Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: Immigration and Deportation in the Trump Administration

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

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🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

Six months in, what has the Trump administration done with immigration and deportation—and what have we learned about where it may be headed? To discuss, we are joined, again, by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. A leading expert on immigration and Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council, Reichlin-Melnick presents an in-depth analysis of the situation that goes beyond the headlines. As he puts it: “We are seeing a pace of enforcement unlike anything we’ve really seen in decades….with [immigration] as the Trump Administration’s top priority. It has surged resources, manpower, and attention to immigration enforcement, with the goal of massively ramping up arrests, detentions, and deportations.” Reichlin-Melnick shares his perspective on the situation on the ground now—as well as how developments such as the massive increase in funding in the reconciliation bill might affect things in the months and years ahead.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.
0:15.3	Welcome back to conversations.
0:17.3	I'm very pleased to be joined today by Aaron Reikland-Melnlich, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, a genuine policy and legal expert on all things immigration.
0:27.8	Aaron's been a busy guy the last six months.
0:30.4	I'm pretty busy for the last few years, honestly, right?
0:33.4	Yeah.
0:34.2	Anyway, American Immigration Council is an excellent research and advocacy organization.
0:38.4	Is that a fair thing to say?
0:39.2	I think that's in the immigration field.
0:42.0	And we had a very good conversation, which people should look at, which stands up well in January, just before inauguration,
0:47.6	about what you expected the administration to do on this signature issue of theirs.
0:53.1	And so let's begin with that.
0:54.8	I mean, what have they done?
0:56.6	What will the history books say?
0:57.5	First six months of the Trump administration, immigration, deportation,
1:00.9	what's the sort of top line summary that we'll get into all the different areas, obviously?
1:06.7	I think we've seen what the administration really telegraphed coming in, which is that immigration
1:12.4	was going to be a top three priority, if not the top priority of the administration.
1:18.5	And to this day, it is the thing that they have leaned into the most in public conversation about
1:24.8	legislative priorities and administrative priorities. In fact, you saw J.D. Vance
1:30.9	use immigration as the reason that Republicans needed to pass the so-called one big beautiful bill
1:37.3	act, the budget reconciliation bill, because of the amount of funding for immigration enforcement
	...

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