this hot of an issue politically, hasn't

20:07

been in the sixties, seventies, eighties.

20:09

Government has made it a higher priority

20:12

to use its power to persecute

20:14

immigrants than they ever had. But I don't

20:16

know that anti immigrant sentiment

20:19

is necessarily that different. I think it's being stirred

20:21

up right, I think it's more activated. But

20:23

I think you know, you go back to you

20:25

know, I went on this kick on on July

20:28

four this year, I read seventeen seventy six and an

20:30

attempt to remember that like revolution on American

20:32

soil was once possible. Um,

20:34

they hated immigrants then, like you know, the immigrants

20:37

were the Irish, and then later the immigrants

20:39

were the Germans, and then they were the Italians.

20:41

But that you know, we've always hated immigrants. There's a you

20:43

know, the first ever Supreme Court case saying

20:45

you can't discriminate against people based on national

20:47

origins from the end of the nineteenth century

20:50

about Chinese immigrants, um,

20:52

who were being sort of systematically discriminated

20:54

against. And the Supreme Court was like, no, you can't,

20:57

you can't do that under this constitution. But it

20:59

took the Supreme Court stepping in two

21:01

and it didn't fix it. I was going to say, to fix it, but

21:03

it didn't fix it. UM. So I think, you

21:05

know, and of course, like I'm Jewish, um,

21:08

and you think about the St. Louis, which

21:10

is the you know, the ship carrying Jews

21:12

fleeing the Holocaust that went from port

21:14

to port to port in the very

21:16

beginning of World War two, and and

21:18

no one would let it dock and eventually it had to

21:20

go back to Europe, and they traced the futures

21:22

of most of those people and most of them died in Auschwitz.

21:25

Um and and America basically

21:28

said, like, we would rather send these people to their

21:30

death than have to admit Jews as refugees.

21:33

That doesn't feel that different to me. Um

21:36

It just like, is is really

21:38

tragic that we can't seem to learn from our mistakes.

21:46

Lawyer and refugee advocate

21:49

Becca Heller of the International

21:51

Refugee Assistance Project. There

21:53

are now more refugees in the

21:55

world persecuted and

21:58

unable to go home than at any time

22:00

in history. Only the end of

22:02

war and hunger can keep people

22:04

from trying to move to save for countries.

22:07

The medical charity Doctors Without

22:09

Borders, known by its French

22:11

acronym MSF, is on the

22:13

ground wherever violence or disaster

22:16

strike. Their international

22:18

president, Joanne Lou joined

22:20

me on here's the thing and talked

22:22

about her experience working in Czechenia.

22:26

You are putting other people in danger. We

22:28

were on the attack on a regular basis, that's one

22:30

thing, but the threat of being abducted

22:33

was so huge and we knew

22:35

that if something were ever to happen to

22:37

the MSF staff, then we will pull out,

22:40

So we were praying

22:43

for not It was so

22:45

nerve wracking out of fear. Yeah,

22:48

and I hate that because you know this, this is so self

22:50

centered and compared to what all those people are

22:52

going through. Come on, get a grip

22:54

on yourself. Here

22:56

the rest of that interview in our archive

22:59

at Here's the Thing dot org. After

23:02

the break what really went on behind

23:04

the scenes and in the spotlight after

23:07

the Muslim band came down. This

23:23

is Alec Baldwin and you were listening

23:25

to Here's the Thing now

23:27

more with the hero of the Trump

23:29

resistance on refugee policy, Decca

23:32

Heller. When

23:35

did you realize that Trump

23:37

had a viable candidacy? Were

23:40

you even paying attention to that? I'm sure you. I'm assuming

23:42

you were. And when you sit there and go, oh my god,

23:44

he's gonna take this thing and there there's plenty

23:46

of kindling on the ground and he's squirting lighter

23:48

fluid all over the floor. Honestly, not until

23:51

not until they called Pennsylvania. I

23:53

mean, we like I remember, um,

23:56

like we were really excited for election night because

23:58

we're like oh, we're gonna eat popcorn and like

24:00

watch come up and happened and and

24:03

show that like you can't win an election based

24:05

on hate, and we like you know, had beer

24:07

and other things that I don't want to say

24:09

on the radio, and we put our kids

24:11

to bed. You can let it rip.

24:14

I mean I I don't want to get my bar membership

24:16

revoked. No, no, don't you dont don't, don't, don't do that.

24:18

We could let it rip in the studio, but just don't

24:22

like that in here, put that out, put it out.

24:24

But we I think everyone had this experience

24:26

of just like this, did you in the campaign?

24:28

You sensed he was different, You sensed he was nuts.

24:30

I mean I knew. I followed it really closely,

24:33

like I knew it was happening. And I was one of those people

24:35

who was like, don't worry about it. Hillary is totally

24:37

gonna win. There's no way she doesn't. I

24:39

completely had my head in

24:41

the sand, like um, And I remember

24:44

going to bed waiting for them to call Wisconsin,

24:46

and I woke up at like three thirty and my husband

24:48

was too o'cock welcome. Yeah.

24:50

I woke up and passed and woke up at three. Yeah,

24:52

my computer. My husband was on his phone,

24:54

and I was like, you know, did they call Wisconsin? And

24:57

he was like, they called Pennsylvania. I

24:59

was, I was my wife and I fell asleep because

25:01

we got you know, a lot of little kids, and my

25:03

wife literally like she was because she wasn't so

25:05

miserable and tired because of breastfeeding

25:08

the baby, and my oh

25:10

god, and she just passed out again. Yeah.

25:12

No, that was the same, except for not passing

25:14

out again. I just like spent the rest of the night and sort

25:16

of a series of panic attacks. But

25:19

yeah, no, I I didn't see it coming. I really

25:21

didn't. And part of that is because I'm, you

25:23

know, the bicoastal elite who like I went

25:25

from California to New England to New

25:27

York, Like, apparently I have no idea what's happening

25:29

in the middle of the country. January

25:32

seventeen, everybody's at the airport. Describe

25:34

what happened, Yeah, I mean it

25:37

started the three Actually, so

25:39

Trump gets sworn in on the twenty, he takes the weekend

25:41

off to go golfing because why why would the president

25:43

work on the weekends, and everyone

25:45

sort of waiting to see, like of the various awesome

25:48

things that he's promised you during the campaign. What's going

25:50

to come down first? And Monday, the

25:52

travel being actually leaks to us. Um,

25:54

someone takes a photograph of a desktop

25:56

monitor in the White House, sends

25:59

it to someone who sends it to someone who sends it

26:01

to us, and it has the text of the travel

26:03

ban on it. And we're like, oh, so, And

26:05

we knew it was coming right, Like, it was not

26:07

a secret that Trump didn't want refugees

26:09

coming in from Syria, and we assumed that we'd

26:12

be grappling with that at some point. We didn't

26:14

know that it would be like one of the first things

26:16

to occur. So we start

26:18

We have a number of clients who have permission

26:21

to enter the US, but who haven't

26:23

left yet because it takes a long time to

26:25

sort of sell everything you own, tie up

26:27

all your loose right to back, right to

26:30

give up your entire Yeah,

26:34

I mean, you know, he was a lot younger and didn't

26:36

have a family. So we start calling our

26:38

clients and saying up and get

26:40

on a plane, like whatever, like take the

26:42

hit on the loss of your house and

26:45

and get on planes. And you're saying clients you're saying

26:47

the organization had had a relationship with these people.

26:49

We need to get out. We represent thousands

26:51

of individuals, Thus,

26:54

how fine a bunch

26:56

of ways. We have offices in the field, We have the

26:59

NGOs and the u N re our cases to us

27:01

um the budget of six and a half

27:03

billion dollars that kind of outreach. Yeah.

27:08

Yeah, we have four people whose full time job it is

27:10

just to like reply to every inquiry where we get

27:12

because so many refugees just

27:14

reach out to like hundreds and

27:17

hundreds of people and here nothing.

27:19

And we feel like, at the very least, like if you're sort

27:21

of a voice crying out in the darkness, you you

27:23

deserve an answer. And usually we try

27:26

to also provide a helpful answer with like legal advice,

27:28

and then we take on their legal cases too, and

27:30

we actually the the u N refers cases

27:32

to us. That was what originally triggered me to realize I

27:34

needed to do this full time. Was when the

27:37

un called the

27:39

summer between my second and third years in law school

27:41

and asked if they could refer cases to us. First,

27:43

I was really flattered, and then I was just like ship,

27:46

like, you don't have anyone else to call like I'm

27:48

not even a lawyer, Like someone has to

27:50

do this, you know. But so we had a bunch

27:52

of clients and a couple dozen who

27:54

had permission to enter but hadn't come

27:56

yet. So we reached out to all of them and we were just like, get

27:58

on a plane, well spot the plane tickets.

28:01

We got law firms to cover them,

28:03

and then UM, that Wednesday, we

28:05

had a transgender client flying into l a

28:07

X. And with transgender

28:10

clients, it's always really tricky when they fly because

28:12

their documentation doesn't match how

28:15

they present, and usually you worry

28:17

about that when they're exiting UM, and

28:19

this time we were. I was really worried about that when they entered,

28:21

because I was like, they might be looking for like any

28:23

excuse to funk with anybody coming in from

28:25

one of these seven countries if

28:28

the band comes down. And so we

28:30

arranged for a lawyer to just like surreptitiously

28:33

hang out in the arrivals area of l a X

28:35

and make sure that this woman had the lawyer's contact

28:38

info in case anything went wrong with

28:40

her entry, and thankfully it didn't.

28:43

UM. But that night I was g chatting with my

28:45

policy director and she

28:47

was like Oh, thank goodness, the band didn't come down

28:49

today. And I was like, oh, because this woman was able

28:51

to make it in. And Betsy was like, yeah, all the

28:53

other people who are on her flight, and

28:56

I was like, holy sh it, this band comes down.

28:58

Whenever that is, there's gonna be thou of

29:00

people who are in the air who had legal

29:02

permission to enter the US when they took off and are

29:04

going to land essentially as undocumented,

29:07

and nobody knows what's going to happen to them.

29:09

And I had spent a lot of time between November

29:12

nine and January twenty being like, what tools

29:14

do we have to deploy in this upcoming war

29:16

on refugees? Right? And the biggest thing

29:18

we had was this army of lawyers. So we had put

29:20

some thought into how can we organize

29:23

that, what we want to do with it? So I was like, we should organize

29:25

lawyers to go to all the airports. So

29:27

we emailed our network and organized

29:30

lawyers to go to every international airpart

29:32

lawyers we organized six d and

29:34

then I don't know how many it ultimately ended up being, I mean

29:36

thousands of thousands,

29:39

yeah, I mean. And the cool thing was that, like for

29:41

the first couple of days, like we were organizing most

29:43

stuff, and then everyone started self organizing,

29:46

um, which was amazing. UM.

29:48

Like I remember being at JFK and there was this

29:50

just like super competent guy sort

29:53

of like assigning people tasks and

29:55

and I've hadn't slept because we were trying

29:57

to file the lawsuit, which we can talk about, and so

30:00

of a mess. And I remember thinking I should

30:02

recruit him, and I pulled him aside at one point. I was like, who

30:04

are you, Like, what do you do and and he

30:06

was like, oh, I work at McKenzie. And I was

30:08

like, yeah, are you happy there? He's like I love it. And

30:10

I was like, all right, good to meet you. You know, next,

30:13

how many people did you get into the country? Two

30:15

thousand in

30:18

partnership with other n g

30:21

o s and a ton of lawyers

30:23

and you know, I mean it wasn't kept in telling if you

30:25

kept in touch with them and monitored them, and they all still

30:27

here. I have no idea, you have no idea.

30:30

I literally don't know their names. We wouldn't know the number

30:32

if the a c LU hadn't sued under the Freedom of Information

30:35

Act. I guess what I'm saying is you get him

30:37

here, then the rest is up to that. Most of those people are coming

30:39

on temporary visas. My daughter is scheduled

30:41

to have a C section. I really want to be there for her.

30:44

Someone's getting married, someone is dying, someone

30:46

there's an event, um not people who

30:48

are want to immigrate to the United States,

30:51

and most of them are trying to visit family because

30:53

from these seven countries, like, we're not giving out a lot of

30:55

tourist visas for you manis to come go to Disneyland

30:58

and so so most of of visas

31:00

that we're giving out, it's because you have a really compelling

31:02

reason to come and some tie to the US because

31:05

our our visa program like was not free

31:07

of sort of racial or national origin profiling

31:09

before this, right Like Irab has a Syrian

31:12

staffer and we've been applying for a visa

31:14

for her to come to New York for our all staff retreat like

31:16

since the Obama administration, and we can't get

31:18

one for her. Why do you think because

31:21

they don't believe that you could be Syrian and not

31:23

intend to immigrate. The

31:26

State Department, yes, and

31:28

the various other you know, you come out the other

31:30

end of this experience of the two

31:33

thousand seventeen UM

31:36

airport weekend. Airport,

31:39

that's what I called. My mom called you Chase

31:41

in airport weekends. He doesn't get to be

31:43

in it. Rogan could definitely

31:45

play me. So you you have airport

31:47

weekend and you come out the other end of that,

31:49

and you you realize things have changed for you. Do

31:52

you feel that they change for you personally in your in your

31:54

career, your arc? I mean

31:56

I I don't maybe. I

31:58

mean my mom called me on Sunday and I was going

32:00

into day three of no sleep, and she was like, how

32:02

are you doing? And I was like,

32:05

Mom, I'm living the first line of my obituary.

32:07

UM. But I said

32:09

it more for like shock value

32:12

then because I actually believed it, and in retrospect

32:14

it might have been true. Um.

32:16

I just wasn't thinking about it in that way.

32:19

Like we came out with a ton of lawsuits on our

32:21

hands and you

32:23

filed right. So the travel band came

32:26

down. It was signed at four thirty pm on Friday,

32:29

and we were tracking

32:32

people coming in. So we had clients who are

32:34

coming in and one of them was a man named Hamid Darwish

32:36

who had worked for us Forces

32:38

in a rock on a Ford Operating base for ten and a half

32:41

years, which is relevant for a number of reasons, one of

32:43

which is that to work on a on a FOB you

32:45

need to get a military grade level security

32:47

clearance every six months. So Hamid

32:50

had had twenty one military grade level

32:52

security checks. There had been multiple attempts

32:54

on his life, he had young kids. Um,

32:56

he was given this visa through a program

32:59

that Senators Kane and Kennedy had

33:01

created in Congress to try to protect those

33:03

who would put their lives on the line to assist our military,

33:06

which I think if we don't implement well, we're going

33:08

to have trouble finding allies in the future.

33:11

And he showed up here and he

33:13

was handcuffed and locked in a room, and they let

33:15

out his wife and kids and they came out crying

33:17

and they we have their lawyer and their law students waiting

33:19

for them, and they said, you know, Hamid is locked in a room

33:22

and there's a bunch of other people in the room with them,

33:24

and we don't know what to do. So Um,

33:27

I called a friend of mine from law school,

33:29

and because I'm not a litigator, and I was like, what do we

33:31

file um, and he was like,

33:33

we need to file a habeas petition. Habeas

33:36

corpus literally means like produced the body.

33:39

Yeah, it's it's it's what says that

33:41

you get like some amount of trial if

33:43

you're held in Guantanamo, Like the US

33:45

can't turn airports into a black site and

33:47

detain anyone from a Muslim

33:50

country who looks brown. You

33:52

have to have a hearing in front of a judge. And

33:54

so my friend Justin Cox

33:56

said, you know, we should file a habeas corpus

33:58

lawsuit, which was brilliant it and now he works for

34:00

I WRAP, which only took me like a year and a half to effectually.

34:03

Then we called our former mentor

34:05

from me A law school, Mike Wishney, who said, let's

34:08

make it a class action, which meant like,

34:10

let's file a habeas petition on behalf

34:12

of anyone who might be detained by the government

34:14

anywhere in the country. And then we looped

34:16

in the Immigrants Rights Project, the a c l U,

34:18

the National Immigration Law Center, and then

34:20

everyone stayed up all night so that we could get the thing

34:22

drafted, it on file by five o'clock in the

34:25

morning, because we wanted it filed before

34:27

any international flights could take off because

34:29

we didn't want them to be able to deport anybody.

34:31

And we were granted a hearing that

34:33

night in Brooklyn at seven thirty and legal

34:36

learned from the a c l U argued it

34:38

and Lee is like a ringer, just like if you ever

34:40

have an argument about due process

34:42

and immigration and you can get Lee to argue it for

34:44

you, like you should. You should definitely do that. Uh.

34:47

You should make sure he's sober um, but

34:49

if he's not, he'll still win. He's

34:53

well, we called him, We literally called him,

34:55

and we were like, Lee, what are you doing right now?

34:57

He's like, I'm in a bar. What's going on? We're like, we need

34:59

you to go to Brooklyn and argue this case right

35:02

there. And he won. Uh, and

35:04

so we want to eat thirty and the judge said

35:06

everyone has to be released. And

35:09

the Customs and Border Protection officials

35:11

of the airport didn't believe us that we

35:13

had won this court decision. So Omar Jodwat

35:15

from the a c l U tweeted out a

35:17

picture of the court order. So you had lawyers

35:19

at airports all over the country, like running around showing

35:22

customs officials the photo of

35:25

Omer's Twitter feed on

35:27

their phones and they obeyed that

35:30

Twitter post. At JFK, we literally got

35:32

a plane turned around on the runway and they

35:34

were trying to deport an Irani and Fulbright student

35:36

to Ukraine of all places. And she was

35:39

on the plane and she was on the

35:41

phone with us, and we were trying to decide, like should

35:43

we have her stand up and make a fuss and get thrown off

35:45

the plane? And then we're like, no, we shouldn't do that because she'll

35:47

lose her visa if she does that. Like, yeah,

35:50

but when you get the woman off

35:52

the plane, when you argue the

35:54

case and you win the case and he gets off

35:56

the bar stool and you have the Twitter picture, there's like

35:58

a great movie. Do you ever meet

36:00

some of these people whose lives you've affected,

36:02

our lives you've changed, Oh, for sure. And I'm

36:05

still in touch with some of them, and we you know, when

36:07

we have events, we try to have

36:09

clients come speak at the events because I think

36:11

it's really important that we're not speaking for people.

36:14

But we also have a lot of clients who don't want to stay

36:16

in touch. You know. I think a typical symptom of of

36:18

going through something really traumatic is to want to

36:20

just like put it all behind you. And we're

36:23

very tied up in that trauma, like where

36:25

what happened before? Right, and

36:27

once you're here, you don't want to deal with what happened before.

36:30

Um, So some people want to stay in touch and some

36:32

people don't. And I you know, I

36:34

don't force it. Well even for people

36:36

who the immigration issue is uh,

36:39

some of that's not in the forefront. The

36:41

number one issue is the economy and their paychecks.

36:43

The number two is healthcare. That this

36:45

ripping children away from their parents

36:48

changed everything. I mean, this becomes the image of the

36:50

most heinous. What was your response

36:52

to that? I mean, I think your organization have

36:54

any role in that. We actually

36:56

want a big lawsuit on behalf

36:59

of two thousand, seven hundred unaccompanied

37:01

kids in Central America who are trying to reunite

37:04

with a parent in the United States. But

37:07

you know, we don't have offices on the border. I

37:09

mean, I took a lot of hope from that, actually, which

37:11

I know is strange, but I

37:13

think this is the bottom

37:15

that we hit. We made at the bottom, right,

37:17

it didn't go further. You know. The thing that

37:19

was amazing about airport weekend.

37:21

Is that like we organized the lawyers, but nobody organized

37:24

the protesters. Totally spontaneous,

37:26

thousands of Americans went out and freezing

37:29

shitty January weather to just be

37:31

like this is not cool. The

37:33

executive order was rescinded

37:36

before the lawsuit. The

37:38

lawsuit we once said that they can't hold people.

37:40

But the one that we won right away wasn't about

37:42

sort of the legality of the order on its face.

37:45

It was the public pressure that got

37:48

the administration to rescind the executive

37:50

order and the so called like chaos at the airports,

37:52

which I will forever be proud of. And

37:54

I the same thing happened with the family

37:56

separation policy on the border. There were plenty of

37:58

lawsuits about it, you know the lawsuits.

38:01

Ultimately we're victorious. Congress

38:03

like fucked around. It didn't end up doing anything.

38:06

Um what got it to stop was

38:08

just like the number of people who

38:10

who stood up and said like this is not okay,

38:13

the number of journalists who refused to stop reporting

38:15

on it. Ultimately, it was just straight up public

38:17

pressure that caused the administration to

38:20

rescind the policy. And it hasn't been totally rescinded.

38:22

Right, they're still separating kids from families. Like, it's

38:24

not a perfect solution, but as

38:26

you watch, like so many of the

38:28

sort of systems to protect democracy and the rule of

38:30

law be dismantled, it does

38:33

give me hope that when something

38:35

that agreed just happens, people

38:37

are still willing to stand up and say

38:39

like, this is an American and that when they do, it

38:41

means something. Um

38:44

in your mind, I'm assuming

38:46

that you're capable of citing a couple

38:48

examples if you're willing. Are there any heroes

38:50

in the Senator of the House on this issue who you think

38:53

get it right about this issue? Senator McCain was

38:55

amazing on this issue. He was amazing

38:58

on refugee issues. Why do you think that is? Because

39:00

I think if you have

39:02

served in the military overseas,

39:04

you understand how important it is for

39:06

our foreign policy to have a humanitarian component.

39:09

You understand that if the US wants

39:12

to be taken seriously as an enforcer

39:14

of national security, that that can't just be

39:16

a stick, that that it needs to have

39:19

a carrot. Also, that we need to take

39:21

responsibility for sort of the peaceful

39:23

side of national security

39:26

issues. And I think he understood

39:28

that deeply. Senator Shaheen has

39:30

been great for us on these issues. Um,

39:34

I'm looking forward to, you know, the new Senate

39:36

and the new House and seeing what we can do with them. And I hope

39:38

that I hope that there are more heroes of

39:41

the six and a half million that comprises your

39:43

current budget or roughly, that most

39:45

of that money comes from where it's individuals,

39:48

foundations and corporate We do not take

39:50

government funding. Describe your relationship with the promptin's

39:53

substitute grandparents. Really.

39:56

Yeah, I have been very generous too. I

39:58

mean they're just lovely, Like Charles

40:01

is just hilarious and sassy and

40:03

has me to his house and it is just like

40:05

really supportive and support Yeah,

40:08

but they've become family.

40:11

And I don't know as media and savvy

40:13

with social media at all important to

40:15

you or not it is important. I think

40:17

it's tricky right now because I think earned

40:19

media doesn't have the impact that it did a couple

40:21

of years ago. I think, um, there's

40:23

so much crazy stuff happening all

40:26

the time that you just when you get

40:28

a story in the New York Times, it just doesn't mean what

40:30

it used to mean, and it doesn't stick the way you used to

40:32

stick. And you also you have an administration that doesn't

40:35

care when The New York Times says

40:37

something. One thing that I've become

40:39

really interested in and I have a project

40:41

that I've been working on for a while, UM

40:44

is sort of using popular culture. UM,

40:47

and how can you sort

40:49

of you know, like people maybe won't read

40:51

New York Times articles or won't register

40:53

them, but like they'll binge watch

40:55

for fourteen hours like the newest

40:57

season of whatever. UM Sola

41:00

Mirror. Yeah, I can't watch

41:02

Black Mirror because it freaks me out too much.

41:04

But you know, But so if you can

41:07

get like a narrative

41:09

about a more positive or

41:11

more useful narrative about immigrants or

41:13

refugees into a

41:15

pop culture format, I

41:18

think that has a lot of promises, a way to try

41:20

to you know, change hearts in minds. What's next for

41:22

you book? No, you're

41:25

not interested in that. You have time to reflect.

41:28

I reflect in a very like neurotic,

41:30

anxious, obsessive way that does not lend

41:32

itself well to like overarching

41:35

narrative. But I think

41:37

with people like you get things done. Yeah. I got

41:39

some offers to write books, and I was like, well, when you

41:41

know so and so activists wrote a book like

41:43

how did they do it? And they're like, oh, they took book leaf

41:45

And I was like, that's the last thing I'm

41:47

gonna do right now. Let's just be like,

41:50

oh, well, I mean, I think attention

41:52

to any issue ebbs and flows, right. Like, we

41:54

definitely had our fifteen minutes around

41:57

airport weekend. We were aware

41:59

at the time time that it was fifteen minutes, and so

42:01

we approached it really strategically and said, you

42:03

know, what can we keep from this, Like what

42:05

can we hang on to that we can continue to use in the future.

42:08

And and I'm continuing

42:10

to sort of take that approach of

42:12

just you know, with the MacArthur like that's

42:14

amazing. I feel like it adds

42:16

a lot of pressure on me to make sure I'm leveraging

42:18

it for the work as much as possible.

42:21

Pay yourself very much money. Well now

42:23

I don't have to, thankfully, thanks MacArthur.

42:25

No I I do, okay, it's not like thirty

42:28

rock money. Um

42:30

No. I want to keep fighting this fight.

42:32

I have a ton of ideas for what

42:34

should be next, and the other staff

42:36

at Arabe has a bunch of ideas, and we've got you

42:38

know, two years ago we were a two million dollar organization,

42:42

So we've grown pretty fast, and we're trying to manage

42:44

that growth in a way where the

42:47

you know, quality of our work is still high, in our organizational

42:49

culture is still good, but also

42:51

we're aggressively growing to fight these problems.

42:54

And you know, so like where is like

42:57

if Hillary had been elected, we would be making a big

42:59

play around climate refugees because to

43:01

me, that's like the single biggest thing that we

43:03

have to contend with, right Like, the first major manifestation

43:06

of climate change is going to be and

43:08

is already like the displacement of large numbers

43:10

of people, and we have no

43:13

no legal or systematic

43:16

regime whatsoever to deal with that anywhere.

43:19

I think I work a little better in a bunker

43:21

mentality, Like getting back to your press,

43:24

I don't like pressure, but I've I've

43:27

process resistance is you

43:29

know, creative resistance is a better fit for

43:31

me than like scaling up widgets. You're

43:34

one of those people who are like, you know, where would the world

43:36

be without you? I mean that quieter that

43:43

was tireless refugee activist

43:46

and could have been stand up comic Becca

43:48

Heller her organization once

43:50

again is the International Refugee

43:53

Assistance Project at Refugee

43:55

rights dot org. I'm a like Baldwin

43:58

and you're listening to here's the Thing and