Webinar: “Trump 2.0: Tuesday Updates With Rosanna Berardi, Esq.” 3/10/26

Transcript:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Berardi Immigration Law Trump Tuesday Update. Yes, it’s the latest and greatest of all things going on concerning immigration in the Trump administration. So it’s been a really interesting year. It feels like thirty years, and we’re three months into it. But a lot of waxing and waning with ICE, some policy directives, policy changes. It’s H-B season. There’s a lot going on. We do these webinars in order to just keep you informed and let you know the latest and greatest. So let’s get started. I hate to waste your lunch hour. Let’s get started. I’m going to talk about two major things today. We have a very big case coming up before the U.S. Supreme Court on April first regarding birthright citizenship. And then CBP just released their new study about how many electronic devices they search of people entering the U.S. So really interesting topics for immigration nerds like me.

So let’s start with the Supreme Court decision. It’s called Trump versus Barbara. April first, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case on birthright citizenship. What does this mean? Well, the Fourteenth Amendment says that U.S. citizens are people who were born in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That means if you’re born in the U.S., it’s a concept that goes back for hundreds and hundreds of years, you’re a U.S. citizen. But the administration is picking on one, two, three, four, five words: subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And they issued an executive order saying we don’t like birthright citizenship. We think this is unfair. People shouldn’t be rewarded for being unlawful in the United States and having children. You may have heard of the term anchor baby. That’s exactly what this case is talking about. But for over one hundred twenty-five years, there is a U.S. Supreme Court case called U.S. versus Wong Kim Ark, and jurisdiction was defined to be physically present in the U.S.

So what’s the government’s argument here? Well, the government’s arguing that in order to be physically present in the jurisdiction, you must have a political allegiance to the U.S. that doesn’t come to temporary residents or people without status. It’s a stretch. They’re trying to fiddle around with the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Really not something presidents should do. There’s a way of officially amending the U.S. Constitution. But the quick and easy sidestep is to try and do an executive order to dismantle the amendments of the U.S. Constitution. So this executive order that was issued, I think it was day one of this administration, basically saying if you’re having a baby here and you are not lawful, that baby is not a U.S. citizen. The U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear these arguments. They’re going to hear from the government lawyer, the solicitor general, who’s the government lawyer who stands up there and argues on behalf of the government. And he’s going to argue that jurisdiction does not mean the same thing for people without immigration status. And then the court’s going to hear on behalf of the attorney for the Barbara party, who is stating, listen, this is long-established constitutional law and we really shouldn’t be monkeying around with it.

So this is happening Wednesday, April first. The court will hear the arguments from both sides, and then they don’t make a decision the same day. The U.S. Supreme Court usually releases all of their decisions late June, early July. So we’re really going to see what the court does on this one. The experts are saying, well, this is a tough one for the administration. Sorry, my spring allergies are kicking in. This is a tough one for the administration because of this longstanding Supreme Court case that says if you’re born here, you’re a U.S. citizen. The government is also, I think, hanging their hat on the conservative court, the six-three conservative majority. But we’ve seen Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh go astray from their ideology, and they may on this one. Lots of amicus briefs were filed. Those are friends of the court. Those are groups like the Cato Institute, UCLA-sorry, ACLU (geez, I’m sorry, I haven’t eaten lunch yet) are definitely arguing that the Constitution should be validated, should be withheld, and we’ll see what happens.

Now, there’s a funny backdoor that may happen here. They may not even decide on this issue. They may take this from a procedural perspective and rule whether the president has the authority to do this or not. They might just focus on the president and not on the constitutionality of what he’s trying to do. So lots to see. I’m hoping I’m in a queue of tickets, requesting tickets for the April first hearing. Hopefully I get in. It would be fascinating to hear this landmark case. I’m not certain. I don’t think the Supreme Court is going to agree with the administration, but we’ll see which position they take, and it will be fascinating to hear both sides of the argument. So what does this mean for you? This means that if you’re born in the United States today to someone who is not lawful, you are still a citizen. And we will see how this shakes out later this summer. So that’s coming up soon.

We also have a really interesting document from Customs and Border Protection concerning our lovely cell phones here and what they can and cannot do, what they can and cannot search. They came out with their statistics for what they did in twenty twenty-five. Now, it seems like it went up significantly. CBP conducted a record fifty-five thousand three hundred eighteen searches of electronic devices. That’s up seventeen point six percent. Well, that headline makes you feel like, oh my God, they’re looking at everything. But what you have to realize is that it’s still a super tiny, small part of the population. So that is point zero zero one percent of four hundred and twenty million travelers a year. So yes, it did go up. Not surprised with this administration. But what’s more surprising here to me is not that it went up seventeen percent. I mean, that is a large number. But they’ve now gone into detail of what they can search.

So we all know reasonable suspicion. They can search your phone, your laptop. They can search your car. They can search basically anything they want for whatever they want. But they went deeper here, and they did list some new searchable devices, including your Apple Watch can be searched, SIM cards, flash drives, GPS systems. So that’s kind of interesting. They can search cars, but I never thought about them searching GPS. The basic searches of these things, to manually look into your cell phone, require no reasonable suspicion. They can do whatever the hell they want. So don’t think when they say, give me the password to your phone, you can say, nope, I’m not doing that. I have a right to privacy. You have no rights at the U.S.-Canadian border, U.S.-Mexican border. This is a constitutional free zone, if you will. The government can do what they want. The longstanding argument is based on national security and protecting the borders and the people within the borders. So the basic search is they could do whatever they want.

Now, if they want to copy data, if they want to download the info from your cell phone, that does require reasonable suspicion of a legal violation. That’s not the majority of the searches. They’re really doing the cursory ones, and they’re doing it a lot more. Interesting, this report also showed that they are targeting U.S. citizens. Super interesting. When I crossed the border coming back to the U.S., I’ve been an immigration lawyer for thirty years, I just feel like, okay, I’m going to show my passport and away we go. But interestingly enough, they searched thirteen thousand five hundred and ninety U.S. citizen devices, U.S.-citizen-owned devices, in twenty twenty-five. Again, there’s four hundred and twenty-five million travelers coming into the U.S. every year, so that number is really tiny, barely a blip on a screen. But interesting, just interesting that this administration is really doing their due diligence at the borders, making sure that everyone that’s coming in is truthful and not engaging in any criminal activity.

So really interesting. Make sure you know what’s on your phone. Make sure you know what’s in your car. I always have said for thirty years, make sure your story matches your stuff, meaning if you say you’re going to Las Vegas, you’re a Canadian citizen, you’re going to Las Vegas for a weekend to gamble and see some shows, but your phone has meeting invites for business meetings to talk to attorneys in Vegas while you’re there, and there’s emails that talk about maybe starting a new business in Las Vegas, that’s not gonna work. So make sure you know what’s on your phone. Make sure you know what your plans are, where you’re going. You need to know your address. Please do not show up at the border, I used to be an officer, drove me nuts, and when people are asked, where are you going, they say “Myrtle Beach”. Where are you staying? “I don’t know. My wife made the reservation”. No, you need to know the Holiday Inn on Lakeshore Boulevard or whatever it is.

So today we’re talking about the Trump administration. We’ve seen a lot of ebbing and flowing. The ICE issue particularly, to me, Operation Surge in January was insane. It was a headline story. Every time you turned around, terrible things were happening in Minnesota. And then one day, it just stopped. The Trump administration brought in Tom Holman, who’s had lots and lots of border management experience with many, many administrations, to negotiate with the state. And the story just went away. Why? I don’t know. I’m not the government, but I can tell you my conspiracy theory here. I think the story went away because I think the majority of Americans did not like what they saw. It appeared and looked very anti-American. The administration, and every administration prior to and going forward, looks at polling. They look at what people like, what they don’t. They’re getting hammered on the ICE issue for immigration. And the story went away. Are we hearing about ICE right now? Very little, very, very little.

So, really interesting what’s going on. This is an administration that is hell-bent on fixing immigration. Now, Congress hasn’t done anything on immigration in thirty years. They probably won’t. We’re going to see with this administration, and probably those to come, trying to legislate through executive order, which is a very dangerous thing to do. But for now, two big issues if you want to sound like the smartest person at your dinner table: Trump versus Barbara, that’s the big Supreme Court case about birthright citizenship challenging the Fourteenth Amendment, and also government is searching more documents, more devices upon entry to the U.S. So make sure you know what’s on your phone. You don’t need to buy a burner phone or do anything like that. The government cannot search anything on the cloud. So there’s that.

But that’s what’s going on today. Thank you for joining us. Short and sweet, just like me. Thirteen minutes of your time, just so you know what’s going on, and we’ll continue to keep you updated. Have a great day.