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How to Humanist asks life’s questions big and small with the help of brilliant humans along the way.
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This is Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. I'm getting married this summer, and we could not be more excited, but weddings can be a lot. On top of dealing with caterers and photographers, it just feels challenging to plan a ceremony that both honors our humanist beliefs and my fiancee's Jewish culture and traditions.
There is no script for something like that. That's why my fiancee and I are getting help from a humanist celebrant, our friend Greg Epstein, who also happened to be the first-ever guest on this podcast. If you're preparing to celebrate your own love story but you're not excited about a traditional religious celebration, you should consider working with a humanist celebrant like Greg.
The Humanist Society can connect you with professional humanist celebrants who are excited to help you and your partner craft a ceremony that reflects your unique story, background, and values. Humanist celebrants are frequently sought out for interfaith, intercultural, and same-sex marriages, but they are available to everyone, and they can legally perform marriages in all 50 states.
If you wanna explore what it means to invite a humanist celebrant into your wedding, visit thehumanistsociety.org. We've got people who can help.
SHAY:
It's How to Humanist, and I'm Shay Leonia, your host. We are in episode 23, and I am, for the first time, gonna get right into this because the salient information that is shared on this episode could change your life and could change the life of your neighbors, those you love, those you don't know but want to show up for.
Our guest today is Qasim Rashid, who is a human rights lawyer, author, and former nominee for US Congress. Qasim is the founder and president of Just Win, a creator representation firm focused on social justice and human rights. He runs a popular human rights Substack with more than 167,000 subscribers titled Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid, and has more than 2.8 million total social media followers.
You can find him across platforms at Qasim Rashid. That's Q-A-S-I-M R-A-S-H-I-D.
I have been following Qasim's content for such a long time, and not only has he always had his finger on the pulse of where we need to be focusing our attention and energy, which sometimes can feel like very scatterbrained, at least for me, but he's also in these streets, he's also raising this money, he's also showing up in the courtrooms. He's just a phenomenal human being and I could not believe that I had the opportunity to not only meet him in person, but now that we are in contact, that we are getting to build with him at AHA, and this is just the first step of hopefully many to come in the future.
Please share this episode. If there hasn't been an episode that you have wanted to share with anybody just yet, I want this to be the first for you, because there's no way that I'm the only one who was not aware of all of the things that you're about to hear Qasim teach me about immigration law.
Share it wide and share it far, and let us know what you think, and if you have any follow-up questions, please do let us know.
SHAY:
And I love that your hat has a heart on it.
QASIM:
Yeah, because a good message... I've noticed in public I can see the anxiety dissipate when they see that, so it's interesting. It's an interesting social experiment versus just walking around without it.
SHAY:
That's interesting. Wait, now, okay, we gotta stay here for a second. So the anxiety.
QASIM:
Yeah.
SHAY:
Is it just innate anxiety from seeing a Brown person?
QASIM:
Yeah, I think you see a Brown bearded guy in kind of this climate where there's this heightened anti-Muslim, anti-Sharia, you know, they're coming to get us, anti-immigrant sentiment. And so in certain places that are probably more homogenous than I'm used to, you see a change in demeanor for sure. And it's interesting. It's almost become like a secret weapon that I have just to be like, "Hey, I'm normal. I'm just like you. I'm okay. I'm not weird."
And it's been interesting. I'm disappointed to find it, but it's a reality, and I'm just kind of leaning into it, so it is what it is.
SHAY:
That's so... You're the second person I've heard tell me recently that they have had to learn how to adapt to make white people comfortable in everyday life.
QASIM:
It's every Black or Brown person in this country has had to do. That's a lived experience of every Black and Brown person in this country since time immemorial, so there's a lot more than two people, I assure you, in your life that are experiencing that.
SHAY:
You're the second to be willing to share with me.
QASIM:
It's one of those things where it's kind of like an unwritten, unspoken rule. But it's life that we're in right now.
SHAY:
For white people that are listening and might not be familiar with what that demeanor looks like, if they wanna maybe even check themselves on their own implicit bias, what are some of the things that you encounter?
QASIM:
I don't know. There's a comedian, I can't remember his name. This Black guy, he's hilarious. He's got this great joke where he goes, "I walk into this elevator, and there's a white woman in there. And she clutches her purse as she sees me walk in. It made me feel some kind of way. And it got really awkward because she's pulling, and I'm pulling, and she's pulling, and if she would just let go, I could be over with this."
And it's just fantastic, right? It's one of those things. It's hard for me to be like, "That's what you do," but it's like you notice the sudden bodily shifts, the kind of like checking your surroundings, the securing of a backpack or of a purse or something, or the tapping of like, is my wallet still here? It's subtle things. It's not, God forbid, somebody pulling out a burning cross and throwing it in your face. But it's those subtle subconscious microaggressions that people often don't realize they're making but are noticed by anyone who's been in a room.
And I think people can relate to this in different ways, right? Every woman watching this has been in a room where she's the only woman in the room, and she has to kind of check her surroundings. And the reason why I bring up the analogy is because a woman in that room is going to notice how men act and behave and function, and be very cognizant of that. And it's that same way, and it would be harder for her to explain to a man why that wasn't a welcome gesture or approach. The guy might just be oblivious and not realize that he's doing it. Doesn't make it okay, but I think in this situation it's kind of the same thing, right? Where we walk into a room where you're the only Black or Brown person, and suddenly you see the mood shift.
And there's another great comedian, I gotta remember these comedians' names, where he's like, "Black people walking into a store, it's a lot like the take a penny, leave a penny tray. Like one or two, I'll tolerate, but once there's three or four or five, people start to get nervous about what's going on."
It's a great joke. But it just leans into the social construct of what the treatment is. And so I didn't mean to make that a whole thing of the conversation, but it was just something I reflect on a lot.
SHAY:
I'm genuinely interested in this because I mean, you, it hopefully it's not too painful to revisit, but you and I were conscious living beings during 9/11.
QASIM:
Sure.
SHAY:
But obviously had very wildly different experiences. I was a new high schooler looking from the outside in on what Muslims were going through, and Brown people in general, because they were attacking anybody that was Brown.
QASIM:
Oh, yeah.
SHAY:
But you went through it as a Brown person during that time.
QASIM:
Sure. Yeah. I mean, the first person killed was a Sikh.
SHAY:
Yeah.
QASIM:
A Sikh American, not even a Muslim. I think two things about that. One, I think what annoys me the most now is when people say stuff like, "I remember how painful 9/11 was, but I also remember the unity we had on 9/12." And I'm like, what unity? What are you talking about? On what planet was there unity? There wasn't. They were planning and scheming to destroy two countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 and kill millions of people. And the Patriot Act was passed, and NYPD surveillance on Muslims, and spikes in hate crimes against Muslims, particularly against Muslim women or anyone appearing to be a Muslim woman.
So that's the first thing that annoys me. The second thing is, sadly it's actually worse now, I would argue, than after 9/11.
SHAY:
Really?
QASIM:
Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. Because at the time, as much as I despise him and think he's a war criminal, George Bush was an effective propagandist in separating his actions from his kind of claims. Like he said verbally, at least, that Islam is a religion that is for human rights and humanity, and that brought down the temperature. Meanwhile, he was bombing the hell out of Afghanistan and killing innocent Muslim women and children and men.
But now you've got Trump, full speed ahead, that Islam hates us, it's the enemy. You've got Randy Fine, you've got Ted Cruz, you've got so many politicians. And then even some Democratic politicians like Kirsten Gillibrand, after Mamdani won the nomination, called him a jihadist. So you've got some really nasty politicians that are kind of joining forces.
The common refrain in our circles is that anti-Muslim hate is one of the last forms of acceptable bigotry in American politics. You're not gonna get canceled in politics if you make an anti-Muslim comment. And for anyone who says, "Well, those aren't anti-Muslim," I'm like, "Okay, replace Muslim with Jew. Replace Muslim with gay person. Replace Muslim with Black person."
And the irony is that the majority of Muslims in America are Black as well, so they get hit a double whammy in that sense because it's anti-Black and anti-Muslim. So I think it is worse now, and I think the data shows that the hate crimes are higher now.
And then just the cowardice of it all is that the majority of people being attacked are Muslim women, because these fascists, these feckless white supremacists, they recognize that if they go after a Muslim man they might get someone who pushes back, and they see Muslim women as easier targets, which again shows their internalized misogyny as well.
So longer conversation, but that's the very short gist of it.
SHAY:
That's so true, because when I especially talk to younger people, they've asked me, was politics always like this? Because they've seen clips here and there of like John McCain defending Obama and things like that, but they didn't really get the sense of how much back then it was very much that magician sense of Bush saying, watch this hand while I do this thing and bomb the countries over here.
QASIM:
Yeah.
SHAY:
There's this clip that you can probably find of Tina Fey on Conan O'Brien in like 1999, I think, talking about how nothing will ever top the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and there will never be anything more dramatic that... She's like, "I can't even imagine what could possibly be more scandalous than that." And I'm just like, God, we were so innocent and sweet back then. Like...
QASIM:
So we were.
SHAY:
I'm like, my God. I wanna go back to that timeframe. I mean, not that there wasn't nasty stuff that happened, but honestly it's wild what's happened since.
QASIM:
Yeah. No, but imagine like seriously traveling back in time and being like, "Well, Tina, the guy that made a cameo in Home Alone..."
SHAY:
Yeah.
QASIM:
But yeah. It's just unbelievable.
SHAY:
I would consider it masking. Would you call it masking? The having to make white people comfortable of it all.
QASIM:
To me masking implies I'm being someone else, and I'm not. I would probably say code switching is a bit more accurate than masking, because I am who I am. I'm not like one face to one person and another face to another person.
But I will approach a conversation in a way that's a little bit different, and that's where the code switching comes in. And I think we all do it on some level, right? I mean, when we're with our high school buddies we speak in a very different way than when we're with our colleagues versus when you're in a job interview. So it's similar, but I would like to think that we're the same person. We're just presenting how we communicate a little bit differently.
SHAY:
Yeah. Because you work in immigration justice as part of your work, correct?
QASIM:
Yeah.
SHAY:
We're clearly seeing a favoritism towards white immigrants than Black and brown ones.
QASIM:
Yeah.
SHAY:
And there are ones for whom English is a second language. How are they supposed to ever be able to code switch? What are they even able to use to assuage what's happening right now to them?
QASIM:
Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah.
SHAY:
I would love, if it's okay, to talk more about immigration justice and reform and learn from you there. Would that be okay?
QASIM:
100%, yep.
SHAY:
Okay, great. So some of our listeners, or many of our listeners even, might not necessarily understand what legal immigration looks like. Can we start there?
QASIM:
Yes. Legal immigration is whatever the current administration says is legal. There's this mythology that there's this long-standing immigration law, like a speed limit. Like, you can't go faster than 70 miles an hour. That's the speed limit. You can't tell me you didn't know that. You ever get pulled over by a cop and be like, "Officer, I didn't realize the speed limit dropped down to 50 in that stretch"? Cop says, "Too bad."
SHAY:
Anyone who's driven on Kelly Drive in Philadelphia knows.
QASIM:
Right? We've all gotten a speeding ticket because we're like, "I just didn't realize." 'Cause the, it says, well, this is the law, it hasn't changed. But that's not how immigration law works.
Immigration law has always been a white supremacist policy forever, and I can prove it. Prior to the Civil War, there was no immigration law. It was colonization. It was get here however the hell you can, and take land, and do whatever you gotta do to take land. We're colonies. We're colonizers. And if you're African, you're part of the transatlantic slave trade, and we're just gonna pull whoever we can, bring them here as human trafficking and sell them to the highest bidder. And whoever is not strong enough won't make the middle passage. They'll get thrown overboard. The rest will make it.
So for the first nearly 100 years of this country, there was no such concept as immigration law. After the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment get passed and there's this nascent stage of civil rights progress, you had the Civil Rights Acts being passed of 1882. They all get struck down, 7-1 or 8-1, and that is what enables Black Codes. This is, you know, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Jim Crow laws.
And it also is what allows there to be things like the Asiatic Exclusion League, the anti-Chinese Chinese Exclusion Act, which became the Asiatic Exclusion League. And so in, I think 1879, my dates might be a bit fuzzy, the Chinese Exclusion Act is passed, and then it's expanded. And by 1908, there's an all-out ban on Asian immigration.
By 1924, Thind versus United States, he's a Sikh, a Punjabi South Asian person who argues that, "Hey, you guys are the ones who have this belief of like, the cranial structures of Black people versus white people. Well, my structure according to your logic is white, therefore I'm white. And so therefore I should be allowed to immigrate." Supreme Court says, "Yeah, maybe that's true," I think it's called phrenology, I can't remember the term. He goes, "Maybe that's true, but you're clearly not a white person, so we're gonna ban all Asian immigration."
And so they just arbitrarily decided in 1924, all Asian immigration is banned, and that also banned majority of Mexican immigration, Latino immigration, African immigration, basically anything except white immigration. White people are still largely coming through undocumented, no need for a visa, no need for sponsorships, no concept of a green card. You're just basically allowed to come through.
And so it wasn't until the Civil Rights Acts of 1965 and the Immigration and Nationalization Act of that time, nearly 200 years after this country was established, that any kind of semblance of immigration law was established. And that matters because my ancestors weren't allowed to immigrate here up until 1965. Europeans had their ancestors first colonize, and then after that set up laws that said only more white Europeans could come.
And Dr. King talks about this as well, that enslaved Africans, when they were finally free from the bondage of slavery, were promised 40 acres and a mule, never got it. And were told to figure it out, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. People forget that was a term of mockery because you can't. Try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The physics don't allow it. And so it was a term of mockery to them. Meanwhile, white European peasants were coming here and getting hundreds of acres of land.
People forget the Homestead Act was free land given to European immigrants. That land was not free. It was stolen from indigenous peoples. 270 million acres. When it was all said and done, 270 million acres was given about 97, 98% to white European immigrants. You can find a couple of examples here and there where an indigenous or a Black person or a brown person got it, but 97, 98% was given to white people.
And for those who think, "Well, this was so long ago," no, the Homestead Act was finally repealed in 1987. I remember 1987. I was alive. I mean, I was a child, but I was alive. And I'm not like this 94-year-old man talking about back in the day. I'm a pretty young dude, pretty healthy, and I remember that.
And so that's what immigration law has always been. And so now what we're seeing is a perpetuation of that arbitrariness of immigration law. The fact that the Supreme Court just effectively banned asylum is devastating. It is outrageous.
People forget asylum was established because the United States was complicit in the Holocaust of Jewish people and other minorities in Germany. The SS St. Louis was a boat of Jewish refugees that arrived on the shores of the United States and was told to go pound sand, and they were sent back to Europe, where a third of them were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. And never again meant that we need to ensure that we give people the right to apply for asylum and hear their case, and those that are valid and legitimate, keep them, and those who don't have a valid claim after due process of law, they go back.
Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that when they're coming to apply for asylum, they don't have to be allowed to enter the US to apply for asylum, which is insane to me. It's horrifying. It's a revival of the horrifying mistakes made that enabled the Holocaust of Jewish people. And the fact that in less than 80 years we're redoing that is insane.
The temporary protective status of Haitians, sending 700,000 Haitians back, how are they going to do that? People forget that was a compromise established because Obama had actually proposed a pretty thoughtful immigration policy to streamline what was happening. Republicans blocked it every turn, said no. Obama refused to get rid of the filibuster, and then it stalled. So then TPS was established as a temporary solution, and then Republicans kept on blocking.
Democrats are terrible at getting the message across. And now Trump has got the Supreme Court to rule that yeah, we're not gonna allow them, we can deport them all.
And then the last thing I'll say for this diatribe is that immigration law initially was under the Labor Department. It was not under the Department of Homeland Security, it was under the Labor Department. Because immigration is inherently an economic issue. It's inherently economic. Our nation thrives economically because of immigrants. Even undocumented immigrants pay 100 billion in taxes a year. Half of Fortune 500 companies in this country right now were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Half of them.
And so if you're gonna cut off immigration, you are cutting off the very economic lifeline that's made this country the powerhouse that it is. And every study shows that more immigrants equals better wages and pay for everyone here, without fail, every single time. It also shows, by the way, that there's never been a year in history where immigrants or undocumented immigrants had a higher crime rate than US citizens.
So statistically speaking, the more immigrants you have in your neighborhood, the safer it is. And I say all this to point out that breaking immigration law therefore has never been a criminal act in this country. It's always been a civil violation. Coming back to my earlier point about the speeding ticket, it's a civil violation. A parking ticket is a civil violation.
If you want people to be thrown into a gulag for breaking immigration law, you're saying that you're okay with the parking meter inspector throwing you into a gulag for overstaying your parking meter by 20 minutes, by 10 minutes. That's how ridiculous that argument sounds.
And so legal immigration is basically whatever those in power have decided it would be, and illegal immigration is basically whatever those in power have decided it will be. In reality, we're talking about a country that's never had any kind of comprehensive immigration policy built on actual justice. It's always favored white people over Black and brown people, and we're seeing that right now with the refugee program, where Trump, out of the 8,000 refugees they've accepted, three were Afghans. They've sent back hundreds of Afghans who supported the US military in Afghanistan, now sending them back to their deaths. And the other 8,000-ish are white African South Afrikaners who aren't suffering any kind of harm in South Africa. But because Trump is a white nationalist and white supremacist, he's trying to make himself seem like a kingmaker in that regard.
I'll stop there 'cause that was a lot of information, but that's the answer to what immigration is in this country in a very short way.
SHAY:
I have always innately known that in an abstract way what's happening is wrong, but I never knew in such a granular way, in such a historical way. My parents were born in 1946 and 1942. So the fact that immigration didn't even exist until '65...
QASIM:
Yeah.
SHAY:
What the fuck? Insane. I had no idea that it was that recent.
QASIM:
Yep. And I mean, and this is where my anger comes into, like, people like Biden. When Biden ran in 2020, he called out Trump for banning asylum using what you call Title 42. Title 42 is a piece of legislation that allows you to have a specific restriction on immigration during a pandemic or for specific pandemic-related reasons. So Trump exploited Title 42 to say, "You know what? We're gonna ban all asylum altogether," and only asylum, nothing else. It was nonsense.
Biden ran on saying, "This is wrong. It's cruel. No president in history has done this." And then when Biden came into office, guess what he did? He perpetuated Trump's rule. He suddenly found that it was a good rule to have.
And this is the hypocrisy that pisses off so many people, and why so many people stay home from voting, 'cause they're like, "Well, what the hell? You just told me that it's wrong and immoral, and now you're doing the exact same goddamn thing. You ran on saving the soul of America, and now you're using the exact same fascist playbook as Trump. Well, then F it. I don't wanna vote anymore." And that's the frustration people have. And it's a valid frustration driven by the hypocrisy of what Biden did.
Like, I expect Trump to be a fascist. He's telling us he's a fascist, in plain terms. You're talking about saving the soul of America, and you're engaging in the exact same fascist policies.
I think one of the biggest disgraces is how corporate media and even some on the left are refusing to criticize where the party can do better. And I know this is a nonprofit conversation, but I'll be an equal opportunity critic of the left and the right, where we get so much into our blinders of red hat versus blue hat, we forget that most Americans just want justice. That's all they want. They just want justice. They don't care if it comes from a red or a blue hat. They just wanna be able to put food on the table, a roof over their head, shirt on their back. And that won't happen when you have this kind of hypocrisy. And so this is where I ask people to stay engaged. It's difficult, it's angering, it's infuriating, but the alternative is far worse.
SHAY:
I wanna talk about Delaney Hall, because it's not a siloed example. But for anybody who hasn't been paying attention, can you just share a little bit about what's happening with Delaney Hall?
QASIM:
Yeah, I mean, this is another example of a politician running on promises and then capitulating in the face of a little bit of pressure. Mikie Sherrill ran on protecting people of New Jersey from ICE. She won, has the trifecta, the House and the Senate in New Jersey. And now Delaney Hall is violating due process, is violating human rights law, and rather than demanding accountability...
I mean, I've got friends who are independent journalists who are there on the ground, can attest to the fact that New Jersey state police officers engaged in violence against peaceful protesters, and she's out here trying to blame protesters. We have it on camera. It's just ridiculous.
And so Delaney Hall, along with Alligator Alcatraz, which got shut down finally, fortunately, due to the leadership of the local Jewish community and the indigenous tribes, so shout out to both of them. And then here where I am in Chicago, you've got Broadview, another ICE detention center. These are all examples of just violation of due process of law.
And that's really all we're asking for. We're not asking for special treatment. We're just saying that the Constitution says that before you can take someone's rights away, the government has to prove that they violated the law through due process. And you don't get to skip that.
Every single legal scholar that has ever read a single textbook will tell you that around the world, the first step towards fascism is the degradation of due process of law. If a government says that, "Shay, I'm gonna take your rights away because I don't like the color of your hair," and doesn't allow you to say, "Having blue hair is not a crime," then we're all screwed, because then the government can just decide whatever the hell they want to be legal or illegal.
[SHAY interjects: In case you've never seen a picture of me, Qasim uses this example because I have blue hair.]
QASIM:
And Delaney Hall is another example of that, where there's no inspection, there's no oversight, there's no due process, there's no accountability. And we know for a fact that these rights are being violated. So rather than waxing eloquent about how you're working hard, do something about it.
And unfortunately Mikie Sherrill's not willing to take that courageous step, which is unfortunate because all of us are suffering. And I'll contrast that, by the way, with Zohran Mamdani in New York City, who said that we are not going to allow ICE onto city property without a judicial warrant.
And people scream like, "Well, this is the Supremacy Clause, don't you know what the Supremacy Clause is?" Yes, I actually do. This has nothing to do with the Supremacy Clause. It says that this is city property, and therefore it is not federal government property, and the federal government cannot go on property that it does not own without a judicial warrant. Simple as that. That actually is what the Constitution requires.
And that's what we wanted in New Jersey. That's what we wanted in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger folded on that as well. Very cowardly, might I add. But Zohran Mamdani said, "No, the law says that you need a judicial warrant. That's what due process of law is, and as the executive of this city, I'm going to enforce that."
So we know it can be done. We just need people with the spine to do it.
SHAY:
If it can be that simple, why wouldn't they want to do it?
QASIM:
I think because most of these politicians in power are guilty of one or two things. The one thing that they're guilty of is getting elected on corporate money, not on people-funded campaigns. And so when you're elected by corporate money, you're elected by billionaires, you're elected by people who are far more powerful than they should be. And as a result, they have far more influence than you'd want them to have.
And so when you're beholden to these corporate interests, to these billionaire interests who got you there, and you don't do what they say, you know what they say about once you make a deal with the mafia, right? And so they know that if I don't do what they say, my career is dead. They are going to run a smear campaign against me. They're gonna do campaign ad attacks against me. They're gonna do everything in their power to destroy me.
And then the second part of it is because they're not there to serve. They're there as an ambition for the next step. Maybe I can run for US senator. Maybe I can run for president. Maybe I can be a vice presidential candidate. Maybe I can get reelected. And that's unfortunately the problem, because when you know that you got there first on the dollar of a billion-dollar corporation or trillionaire who's corrupt and unjust themselves, then you know that if you step out of line, your future prospects are gone too, and you want your future prospects.
Someone like Zohran Mamdani on the other hand, and there are other examples too, Summer Lee in Pennsylvania, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania as well. Claire Valdez just got elected in New York. There are so many examples of this. When you're elected on people's funding by serving the people, that is who you're accountable to. So you don't give a damn that you pissed off Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase. You want to be careful about, "Hey, I promised that I'm gonna freeze rent. Am I gonna actually fulfill this promise?" You promised free childcare to millions of New Yorkers. You can't show your face unless you do that.
SHAY:
So I'm gonna make a connection that might be completely incorrect, so I welcome your corrections.
QASIM:
Please.
SHAY:
I would think then if they were beholden to the big corporate money, my first question would be, well, what vested interest do corporations have in immigration and ICE enforcement? And so I would think that it then goes into the quota that these concentration camps essentially are filling by being for profit. Is that accurate?
QASIM:
It's exactly right. That's a huge part of it. The prison industrial complex is a multi-multi-billion dollar industry in this country. It always has been.
Again, the 13th Amendment did not abolish slavery. America has never abolished slavery. It said that slavery is forbidden except as a punishment for a crime. So you have inmates, incarcerated people, who are making 11 cents an hour doing hard labor, 17 cents an hour doing hard labor.
And it's not just the fact that, you know, they're building this giant prison in one of the southern states, where it comes out to $300,000 a bed that taxpayers are paying. $300,000 a bed. You could build a beautiful house for $300,000, but they're spending $300,000 for one bed. It does not cost $300,000 to build a bed. It might cost a couple of grand. They are making just 98% profits on this stuff.
[SHAY interjects: Actually, when I was researching what Qasim was saying about this, I found articles saying that there were federal ICE detention centers where companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic are doing the no-bid contracts. And the expansion is $38.3 billion, making each bed $400,000. So $300,000 is not even the limit.]
QASIM:
And then it's not just the actual facilities. People who are incarcerated wanna communicate with their families. Let's charge them three bucks a minute to talk to their families.
SHAY:
Right.
[SHAY interjects: All right, let's stay here for a second. According to prisonpolicy.org, the average daily wage of an incarcerated worker, quote-unquote, is 86 cents. That's per day. Per day.]
QASIM:
People who are incarcerated can't vote. So now you gerrymander districts so you can count people in prison as part of the population, but know that they can't vote. And because they're disproportionately Black and brown, guess what? Now you can say you've got this many Black and brown people in your district, but know full well that they cannot vote. It's modern day...
SHAY:
Wow.
QASIM:
I know. People don't think about that. Yeah. There's a great book that I read in law school that has become like the bible of the criminal justice system called The New Jim Crow by Dr. Michelle Alexander. Black scholar, amazing woman. And she brings up a point, and then Dr. Ibram Kendi brings up this point too, in his book Stamped from the Beginning. They both bring up this point that people tend to think that racism is the result of ignorance, and that's actually not true.
Because when you look at American history, the racist policies of the antebellum era of slavery didn't just go away once the 13th Amendment was passed. They transformed and became more and more sophisticated. They became black codes. They became poll taxes. They became prisons built in certain parts of the country. They became a criminal justice system where crack was punished at 100 times the possession versus cocaine. 5 grams of crack got you 10 years in prison. 500 grams of cocaine got you 10 years in prison. Because crack was predominantly used by Black people, cocaine predominantly by white people.
And so you see these things happen. When the government is invested in disenfranchising a populace, they will build laws around that as well. And you can say, "Well, just don't do crack," or, "Just don't do cocaine." Yeah, of course. But the problem is that when people do, the disparate impact has a disparate impact on all of society as well.
And so racism is actually extraordinarily deceptive and diabolical and malicious. It's definitely not ignorant. It's extremely refined. And if you don't pay very, very close attention to it, then you miss it. And that's the effort.
And I'll give you one really quick example of this today, with Republicans trying to pass the SAVE Act, which will disproportionately harm women and Black and brown people. And their talking point is, "Hey, are you saying that Black people are too dumb to get an ID? Like, it's you who's racist for saying that." All while ignoring that when people register to vote, they already show an ID. We already have voter ID.
What the SAVE Act says is that that ID is no longer valid. We're gonna make you jump through hoops to get a second ID. And guess what? That costs time and money. And guess who has lower income access and lower wealth access? Black and brown people. So guess who's gonna be harmed more by this? Black and brown people, right?
So it's very subtle, and it doesn't require them to ban all Black and brown people from voting. But just enough, 1, 2, 3% is all we need just to seize power, take absolute control, and then blame you for not pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
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SHAY:
I first witnessed what you're saying when I used to be a teaching artist in the South Bronx, and so all of my students were Mexican, Black, and from other countries. They were all immigrants and Black kids. And I remember we were constantly under threat of being defunded because we were an arts program. I was teaching songwriting, so a lot of my work had to do with writing, vocabulary, things like that, critical thinking. And I remember getting pulled into the office and being told that the prisons were estimating the route from students' spelling scores and vocabulary testing to how much square footage they would need in the prisons.
QASIM:
Wow.
SHAY:
And then I ended up getting laid off. So it's just, I can't imagine that happening in a white town. It's literally from birth they are projecting these kids to go straight into prison.
QASIM:
That's right. Yeah, the school-to-prison pipeline is again, it's like a conveyor belt. It's the perpetuation of chattel slavery. And there's a great study, a painful study done by EdTech a couple years ago that documents the disparate financial investments in Black and Latino schools versus white majority schools. Because remember, schools are funded by taxes on people's properties, by homeowner taxes. And with the legacy of redlining, the disparate property worth of Black and Latino versus white is astronomical.
And so they estimate that every year there is a $20 billion difference in investments in white majority schools versus Black and Latino majority schools. $20 billion. It's absurd to think that you're gonna have a level playing field.
And to anyone who says that's not an excuse, I'm like, "Sure. Let's start two companies. You get $0, I get $20 billion. Let's see who builds the better company."
SHAY:
Right. Like...
QASIM:
Or hell, I'll give you a billion dollars, I'll take $21 billion, and the next year you get a billion dollars and I get another $21 billion. After 10 years, you've gotten 10 billion, I've gotten 200 billion. Let's see who builds a better company.
And it's just not hard to see how disparate it actually is. And this is what I mean, that this is the systemic issue. Going back to our earlier conversation about immigration, this is where the systemic issues really come from, that the legacy of racism was never actually dismantled. On paper it was said, "Hey, this is bad," but in practice there was no real change. Let alone reparations and restitution, there was no real reconciliation or recognition of how these policies are still in place and how they need to be reformed before meaningful progress can be made.
[SHAY interjects: Brief warning, we're about to have some mention of sexual assault, so if you'd like to skip ahead to 41 minutes, you should be good.]
SHAY:
I know you do some intersectional work. There are different areas that you focus on as a lawyer. You also defend women who have experienced domestic violence.
QASIM:
Yeah.
SHAY:
Is there any link or intersectionality between what's happening at these concentration camps and sexual violence?
QASIM:
Oh my goodness. It's extraordinarily painful. There's a report done by The Guardian published in 2019 that documented 5,000 cases of child and sexual abuse against women and children by DHS and ICE. 5,000 minimum documented cases. Trump didn't investigate them. Biden increased ICE funding, didn't investigate them, and Trump obviously is not investigating them now.
That's one. Two, there are these cruel agreements called 287 agreements, which are agreements that the federal government makes with local municipalities that allows the federal government to deputize local police to do federal immigration work. And this is devastating for a number of reasons because, one, if a local municipality is tasked with keeping a community safe, but instead of working on things like burglaries, and robberies, and murder, and rape, they're told, "We need to pull you off your cases and go after this immigration lead," guess who's not being served? The local community. And so it makes the community less safe.
Three, and this goes directly to your question, if you are an undocumented woman, or if your immigration status is still pending or not in full status, and you are suffering domestic abuse or sexual abuse, or your children are suffering some kind of abuse, are you gonna go to the police knowing full well that you're gonna be separated from your children?
You're gonna sit there and suffer those horrific crimes. Whether it's a crime of rape, whether it's a crime of child sexual abuse, you're being given this horrible Sophie's choice of, do I go to the police to stop my abuser and then be separated from my children, and God knows what's going to happen to them, or do I sit here and just try to wait it out?
This is the reality being imposed upon millions of people right now, at least hundreds of thousands of people right now, and I get emails every day from people expressing this, and I do my best to connect them to public aid defenders and whatnot. But they're all over the country. It's overwhelming. It's horrifying. But this is a deliberate strategy that the Trump regime has enacted and that the Biden administration enabled, which is just extraordinarily painful to have to admit to. But that's where we are right now.
SHAY:
The lack of humanity in that.
QASIM:
I know. I know. And what angers me even more is that it's all based off of disinformation, all of it. Immigrants don't make our cities and states more dangerous. They make them safer. They don't hurt the economic output of our country, they increase it significantly. They don't decrease wages for anyone, they actually increase them. The Cato Institute, a libertarian right-wing think tank, did a study on this, and they admit that immigrants being present, documented or undocumented, actually increases the wages because they drive economic output. There's more money, businesses have more money, and they can pay their people better. This has been documented time and time again.
There's just no evidence that immigrants harm this country in any way, shape, or form. But that narrative, that white supremacist narrative that's been infused, is convincing the right to vote against their own interest and cut off their nose to spite their face. And so we're all suffering as a result of it.
And this is why I tell folks that for me, this is not a left versus right issue. I don't get into these culture wars of left versus right. For me, this is a bottom 99% versus top 1% issue. And that's the battle that we need to have.
I don't begrudge people who are millionaires. Good on you. I can see how someone can earn a million dollars. But people need to understand there's a big difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. The old saying goes that the difference between a million and a billion is about a billion. People don't realize that. A million seconds from now is in 11 days. A billion seconds from now is 32 years. There's a big difference.
And so what I want folks to understand is that what we're talking about is building a society where you can get wealthy, you can do well for yourself, you can provide for your family, you can have nice things. Buy the nice car, go on the nice vacation. We deserve nice things. Like, we genuinely deserve nice things. But we can't have a society where so few have billions and trillions of dollars while 60% of Americans can't even make rent, can't make ends meet. That's not sustainable. That's French Revolution-level guillotine-style nonsense. It's just not sustainable.
SHAY:
As if we're not frustrated enough and depressed enough over this, can you walk me through, someone gets, I'm gonna say kidnapped by ICE, brought to a concentration camp. What is their family privy to in terms of information? How long does it take to get their family information? What hope do they have once they're in these centers?
QASIM:
We just don't know. It just depends on the situation. If they're sent to a gulag in Louisiana or if they are sent to El Salvador to the CECOT prison, we just don't know, and that's fundamentally the problem.
SHAY:
And they could be based in New York and sent there?
QASIM:
That's right. That's exactly right. I mean, Kilmar Alfredo Garcia was in Maryland, he got sent to El Salvador, right? Mahmoud Khalil was based in New York, he got sent to Louisiana, all without his wife knowing where he was, and she was expecting. He missed the birth of their child as a result of it.
And so we just don't know. And that's where the breakdown of due process of law is so devastating. And so the advice I give to folks is, this is where citizens need to step up and be the shield. Don't ask immigrants or undocumented immigrants to be the martyrs because it's not gonna solve anything. We need US citizens to step up.
Someone once said to me that if your activism doesn't make you a little bit uncomfortable, then you're not risking enough. And so step up, be out front, and be loud and consistent about it. But for immigrants and undocumented immigrants in particular, you should be talking to a lawyer. If you can't afford a lawyer, get to a public aid office and say, "Hey, here's my situation. I need to figure this out." And have a lawyer help you actively figure it out. Because if you are represented by counsel, that's gonna make things infinitely better than they already are. It may not solve everything, but all things being equal, you want to be represented by counsel.
So one, talk to a lawyer. Two, know what your A number is. Everyone has an A number. Even if you're undocumented, know what your A number is because you may not have access to any of your information. Three, make sure your family knows where you're going when you go out. Make sure they know when you're gonna be coming back. Make sure you have check-in times and points. Don't go to unfamiliar places. Four, make sure you have your family's number memorized, your lawyer's number memorized as well. Five, do not under any circumstance unlock your phone for ICE, ever.
These fascists have no actual right to your phone. But here's the trick. They can force you to use face ID or fingerprint to unlock your phone. They can't force you to enter your code. So set your phone settings where it requires a code, and you have no requirement to give that to them. But if they unlock it with your fingerprint or your face, then they can access it.
Next, don't lie to ICE under any circumstance. The federal government, the police can lie to you. They have the right to lie to you, as weird as that sounds. You do not have the right to lie to them. So do not lie. And the best way to not lie is to say, "I want my lawyer." If they ask you anything else, "I want my lawyer."
The first thing you should ask them is, "Am I free to go?" And if the answer is yes, leave. Get out of there. Just leave like it's a bad prom and you just wanna get home and be away from everybody. But if you're not allowed to leave, then ask them if you can have your lawyer, and then don't talk until your lawyer gets there.
Some states, and there are online tutorials you can find, require you to identify yourself, which if you're required to, then do so. But otherwise just ask to talk to your lawyer, and do not say a word until your lawyer gets there. Don't sign anything. Don't agree to anything. Don't consent to anything until your lawyer gets there. None of this is foolproof, but these are all things that will help mitigate harm significantly if it comes your way.
[SHAY interjects: Okey, mi gente y mis amigos. Qasim acaba de compartir pasos importantes si ICE te detiene. Primero, habla con un abogado. Si no puedes pagar uno, ve a una oficina de ayuda pública.
Segundo, memoriza tu número A, que es como tu número de seguro social para tu caso migratorio.
Tercero, avisa a tu familia a dónde vas y a qué hora vas a regresar.
Cuarto, memoriza el número de tu familia y de tu abogado.
Quinto, nunca desbloquees tu teléfono para ICE. Pon tu teléfono en modo de código en lugar de huella digital o reconocimiento facial porque ICE puede forzarte a usar tu cara o tu dedo, pero no pueden forzarte a dar tu código.
Sexto, no le mientas a ICE bajo ninguna circunstancia. Ellos pueden mentirte a ti, pero tú no tienes ese derecho. Lo mejor que puedes hacer es decir: "Quiero hablar con mi abogado", y no decir nada más hasta que llegue.
Y si te preguntan si eres libre de irte y la respuesta es sí, vete. No firmes nada, no aceptes nada, no des tu consentimiento a nada sin tu abogado presente.]
SHAY:
What is an A number? I've never heard of this.
QASIM:
It's just an A registration number. The best way I can describe it is it's your alien number, but it's the equivalent of a Social Security number in just terms of tracking your file and tracking your overall case.
SHAY:
Got it. Okay.
Clearly this administration is trying to make us scared to even put our bodies on the line in protest. The recent cases with the multi-decade sentences that were passed down to protesters.
QASIM:
In Texas. Yeah. I mean, look, this is just an example of the arbitrariness of how this administration is functioning. Texas, by the way, is the same state that let a serial child sexual predator out of prison after 30 days. That same state is now sentencing protesters to fifty to a hundred years in prison.
And I mean, you have to understand that they're, the whole point is to get you to self-censor. The whole point is to get you to say that I'm not going to risk my life.
A good friend of mine, Dana Briggs, he's a seventy-some-year-old Air Force veteran. I was protesting with him here in Broadview, and ICE fascists told him to back up. He backed up, and they got in his face, intimidated him. He fell backwards, and as he was falling, he flailed his arm to try to catch something, as one does. I mean, he's a seventy-some-year-old guy. He's not some Olympic athlete. And as he's falling backwards to catch onto something, his hand grazed against an ICE fascist's arm, and they charged him with assaulting a federal officer and dragged him through the courts and threatened him with prison time and offered him a plea deal. He said no to all of it, and finally they dropped the charges 'cause they knew they had nothing. But it took a year of his life to go through all that.
And so my point is that this is expected. This is what they're going to continue to try to do, so don't let it surprise you. But work in groups. You don't need to go solo. You don't need to be a martyr. We need messengers, not martyrs. Work with a group. Work with a coalition.
The two examples in Florida of the Jewish community and the indigenous community working together to shut down Alligator Alcatraz is an excellent example of how organizing works, how it's substantive, how it's effective. But it requires you to work with a community instead of trying to go solo.
SHAY:
Can you share a bit more about what the community aspect was about the organizing that they did specifically?
QASIM:
Yeah, I mean, I think for one, it was consistency. They had been protesting in front of Alligator Alcatraz for about a year, so they were showing up every single day. And when you show up every single day, it builds momentum. Two, they got involved with the local community, the local city councils, local county boards, and put pressure on them. And then three, they had a specific set of demands of what they wanted done as well.
I recall someone sharing with me that they were in a meeting with a coalition of activists with President Obama years ago, and there were about 30 people in the room, and he was the liaison to the president. And after the meeting, it was like a two-hour meeting, and the president asked numerous times, "Well, what do you want me to do?" And he would get all these answers. And after the meeting Obama said, "You know, if they had come together and said, 'Hey, these are the two things we need done,' there's a pretty good chance I could've gotten it done. But I heard about 15 or 16 different things in there, and it's just not gonna happen."
And I'm not here to defend Obama. I've got my critiques of Obama. But he's right on this one, that you can't solve every problem all at once. But you can definitely solve one or two problems, and then move on to the next one as well.
And this is why I go back to organizing being so effective. Look, there's very few issues out there that don't already have people organizing very effectively around them, and what we don't need is somebody coming in and saying, "I alone can fix it." Work with the organizers who are already doing the work. And once you understand the work being done and you wanna build beyond that, by all means, go ahead. But it's that old African saying that if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together.
And that's what needs to happen here. And so working with the local organizers, working with the local city council, hell, working with local police departments and see if they're willing to be on board. Here in Naperville, where I live, we were able to effectively organize and block a data center, working with the local community left and right. We were able to effectively organize and pass an anti-ICE ordinance in our city council because we effectively organized. And so we know it can be done. It's just gonna require the consistency.
SHAY:
Yeah. Is there any other hope that you can give us on where we're at right now with ICE and immigration?
QASIM:
Despite everything I've said, I'm hopeful. My job as a human rights lawyer is to call it as I see it, and to be objective, and to uphold justice. That should never be conflated with despair or hopelessness ever. Because to me, you can't solve a problem unless you accurately identify it. If someone has got a bump on a part of their body, and you're like, "Ah, that's just a cyst," when it's actually cancer, it's not gonna go away. You have to actually take actions to excise that cancer, and calling it a cyst when it's not is not gonna solve the problem.
That's why I'm so blunt and direct on the issues that we face right now. But again, I emphasize, this should not be taken as me being hopeless or falling into despair or saying woe unto me. On the contrary, this is the challenge given to us, and we absolutely can and will overcome this because history has proven that fascists never win. The good guys always win at the end because they're committed to justice. And it'll take sacrifice. So do what you can.
I mean, I'm acting to the best of my ability, supporting, providing legal support, raising money for orphans in Gaza. I'm gonna be going to Syria later this year to provide hearing aids to kids in Syria. Raised about $30,000 for that.
SHAY:
Wow.
QASIM:
So all these things matter. And just the worst thing you can do, the absolute worst thing you can do, is give up hope. That's loser talk, just to be blunt about it. Don't give up hope. If you need to rest, rest is resistance. Remind yourself, rest is resistance. Take the time to rest. Don't feel guilty about binge-watching Netflix, your favorite show for a weekend, and just locking yourself in a room with your favorite snack and just binge-watching. Don't feel guilty about that. That's important. Your body needs that. Your mind has rights over you. Enjoy those moments, but then once you're rejuvenated, get back out in the fight and let somebody else rest. And so that's how we get through this, by working together, by maintaining that hopefulness, by resting when we need to, and by fighting with every fiber of our being when we can.
SHAY:
At AHA, we're tremendous fans of you and how you use your voice, and the work that you are doing. The fact that you are not even just showing up online, but the fights that you are showing up to in person time and time again, tremendous fans of your work. How can other people that are listening to this episode support you in what you're doing?
QASIM:
Well, you're very kind. I love the work that you guys do as well. I love the fact that as an observant Muslim, I can speak to my atheist and agnostic friends, and recognize that we share a common bond of separation of religion and state, of secular governance, of universal human rights for all people. I think any ideology that misses those marks is not really one worth pursuing. And to me, the beauty of this partnership is that it allows us to be fully ourselves while respecting and protecting each other's right to be fully themselves. That to me is what a true utopia looks like.
I'm very easy to find on social media. I'm at @qasimrashid, my name, across all platforms. My Substack, qasimrashid.com, has no paywall. If you have the means to be a paid subscriber, I would love to have your support, because independent media doesn't fund itself. We rely on your support. But we will never have a paywall. We will never be exclusive or restrictive in our access. We wanna be as accessible, and those who are able to become paid subscribers make it accessible, or subsidize the cost for those who can't, which I think is a beautiful example of how we need to live in a society where those who have the means should invest, and those who don't can participate fully as well.
SHAY:
Thank you so much, Qasim. I have a personal desire to connect you with our legal director, Amitai Heller, because I feel like at one point or another, there's gonna be something that you two can work on together.
QASIM:
I'd love to.
SHAY:
I would love that.
QASIM:
Yeah. It's been a pleasure as well, and I would love to continue to work together on future projects as well.
SHAY:
Absolutely. You cracked open my brain in all the best ways.
QASIM:
I appreciate that. Thank you for the opportunity, and let's keep finding ways to collaborate. I really mean that.