Becca Heller - Summer Staff Picks

Our summer tradition at Here’s the Thing continues, as staff members choose their favorite conversations from the archives for our Summer Staff Pick series. This week, we revisit Alec’s conversation with Becca Heller. On January 27th, 2017, Donald Trump issued the travel ban barring visitors and migrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Becca Heller, founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), had seen it coming. She foresaw that it would catch people in planes, turning passengers into undocumented immigrants midair. She prepared by setting up a network of volunteer lawyers who would show up at airports to help travelers being held there. On the 27th, the lawyers came, followed by thousands of protesters. The Trump administration, facing legal losses and "chaos at the airports," gave up enforcing the ban until officials could draft a new version. For a while, the good guys had won. Two years later, with a MacArthur "genius" grant under her belt, the 37-year-old Heller is strategizing about where to take refugee-advocacy next. Serious stuff, but she's still one of the funniest people ever to come on Here's the Thing. The International Refugee Assistance Project is at https://refugeerights.org/. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:34Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. It's summer, and that means it's time for our tradition at Here's the Thing, where the staff share their favorite episodes from our archives in our Summer Staff Picks series. Next up is producer Zach McNeese.

• 1:54Speaker 06

  Thanks, Alec. Becca Heller is the founder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. When Donald Trump first instituted his travel ban in 2017, Heller rushed volunteer lawyers into airport terminals overnight to fight for the travelers trapped there in limbo. I wanted to bring this one back because that story didn't end in 2017. It's happening again, right now, on a wider scale. On the first day of his second term in January 2025, the Trump administration moved to shut down the entire US refugee program, barring travelers from 19 countries. Since then, Becca and her team of lawyers have been back in court, fighting it every step of the way. Hearing conversations like this from the first Trump term, it's striking how much

• 2:37Speaker 06

  it plays less like history and more like a warning we're now living through. Here's Alec's 2019 conversation with Becca Heller.

• 2:49Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Late in the afternoon of January 27, 2017, Donald Trump, guided by Stephen Miller, issued the Muslim ban. Hundreds of people had their immigration status changed in midair. They'd taken off from their home countries with permission to migrate or to visit friends or have a business meeting. They landed essentially as illegal immigrants. Those travelers needed, the rule of law needed, a savior. They found one in my guest today, Becca Heller.

• 3:29Alec Baldwin?

  Her organization, the International Refugee Assistance Project, deployed an army of volunteer lawyers to the airports. One of them obtained a court order forbidding deportations. As Trump's court troubles grew, he essentially gave up. For a while, the good guys had won. Heller was an overnight celebrity on every nightly news show. She got a New York Times profile, a Daily Show appearance, and a MacArthur Genius Grant. Irap tripled its budget in a year. Now, almost two Years later, Heller has helped over 200,000 migrants and refugees stay in the United States.

• 4:13Alec Baldwin?

  It would be heroic work for anyone, but especially so for someone in their mid-30s with a toddler and a pile of student loans. Where do her energy and courage come from? As it turns out, the answer is suburbia.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  My dad was a cardiologist. My parents are both still alive. I'm using past tense just because they're retired, not because anything tragic happened. My dad was a cardiologist and my mom taught public school.

• 4:37Alec Baldwin?

  Where?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  I grew up in the Bay Area.

• 4:40Alec Baldwin?

  And how many siblings?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  I have one younger brother.

• 4:43Alec Baldwin?

  And what's he doing now? He's not solving the immigration problem?

• 4:46Speaker 02

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

• 4:50Alec Baldwin?

  Okay, sure, okay, that's cool. Someone's got to do that.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:53Alec Baldwin?

  Someone's got to take the money that you have in your budget and invest it somewhere, right?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  He's not day trading our budget.

• 4:58Alec Baldwin?

  He's not helping your budget.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  No, he's not even helping me personally. I've asked him what I should do with my money and he doesn't want to be responsible if I lose it all.

• 5:05Alec Baldwin?

  I had a dear friend of mine say the same thing to me. I said, "What should I do in terms of a business manager to invest my money?" He goes, "What would I do or what do I think you should do?"

• 5:14Speaker 02

  How different were the answers?

• 5:16Alec Baldwin?

  He said, "I would never tell you to do what I did." He said, "I don't want that responsibility." Now, so you grew up in the Bay Area and through high school, were you an activist or what were you doing?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  I was like a wannabe activist. Like, I had all these ideas for things all the time and I felt sort of very empathic toward, especially homelessness is a very visible manifestation of social.

• 5:36Alec Baldwin?

  In the Bay Area?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the Bay Area, you know, because the weather's good, right?

• 5:39Alec Baldwin?

  And it's a tolerant community, too. Like, there's a level of homelessness you just don't see on Park Avenue in the 70s.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:46Alec Baldwin?

  And I live in the Village and you see quite a bit of it because that community then is a lot more tolerant.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Right, and, you know, we'll see if tech changes that for better or worse. But I think, you know, that was so visible and I remember always being like really worked up by that and having these like big ideas of, you know, when I was 10, I was like, "I'm going to do a blanket drive" and then just not doing it. Because I think I, I don't know if I felt disempowered or I just felt scared or I didn't know my own.

• 6:07Alec Baldwin?

  You had the passion, but you didn't follow through?

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty, like many people, I think.

• 6:11Alec Baldwin?

  Right, and then you go to Dartmouth, why?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Uh...

• 6:14Alec Baldwin?

  Because we were all saying Dartmouth, to us, is like of all the Ivies, it's like the most animal house of the Ivies. Is that fair?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  You think I can't roll with animal house?

• 6:22Alec Baldwin?

  No, I'm closing my eyes, I'm thinking about you like having a blanket drive up there in...

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing, I never did the blanket drive, right? I'm the person who wanted to and then went to Dartmouth instead. No, I actually, I had an amazing time at Dartmouth.

• 6:35Alec Baldwin?

  But why Dartmouth?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  I messed up applying to college the first time around. I applied to two schools early and one of them found out and told the other and they both rescinded my offer of admission. And I took a year off and I did AmeriCorps, which I would pinpoint as sort of like the turning point of when I realized that, oh, do I need to re-say that because I dropped that on the table and it made a weird echoing sound.

• 6:58Alec Baldwin?

  I think people can tell right away there's going to be a very bumpy interview.

• 7:03Alec Baldwin?

  AmeriCorps.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  AmeriCorps. It's the kind of domestic peace corps.

• 7:07Alec Baldwin?

  No, I know, but so where did you go?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  I stayed at home because they don't pay you very much. So I lived with my folks and I was working at an elementary school in Berkeley on sort of broadly equal opportunity education stuff and they just gave us this big budget and they were like, do programming to help fight institutional oppression. And I was like, I don't know what that means. I don't know how to do that, but I'm going to give it a shot. And then I think much to my surprise, it turned out there was a lot of things that we could do collectively.

• 7:35Alec Baldwin?

  Now, when you leave school, when you leave Dartmouth, you go to Yale Law School, you go right one to the other or you take another gap?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I took two years.

• 7:44Alec Baldwin?

  And what did you do in that two years?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  I was in Malawi for a year on a Fulbright.

• 7:49Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  And then I actually went to Vermont for a year, partly for a boy, partly for a job. I ended up working on the Freedom to Marry campaign in Vermont.

• 7:59Alec Baldwin?

  Did you find you had a kind of a peripatetic nature? You liked moving around and you weren't married at the time, you had no kids and did you find now's the time for me to go to Malawi? You were there for like a year, right?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was there for a year. I still am pretty peripatetic, actually. I get really claustrophobic if I stay in one place for too long. I like to move around. I think the world is just completely fascinating. I like to see as much as possible.

• 8:23Alec Baldwin?

  Does your husband share that passion with you or he's?

• 8:25Speaker 02

  He has like a huge zest for life. He doesn't like long plane rides as much as I do. But yeah, he loves to travel and I'm taking actually, the day after Trump was elected, I- I like couldn't really get out of bed, but I went to the Brooklyn Public Library and got my kid, who is one at the time, a passport. Because just I professionally help people flee. And I was like, if this all goes to shit, I'm not gonna not be able to get across the Canada border because she has a different last name from me. But she's never actually traveled internationally, but in in January, I'm taking her and my mom to Costa Rica, which I'm really excited about. I want I want her to be equally parapetetic.

• 9:01Alec Baldwin?

  What was your awareness of Malawi and what was going on in Malawi before you showed up there?

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Well, I had been in Zimbabwe on and off for the year before.

• 9:09Alec Baldwin?

  But doing what kind of work?

• 9:11Speaker 02

  On paper, I was helping build community gardens as a response to HIV-related malnutrition at public health clinics. But I think when you're, you know, if you're an activist and you're deep in the middle of a problem, you're always like, what's the root cause of this? Right? And in Zimbabwe, the root cause of this was like the ruling party. So I ended up getting involved in some political opposition stuff and ended up needing to leave the country.

• 9:37Alec Baldwin?

  What kind of gardens?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Community.

• 9:39Alec Baldwin?

  Community gardens to address malnutrition in the HIV community. That sounds pretty benign and pretty wonderful. Do you land in Zimbabwe knowing that the government and the status quo needs to be addressed? Or do you learn that there?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  I landed-

• 9:54Alec Baldwin?

  Are you the accidental activist or you were predisposed?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Both. I mean, I didn't, I would say that I landed aware of the problems because I do my homework. So like I landed knowing that ZANU PF, which was the ruling party, had said, no one can buy maize meal, which is the staple food, without a political party membership card, which means that like it doesn't matter how sick you are, in order to get food, you have to say that you're loyal to-

• 10:18Alec Baldwin?

  Support us or die.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Right, literally. Or starve to death. So like, I knew that. I didn't go in there saying, oh, I'm gonna fix that. I'm gonna address that, you know?

• 10:27Alec Baldwin?

  But eventually, you couldn't help yourself.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I stumbled into a meeting of the opposition party and had some feelings. I mean, I think- I think I was primed in a way that like, I'm not afraid of a good fight on behalf of a good cause, but I also, I think going into someplace, especially with like a fighting mentality is usually like really unproductive.

• 10:50Alec Baldwin?

  Tell me about it.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think historically, America hasn't been that good at not doing that.

• 10:57Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  So I didn't go in saying like, oh, I'm gonna struggle for regime change, but I went in being like, there is a problem, which is that like really sick people don't have access to immune boosting foods. And this was before antiretroviral therapy was really widely available. And you know, HIV doesn't kill you. What it does is weaken your immune system and then you get a secondary infection that kills you. So nutrition becomes really important. So I had this like theory that I thought might work, but I went in knowing that it was just a theory and that really like I didn't know shit about shit. And so I was open to learning that the problem had other facets and there might be a better way to.

• 11:33Alec Baldwin?

  What the political.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, political or not.

• 11:35Alec Baldwin?

  What kind of facilities did you live in?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  I lived with a family. I originally actually was.

• 11:40Alec Baldwin?

  An African family.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Living with a black family, because I had this weird concept of like solidarity that like, oh, just because I'm privileged and have a cellphone like doesn't mean I should get to stay in a fancy house, like I should stay in the township like everybody else. And then one night, some rocks were thrown in the window and the rocks said mzungu on them, which means like white person.

• 11:59Alec Baldwin?

  It means go back to the embarkadero.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Uh, I'm from the East Bay, so I don't mess around with the embarkadero.

• 12:04Alec Baldwin?

  Sorry, sorry.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  But that's cool. It was a sort of awakening moment for me of like, oh, that's solidarity doesn't mean that I like pretend that we're the same.

• 12:12Alec Baldwin?

  How much longer did you last in Zimbabwe?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Oh, that was the beginning.

• 12:15Alec Baldwin?

  That was the beginning.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:17Alec Baldwin?

  And so what happened after that?

• 12:18Speaker 02

  I kept doing the same work, but I moved in with a white family so that I wasn't like putting people in danger with my physical presence.

• 12:25Alec Baldwin?

  So what is the end game there? When did you realize it was time to get out of there?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Well, I got deported.

• 12:29Alec Baldwin?

  Like someone comes to you and says, pack your things, we're going.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Uh, the, I got picked up by the local police and taken to a police station and they like held me in an office for seven hours and I started. Started out really scared and then by the end I just like had to pee worse than I've ever had to pee in my life. And then they came in and they're like, you need to leave the country, we're gonna take you to the airport. And I was like, great, can we stop by a bathroom, please? And that was kinda, and then they, the family shipped me my stuff, like.

• 12:59Alec Baldwin?

  And when you came home, what happened? What'd you start doing?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  That was when I, I got the full bright to go to Malawi and then I went to Malawi for a year.

• 13:05Alec Baldwin?

  And what was the work in Malawi?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  I was working for the Malawian government.

• 13:09Alec Baldwin?

  What did the Malawian government want you to do?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  I was working for their Ministry of HIV AIDS and Malnutrition and they wanted me to write their like five-year HIV AIDS and Malnutrition policy.

• 13:18Alec Baldwin?

  So related work to what you did in Zimbabwe?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you know, I'm 23, I still don't know anything about these issues. They wanted someone who could write fluently in English so that they could submit proposals to the World Health Organization to get funding.

• 13:31Alec Baldwin?

  Right. And then you were there for a year?

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, give or take.

• 13:34Alec Baldwin?

  Did you accomplish what you wanted to accomplish in Malawi?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  No, not remotely.

• 13:38Alec Baldwin?

  So when you look back on that year, how do you characterize that year?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  I was bored.

• 13:41Alec Baldwin?

  And you, and you learned?

• 13:42Speaker 02

  I don't know if I, I mean, I came back opposed to foreign aid.

• 13:45Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 13:47Speaker 02

  For a bunch of reasons. I mean, one, I feel like a lot of it gets lost to corruption.

• 13:50Alec Baldwin?

  Sure.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Two, I feel like it displaces the growth of a real middle class. I think that if, you know, in Malawi, for example, some huge amount of their GDP was in the form of foreign aid. And if like America keeps subsidizing farmers to grow a bunch of food we don't use and then dumps that food for free on countries like Malawi, it becomes really hard for Malawian farmers to ever grow anything marketable.

• 14:11Alec Baldwin?

  Take care of themselves.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Right. So it just created.

• 14:14Alec Baldwin?

  And infantilized the culture there.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it, it prevented any real local economic growth.

• 14:21Alec Baldwin?

  So when you're bored, you're like, what do I do? Let's go to Yale Law School.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  No, then I chased a boy to Vermont.

• 14:25Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Cause I thought I really missed Vermont and I'd, I'd.

• 14:29Alec Baldwin?

  The marriage equality thing? And you were there for how long?

• 14:31Speaker 02

  For a year.

• 14:31Alec Baldwin?

  Right. And in pursuit of helping gay men and women get married, did you end up getting married to the boy you chased to Vermont? Did he, did you close that deal?

• 14:39Speaker 02

  I did not. We, I'm married to someone else.

• 14:44Alec Baldwin?

  Once that guy you chased to Vermont found that he could get married to a guy, he wouldn't marry the guy.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that must have been what happened.

• 14:49Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, I think it sounds good.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Why else would we not be together anymore?

• 14:51Alec Baldwin?

  How long were you in Vermont? A year?

• 14:53Speaker 02

  A year.

• 14:53Alec Baldwin?

  So it seems like a year is your shelf life.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Well, it was.

• 14:56Alec Baldwin?

  In your youth.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  I've, are you saying I'm not in my youth anymore?

• 14:59Alec Baldwin?

  No, but I'm like in your pre-youth.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  You invite me onto your podcast and you tell me I'm no longer in my youth.

• 15:04Alec Baldwin?

  In your natal stage, in your prenatal stage.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  When I was an embryo, nine months was my shelf life.

• 15:09Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  No, I did a lot of stuff for a year. I mean, I think.

• 15:12Alec Baldwin?

  I think most people in their early twenties should do that, like, a year or two. I think your twenties is a time. Have a tapas of issues. Yeah, exactly. Like, you don't know what floats your boat. Like, try out a bunch of stuff. Like, that's your. I always tell people that. I say, either before you go to college, in this way, have a gap year, which I just love that idea. I said, don't go to college. I said, take a year off and work and travel if you can. Taking a gap year is the, I mean, I didn't do it on purpose, but it's the best thing that ever happened to me. So then, when you decided to go to law school and why? I think I've always kind of known I was gonna go to law school. Did you feel that was just like, that was a bullet you wanted in your chamber to have a law degree? Yeah, I didn't know, kind of, like, which social justice issues I wanted to take on, but I felt like whatever I was working on, like, at a certain point, you just run up against the law.

• 15:56Alec Baldwin?

  And I wanted to know if a law degree was a way to kind of get over that hurdle. And I worried that it wasn't. How do you describe your years in law school? Intense. It was a lot.

• 16:08Alec Baldwin?

  I mean, Yale's nice because they don't make you take any classes. So I basically just did clinics, which is where you work on cases directly. I founded IRAP in law school. We're gonna get to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, I just, I did IRAP. I did, like, the Human Rights Clinic. I did the Immigration Clinic. I got to, like, depose racist cops. That was pretty fun. I know, I. In New Haven? Uh, in Danbury. And two. How'd that go over? Oh, I loved it. And we won the case. Did you get deported from Connecticut? No. So, uh, when you found IRAP, how does that idea come to you? How does the, uh, the idea of immigration is the issue that becomes your creed de cour, obviously, for the last several years? How, how did that happen?

• 16:51Alec Baldwin?

  When I came to law school, I thought I wanted to do international human rights law. And then I realized that that's mostly PR. Why do you say that? When an international human rights court rules on something, it's not really binding. Right? Like, they can hold that this thing that the US does is illegal, and the US is free to keep doing it. And what happens is there will be an article that the, like, yada, yada, yada court ruled that this country is behaving illegally. But usually, it doesn't actually lead to anything in practice. The sort of naming and shaming element of the sort of public relations nature of human rights law is really important. It just didn't interest me as.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  The thing I wanted to be doing every day because I wanted something a little toothier. And so I got really interested in asylum law. Because it's people who are fleeing international human rights violations. And then looking for a remedy that will actually help them kind of restart their lives. There's, you know, they've fled something really awful. They've gotten to a place where they think they can be safe and they're trying to stay. So it felt like a way that I could address the fallout of international. Human rights violations, but in a way that like had concrete meaning, even if it was on, you know, a person by person scale, rather than like a nation by nation scale.

• 18:00Alec Baldwin?

  So you decide to set it up, how and where, what's the physical operation there?

• 18:04Speaker 02

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

• 18:06Alec Baldwin?

  It's a cell phone.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  I don't even know if I had a cell. I guess I had a cell phone. I didn't have an iPhone. I sort of wandered into the issue. I was doing an internship between my first and second years of law school and. The NGO I was with just sort of didn't have enough for me to do. And I really hate that. Like I hate wasting my time.

• 18:22Alec Baldwin?

  You have a lot of energy.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Well, also, you know, we're all gonna die, so the minutes are important.

• 18:27Alec Baldwin?

  See all the paintings in the museum before I die.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  You started with my childhood.

• 18:31Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, right. No, but I mean, that's very exciting and very admirable, but you've been doing this for how long now? Six years, seven years?

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Eight to 10, depending on how you count.

• 18:40Alec Baldwin?

  Long time, long time.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean.

• 18:42Alec Baldwin?

  Your adult life.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I've improved my shelf life.

• 18:44Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  By an order of magnitude.

• 18:46Alec Baldwin?

  Right, yeah, you're in.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  I am in. Arab is the Hotel California for me. I thought I'd go Startra or the Eagles and I went the Eagles.

• 18:54Alec Baldwin?

  I'm always down with a good Eagles reference.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  I hate the fucking Eagles, man.

• 18:59Alec Baldwin?

  Do you really?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  No, I was quoting the Big Lebowski.

• 19:01Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, okay.

• 19:04Alec Baldwin?

  We're doing overlapping cultural references.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  I know, I was trying to hang.

• 19:07Alec Baldwin?

  Lebowski, Eagles, I love it. So when, when, when law school ends.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Well, here's what happened. I am really obsessed with efficiency. Going back to my mortality thing a little bit, but I also just like, I'm not. It's not about ego for me, right? I'm not like, oh, I want to start an organization like I actually really didn't. People go to law school not knowing what they want to do and I actually went to law school wanting to be a lawyer. Like I love the practice of law. It's just like, it's, it mirrors how my mind works really well.

• 19:37Alec Baldwin?

  You gave that up?

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't do that really.

• 19:39Alec Baldwin?

  Right. Why?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Cause that's not, it turns out, running an organization isn't about like doing the programming of the organization. Basically, like I, I met with these refugees in Jordan after. They're quitting this internship in Israel and they all just needed legal assistance. They were, you know, they can't go back to Iraq because something terrible happened to them. They can't stay in Jordan because they have no status. They can't work. Their kids can't go to school. They can't get healthcare. They could be deported at any time.

• 20:07Alec Baldwin?

  For whatever reason, there's only one direction they can go in.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:10Alec Baldwin?

  Safely.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  And, and the process of deciding sort of who gets to go in that direction and how, and then who has to like get on a raft across the Mediterranean, or who has to go back to Syria and get killed, is just incredibly legalistic, super arbitrary, really complicated and bureaucratic. So I was like, oh, you need a legal advocate. Like, this is a legal process. Your life depends on the outcome. If I were in a legal proceeding and like the death penalty were on the line, the thing I would want the most would be a good lawyer.

• 20:41Alec Baldwin?

  So, for example, to distill this part of it down, because I want to think about, I want to, I want to get into this theoretically for a minute.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:48Alec Baldwin?

  Where someone can't go back, because that means death. Like, I understand them getting all the help they can, but do you think that there should be limitations on immigration in this country?

• 20:56Speaker 02

  I mean, sure.

• 20:58Alec Baldwin?

  And where do people who are typically lined up on the opposite side of the issue than you, where do you think they're right?

• 21:04Speaker 02

  I think mostly the problem with how we conceptualize of immigration policy in this country is that we look at it in a vacuum.

• 21:11Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  I think you can't answer, you know, I get asked like, do you think there should be an open border? Do you think, do you think we should let in as many immigrants as possible?

• 21:18Alec Baldwin?

  Do you?

• 21:19Speaker 02

  I think it's an irrelevant question. I think as long as we're, or I think the answer is yes, as long as we continue to overthrow democratically elected governments and rape countries of their natural resources such that there is no political stability or jobs, I think we shouldn't be surprised when people have to flee those places and show up here where all the resources have landed. So, to me, like, as long as our economic and foreign policies are what they are, it seems really hard to decouple our border policies.

• 21:46Alec Baldwin?

  And you think the United States is responsible?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Directly.

• 21:48Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  MS-13 exists because we overthrew governments and then deported people back there. MS-13 was deported from LA to El Salvador. I mean, it's just, you know, and for decades, like, for the whole-

• 22:01Alec Baldwin?

  It's the ISIS of Central America, something we made.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  In the sense that we made it, sure.

• 22:06Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Like, how many democratically elected leaders did the CIA overthrow in Central America in the 80s? Like, tons. Like, we destabilized that region, and then prior to that, you know, with like United Fruit Company, like, we created plantations, we enslaved the population. We took most of their natural resources and took them here. Like, we prevented the growth of local economies. We did everything possible over the last 100 years to destabilize them. And now, you know, this whole idea that like, oh, people are only coming because there's no jobs. It's like, well, the fact that there's no jobs is what leads to like drug violence, gang violence, murders, domestic violence, and that's kind of on us.

• 22:43Alec Baldwin?

  We point the finger there and say it's a mess, and it's a mess we made.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  It's our mess.

• 22:47Alec Baldwin?

  To a large degree, yeah. I don't remember immigration being this hot of an issue politically. Has it been in the 60s, 70s, 80s?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Government has made it a higher priority to use its power to persecute immigrants than they ever had, but I don't know that anti-immigrant sentiment is necessarily that different. I think it's being stirred up, right? I think it's more activated, but I think, you know, you go back to, you know, I went on this kick on July 4th this year. I read 1776 in an attempt to remember that like revolution on American soil was once possible. They hated immigrants then, like, you know, the immigrants were the Irish, and then later the immigrants were the Germans, and then they were the Italians. But, you know, we've always hated immigrants. There's a, you know, the first ever Supreme Court case saying you can't discriminate against people based on national origin is from the end of the 19th century about Chinese immigrants

• 23:39Speaker 02

  who were being sort of systematically discriminated against, and the Supreme Court was like, no, you can't, you can't do that under this constitution. But it took the Supreme Court stepping in to, and it didn't fix it. I was going to say to fix it, but it didn't fix it. So I, you know, and of course, like, I'm Jewish, and you think about the St. Louis, which is the, you know, the ship carrying Jews fleeing the Holocaust that went from like port to port to port in the very beginning of World War II, and, and no one would let it dock, and eventually it had to go back to Europe, and they traced the futures of most of those people, and most of them died in Auschwitz. And, and America basically said, like, we would rather send these people to their death than have to admit Jews as refugees. That doesn't feel that different to me.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  It just like is, is really tragic that we can't seem to learn from our mistakes.

• 24:32Alec Baldwin?

  Lawyer and refugee advocate Becca Heller of the International Refugee Assistance Project. There are now more refugees in the world persecuted and unable to go home than at any time in history. Only the end of war and hunger can keep people from trying to move to safer countries. The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, is on the ground wherever violence or disaster strike. Their international president, Joanne Lu, joined me on Here's the Thing and talked about her experience working in Chechnya.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  You are putting other people in danger. We were under attack on a regular basis, that's one thing, but the threat of being abducted was so huge. And we knew that if something were ever to happen to the MSF staff, then we would pull out. So, we were praying for not. It was so nerve wracking.

• 25:32Alec Baldwin?

  Lot of fear.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I hate that because I think, oh, this is so self-centered and compared to what all those people are going through, come on, get a grip on yourself.

• 25:41Alec Baldwin?

  Hear the rest of that interview in our archive at hereisthething.org. After the break, what really went on behind the scenes and in the spotlight after the Muslim ban came down.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  A repayment. Get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  My small experience with the discrepancy in the business of music made me angry in the best way, and I wanted to, I wanted to finish. So I started really like leaning into my therapy, trying to get down to like what matters now. Somewhere Miguelito felt like he didn't have a place to say how he felt. And music was the place that I went to, to say how I felt.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  This is Stugatz from Stugatz and Company Live. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features N-Tech or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops, while Toyota's legendary resale value means you can get more at trade-in. Get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 28:08Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Now more with the hero of the Trump resistance on refugee policy, Becca Heller.

• 28:20Alec Baldwin?

  When did you realize that Trump had a viable candidacy? Were you even paying attention? I'm sure you, I'm assuming you were. Yeah, I was. And we used to sit there and go, oh, my God, he's going to take this thing. And there's plenty of kindling on the ground, and he's squirting lighter fluid all over the floor. Honestly, not until, not until they called Pennsylvania. I mean, we, like, I remember, like, we were really excited for election night.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Because we were like, oh, we're gonna eat popcorn and like, watch comeuppance happen and and show that like, you can't win an election based on hate. And we like, you know, had beer and other things that I don't want to say on the radio. And we put our kid to bed.

• 28:57Alec Baldwin?

  It's NYC, baby. You can let it rip. It's okay.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm, I don't want to get my bar membership revoked.

• 29:02Alec Baldwin?

  No, no, don't, don't, don't, don't do that.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  We could let it rip in the studio, but just not say while we're letting it rip.

• 29:06Alec Baldwin?

  No, not on the air. Don't light that in here.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Put that out. Put it out. But we, I think everyone had this experience of just like

• 29:12Alec Baldwin?

  Should you run the campaign? You sensed he was different. You sensed he was nuts.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I knew, I followed it really closely. Like, I knew it was happening. And I was one of those people who was like, don't worry about it. Hillary's totally gonna win. There's no way she doesn't.

• 29:24Alec Baldwin?

  It's in the bag.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  I completely had my head in the sand. Like, and I remember going to bed, waiting for them to call Wisconsin. And I woke up at like, 3:30 and my husband was...

• 29:34Alec Baldwin?

  Me too. 3 o'clock, I woke up.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I woke up and...

• 29:36Alec Baldwin?

  I passed out and woke up at 3. Went to my computer.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  My husband was on his phone and I was like, you know, did they call Wisconsin? And he was like, they called Pennsylvania.

• 29:43Alec Baldwin?

  I was, I was, my wife and I fell asleep because we got, you know, a lot of little kids. And my wife literally, like, she was, because she wasn't so miserable and tired and because of breastfeeding the baby. And my wife just looks at you, she goes, "Oh, God." And then she just passed out again.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, that was the same, except for not passing out again. I just like, spent the rest of the night in sort of a series of panic attacks. But yeah, no, I didn't see it coming. I really didn't. And part of that is because I'm, you know, the bi-coastal elite who, like, I went from California to New England to New York. Like, apparently I have no idea what's happening in the middle of the country.

• 30:15Alec Baldwin?

  January 28th, 2017. If everybody's at the airport, describe what happened.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it started the 23rd, actually. So Trump gets sworn in on the 20th. He takes the weekend off to go golfing, because why would the president work on the weekends? And everyone's sort of waiting to see, like, of the various awesome things that he's promised to do during the campaign, what's gonna come down first. And Monday... The travel ban actually leaks to us. Someone takes a photograph of a desktop monitor in the White House, sends it to someone who sends it to someone who sends it to us, and it has the text of the travel ban on it. And we're like, oh, so, and we knew it was coming, right? Like, it was not a secret that Trump didn't want refugees coming in from Syria, and we assumed that we'd be grappling with that at some point. We didn't know that it would be, like, one of the first things to occur.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  So, we start, we have a number of clients who have permission to enter the US, but who haven't left yet, because it takes a long time to sort of sell everything you own, tie up all your loose, right?

• 31:13Alec Baldwin?

  To pack.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Right, to give up your entire existence.

• 31:17Alec Baldwin?

  You don't roll it up in a napkin like Huckleberry Finn, yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 02

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

• 31:22Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  So, we start calling our clients and saying, hurry up and get on a plane, like, whatever, like, take the hit on the loss of your house and get on planes.

• 31:31Alec Baldwin?

  So, you're saying clients, you're saying the organization had had relations with these people who were seeking to get out?

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, we represent thousands of individual refugees.

• 31:38Alec Baldwin?

  Thousands, thousands. How do they find you online?

• 31:41Speaker 02

  A bunch of ways. We have offices in the field, we have, NGOs in the UN refer cases to us.

• 31:46Alec Baldwin?

  Is this why the budget is $6.5 billion, that kind of outreach around the world?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Does that seem high or low to you?

• 31:52Alec Baldwin?

  It's not nothing, it's not nothing.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we have four people whose full-time job it is just to, like, reply to every inquiry we get, because so many refugees just reach out to, like, hundreds and hundreds of people and hear nothing. And we feel like, at the very least, like, if you're sort of a voice crying out in the darkness, you deserve an answer. And usually, we try to also provide a helpful answer with, like, legal advice, and then we take on their legal cases, too. And we, actually, the UN refers cases to us. That was what originally triggered me to realize I needed to do this full-time, was when the UN called my, the summer between my second and third years in law school, and asked if they could refer cases to us. First, I was really flattered, and then I was just like, shit, like, you don't have anyone else to call? Like, I'm not even a lawyer, like, someone has to do this, you know?

• 32:37Speaker 02

  But so, we had a bunch of clients and a couple dozen who had permission to enter but hadn't come yet, so we reached out.

• 32:42Alec Baldwin?

  Out to all of them and we were just like, get on a plane, we'll, we'll spot the plane tickets. We got law firms to cover them. And then that Wednesday, we had a transgender client flying into LAX. And with transgender clients, it's always really tricky when they fly because their documentation doesn't match how they present. And usually you worry about that when they're exiting. And this time we were, I was really worried about that when they entered because I was like, they might be looking for like, any excuse to fuck with anybody coming in from one of these seven countries if the ban comes down. And so, we arranged for a lawyer to just like, surreptitiously hang out in the arrivals area of LAX and make sure that this woman had the lawyer's contact info in case anything went wrong with her entry.

• 33:26Alec Baldwin?

  And thankfully, it didn't. But that night, I was G-chatting with my policy director and she was like, oh, thank goodness, the ban didn't come down today. And I was like, oh, because this woman was able to make it in. And Betsy was like, yeah, and all the other people who were on her flight. And I was like, holy shit, this ban comes down, whatever that is, there's going to be thousands of people who are in the air who had legal permission to enter the US when they took off and are going to land essentially as undocumented and nobody knows what's going to happen to them. And I had spent a lot of time between November 9th and January 20th, being like, what tools do we have to deploy in this upcoming war on refugees, right? And the biggest thing we had was this army of lawyers. So, we had put some thought into, how can we organize that? What do we want to do with it?

• 34:09Alec Baldwin?

  So, I was like, we should organize lawyers to go to all the airports. So, we emailed our network and organized lawyers to go to every international airport. How many lawyers? We organized 1,600 and then I don't know how many it ultimately ended up being, I mean, thousands and thousands. Multiple thousand. Yeah, I mean, and the cool thing was that, like, for the first couple of days, like, we were organizing most stuff and then everyone started self-organizing, which was amazing. Like, I remember being at JFK and there was this just like, super competent guy, sort of like, assigning people tasks and, and.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  I hadn't slept because we were trying to file the lawsuit, which we can talk about. And I was sort of a mess. And I remember thinking I should recruit him. And I pulled him aside at one point. I was like, who are you? Like, what do you do? And he was like, oh, I work at McKinsey. And I was like, yeah, are you happy there? He's like, I love it. And I was like, all right, good to meet you. You know, next.

• 34:58Alec Baldwin?

  How many people did you get into the country?

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Uh, 2,100.

• 35:02Alec Baldwin?

  Wow.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  In partnership with other NGOs and a ton of lawyers. And, you know, I mean, it wasn't.

• 35:09Alec Baldwin?

  Have you kept in touch with them and monitored them? And are they all still here?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  I have no idea.

• 35:14Alec Baldwin?

  You have no idea?

• 35:15Speaker 02

  I literally don't know their names. We wouldn't know the number if the ACLU hadn't sued under the Freedom of Information Act.

• 35:21Alec Baldwin?

  I guess what I'm saying is you get them here, then the rest is up to them.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Most of those people are coming on temporary visas. My daughter is scheduled to have a C-section. I really want to be there for her. Someone's getting married. Someone is dying. Someone, there's an event, not people who want to immigrate to the United States. And most of them are trying to visit family because from these seven countries, like, we're not giving out a lot of tourist visas for Yemenis to come go to Disneyland. So, so most of the visas that we're giving out, it's because you have a really compelling reason to come and some tie to the US. Because our visa program like was not free of sort of racial or national origin profiling before this, right? Like, IREP has a Syrian staffer, and we've been applying for a visa for her to come to New York for our all-staff retreat, like, since the Obama administration, and we can't get one for her.

• 36:04Alec Baldwin?

  Why do you think?

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Because they don't believe that you could be Syrian and not intend to immigrate.

• 36:11Alec Baldwin?

  The State Department?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:13Alec Baldwin?

  The government.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  And the various other, you know?

• 36:15Alec Baldwin?

  You come out the other end of this experience of the 2017.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Airport Weekend.

• 36:22Alec Baldwin?

  Airport. Well, that's a great.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  That's what I call, my mom called me.

• 36:26Alec Baldwin?

  Chevy Chase in Airport Weekend.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  No, he doesn't get to be in it.

• 36:29Alec Baldwin?

  Seth Rogen.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  Seth Rogen could definitely play me.

• 36:31Alec Baldwin?

  So, you have Airport Weekend, and you come out the other end of that, and you realize things have changed for you? Do you feel that they changed for you personally and your career, your arc?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I don't, maybe. I mean, my mom called me on Sunday, and I was going into day three of No Sleep, and she was like, how are you doing? And I was like, Mom, I'm living the first line of my obituary.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  But I said it more for like shock value than because I actually believed it. And in retrospect, it might have been true.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  I just wasn't thinking about it in that way. Like, we came out with a ton of lawsuits on our hands.

• 37:08Alec Baldwin?

  Talk about the lawsuit you filed.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Right, so the travel ban came down. It was signed at 4:30 PM on Friday, the 27th. And we were tracking people coming in. So we had clients who were coming in, and one of them was a man named Hamid Darwish, who had worked for US forces in Iraq on a forward operating base for 10 and a half years, which is relevant for a number of reasons. One of which is that to work on a FOB, you need to get a military-grade level security clearance every six months. So Hamid had had 21 military-grade level security checks. There had been multiple attempts on his life. He had young kids. He was given this visa through a program that Senators McCain and Kennedy had created in Congress to try to protect those who had put their lives on the line to assist our military, which I think if we don't implement well, we're going to have trouble finding

• 37:54Speaker 02

  allies in the future. And he showed up here, and he was handcuffed and locked in a room. And they let out his wife and kids, and they came out crying. And we had their lawyer and their law students waiting for them. And they said, you know, Hamid is locked in a room, and there's a bunch of other people in the room with them, and we don't know what to do. So I called a friend of mine from law school, because I'm not a litigator. And I was like, what do we file? And he was like, we need to file a habeas petition. Habeas corpus literally means like produce the body. Yeah, it's what says that you get like some amount of trial if you're held in Guantanamo. Like, the US can't turn airports into a black site and detain anyone from a Muslim country who looks brown.

• 38:36Alec Baldwin?

  To be charged.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  You have to have a hearing in front of a judge. And so my friend, Justin Cox, said, you know, we should file a habeas corpus lawsuit, which was brilliant. And now he works for Irap, which only took me like a year and a half to effectuate. Then we called our former mentor from Yale Law School, Mike Wishney, who said, let's make it a class action, which meant like, let's file a habeas petition on behalf of anyone who might be detained by the government anywhere in the country. And then we looped in the Immigrants Rights Project, the ACLU, the National Immigration Law Center, and then everyone stayed up all night so that we could get the thing drafted and on file by 5 o'clock in the morning because we wanted it filed before any international flights could take off because we didn't want them to be able to deport anybody. And

• 39:16Speaker 02

  we were granted a hearing that night in Brooklyn at 7:30, and Lee Alert from the ACLU argued it. And Lee is like a ringer, just like if you ever have an argument about due process in immigration and you can get Lee to argue it for you, like you should, you should definitely do that. You should make sure he's sober. But if he's not, he'll still win.

• 39:36Alec Baldwin?

  He likes to challenge.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Well, we called him.

• 39:39Alec Baldwin?

  It's too easy for him.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  We literally called him and we were like, Lee, what are you doing right now? He's like, I'm in a bar. What's going on? We're like, we need you to go to Brooklyn and argue this case.

• 39:47Alec Baldwin?

  I'll be right there.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  And he won. And so we won at 8:30, and the judge said everyone has to be released. And the, the Customs and Border Protection officials at the airport didn't believe us that we had won this court decision. So Omar Jodwot from the ACLU tweeted out a picture of the court order. So you had lawyers at airports all over the country like running around showing Customs officials the photo of, of Omar's Twitter feed on their phones.

• 40:13Alec Baldwin?

  And they, and they obeyed that, that Twitter posting?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  At JFK, we literally got a plane turned around on the runway. They were trying to deport an Iranian Fulbright student to Ukraine, of all places. And she was on the plane, and she was on the phone with us. And we were trying to decide, like, should we have her stand up and make a fuss and get thrown off the plane? And then we're like, no, we shouldn't do that because she'll lose her visa if she does that.

• 40:34Alec Baldwin?

  Or to jail.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:37Alec Baldwin?

  We're taking a break. Stay with us.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating

• 41:22Alec Baldwin?

  We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, there's every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back. You know, I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So, and you, you obviously are an expert here.

• 41:58Alec Baldwin?

  Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  This is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford Ability and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra. Two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 42:48Alec Baldwin?

  But when you get the woman off the plane, when you argue the case and you win the case and he gets off the bar stool and you have the Twitter picture, this is like a great movie. Do you ever meet some of these people whose lives you've affected or lives you've changed?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. And I'm still in touch with some of them. And we, you know, when we have events, we try to have clients come speak at the events because I think it's really important that we're not speaking for people. But we also have a lot of clients who don't want to stay in touch. You know, I think a typical symptom of going through something really traumatic is to want to just like put it all behind you. And we're very tied up in that trauma, like we're what happened before. Right? And once you're here. You don't want to deal with what happened before. So some people want to stay in touch and some people don't. And I, you know, I don't force it.

• 43:34Alec Baldwin?

  Well, even for people who the immigration issue is something that's not in the forefront. The number one issue is the economy and their paychecks. And number two is healthcare. This ripping children away from their parents changed everything. I mean, this becomes the image of the most heinous. What was your response to that?

• 43:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I think-

• 43:52Alec Baldwin?

  Did your organization have any role in that?

• 43:54Speaker 02

  We actually won a big lawsuit on behalf of 2,700 unaccompanied kids in Central America who are trying to reunite with a parent in the United States. But, you know, we don't have offices on the border. I mean, I took a lot of hope from that, actually, which I know is strange, but I think-

• 44:13Alec Baldwin?

  This is the bottom that we've hit.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  We made it the bottom, right? It didn't go further. You know, the thing that was amazing about Airport Weekend is that, like, we organized the lawyers, but nobody organized the protesters. Totally spontaneous. Thousands of Americans went out in freezing shitty January weather to just be like, this is not cool. The executive order was rescinded before the lawsuit. The lawsuit we won said that they can't hold people, but the one that we won right away wasn't about sort of the legality of the order on its face. It was the public pressure that got the administration to rescind the executive order and the so-called, like, chaos at the airports, which I will forever be proud of. And the same thing happened with the family separation policy on the border.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  There were plenty of lawsuits about it that, you know, the lawsuits ultimately were victorious. Congress, like, fucked around and didn't end up doing anything. What got it to stop was just, like, the number of people who stood up and said, like, this is not okay, the number of journalists who refused to stop reporting on it. Ultimately, it was just straight-up public pressure that caused the administration to rescind the policy. And it hasn't been totally rescinded, right? They're still separating kids from families. Like, it's not a perfect solution. But if you watch, like, so many of the sort of systems to protect democracy and the rule of law be dismantled, it does give me hope that when something that egregious happens, people are still willing to stand up and say, like, this is un-American, and that when they do, it means something.

• 45:42Alec Baldwin?

  In your mind, I'm assuming that you're capable of citing a couple of examples, if you're willing. Are there any heroes in the Senate or the House on this issue who you think get it right about this issue?

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Senator McCain was amazing on this issue. He was amazing on refugee issues.

• 45:57Alec Baldwin?

  Why do you think that is?

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Because I think if you have served in the military overseas, you understand how important it is for our foreign policy to have a humanitarian component. You understand that if the US wants to be taken seriously as an enforcer of national security, that that can't just be a stick, that it needs to have a carrot also, that we need to take responsibility for sort of the peaceful side of national security issues. And I think he understood that deeply. Senator Shaheen has been great for us on these issues. I'm looking forward to, you know, the new Senate and the new House and seeing what we can do with them. And I hope that there are more heroes.

• 46:39Alec Baldwin?

  Of the six and a half million that comprises your current budget, or roughly that, most of that money comes from where?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  It's 50% individuals, 30% foundations, and 20% corporate. We do not take government funding.

• 46:49Alec Baldwin?

  Describe your relationship with the Brothmans.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  Substitute grandparents.

• 46:54Alec Baldwin?

  Really?

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:55Alec Baldwin?

  They've been very generous to you.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  I mean, they're just lovely. Like, Charles is just hilarious and sassy and has me to his house and is just like really supportive.

• 47:05Alec Baldwin?

  And supports your work, I rap.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they've become family and I don't know.

• 47:10Alec Baldwin?

  Is media and savvy with social media at all important to you or no?

• 47:15Speaker 02

  It is important. I think it's tricky right now because I think earned media doesn't have the impact that it did a couple of years ago. I think there's so much crazy stuff happening all the time that you just, when you get a story in the New York Times, it just doesn't mean what it used to mean. And it doesn't stick the way it used to stick. And you also, you have an administration that doesn't care when the New York Times says something. One thing that I've become really interested in, and I have a project that I've been working on for a while, is sort of using popular culture. And how can you sort of, you know, like, people maybe won't read New York Times articles or won't register them, but like they'll binge-watch for 14 hours, like, the newest season of whatever.

• 47:58Alec Baldwin?

  Black Mirror, yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't watch Black Mirror because it freaks me out too much. But, you know, but so if you can get like a narrative about- About a more positive or more useful narrative about immigrants or refugees into a pop culture format. I think that has a lot of promise as a way to try to, you know, change hearts and minds.

• 48:20Alec Baldwin?

  What's next for you? Book?

• 48:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:23Alec Baldwin?

  You're not interested in that? You don't have time to reflect.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  I reflect in a very like neurotic, anxious, obsessive way that does not lend itself well to like an overarching narrative.

• 48:34Alec Baldwin?

  But I think when people like you get things done.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got some offers to write books and I was like, well, when, you know, so-and-so activist wrote a book, like, how did they do it? And they're like, oh, they took book leave. And I was like, that's the last thing I'm gonna do right now. Let's just be like, oh, well, I mean, I think attention to any issue ebbs and flows, right? Like, we definitely had our 15 minutes around airport weekend. We were aware at the time that it was 15 minutes, and so we approached it really strategically and said, you know, what can we keep from this? Like, what can we hang on to that we can continue to use in the future? And I'm continuing to sort of take that approach of just, you know, with the MacArthur, like, that's amazing. I feel like it adds a lot of pressure on me to make sure I'm leveraging it for the work as much as possible.

• 49:19Alec Baldwin?

  You don't pay yourself very much money.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Well, now I don't have to, thankfully. Thanks, MacArthur. No, I do OK. It's not like 30 Rock money. No, I want to keep fighting this fight. I have a ton of ideas for what should be next, and the other staff at IREB has a bunch of ideas. And we've, you know, two years ago, we were a $2 million organization. So we've grown pretty fast, and we're trying to manage that growth in a way where the, you know, quality of our work is still high and our organizational culture is still good, but also we're aggressively growing to fight these problems. And, you know, so like, whereas like, if Hillary had been elected, we would be making a big play around climate refugees. Because to me, that's like the single biggest thing that we have to contend with, right?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Like, the first major manifestation of climate change is gonna be and is already, like, the displacement of large numbers of people.

• 50:09Alec Baldwin?

  Flooding, drought.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  And we have no, no legal or systematic regime.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  whatsoever to deal with that anywhere. I think I I work a little better in a bunker mentality, like getting back to your

• 50:21Alec Baldwin?

  You like pressure.

• 50:22Speaker 02

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

• 50:25Alec Baldwin?

  But you process pressure.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Resistance is, you know, creative resistance is a better fit for me than like scaling up widgets.

• 50:32Alec Baldwin?

  You're one of those people who like, you know, where would the world be without you? I mean that.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Quieter.

• 50:36Alec Baldwin?

  Be quieter.

• 50:41Alec Baldwin?

  That was tireless refugee activist and could have been stand up comic Becca Heller. Her organization once again is the International Refugee Assistance Project at refugeerights.org. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

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