Mike Howell: The Amnesty Lobby is coming for Trump - pushing farm worker amnesty and the DIGNIDAD Act into the midterms. Trump needs to stand firm.

Mike Howell is president of the Oversight Project at itsyourgov.org, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, and a partner in the Mass Deportation Coalition. He is a Virginia lawyer, a Duke and Emory Law graduate, a former House and Senate oversight counsel, and the first Trump administration’s chief legal point of contact at DHS for congressional investigations.

On this episode of Counterweight, Howell walks through the machinery that keeps a real deportation program from scaling. A Senate that treats interior enforcement as a favor to trade. An ICE pause on vehicle stops after Susan Collins called it in. Religious-in-name-only NGOs that still siphon money after Kristi Noem cut the main pipes. An immigration bar that files a habeas petition every time an alien is arrested. The legal fights on no-bond detention and TPS are real. The numbers problem is still a numbers problem. Howell’s midterm advice is worksite enforcement, sanctuary farms and factories on notice, and no victory lap that hands Washington a Gang of Eight sequel.

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Mike Howell: @MHowellTweets on X · Oversight Project @ItsYourGov · itsyourgov.org · massdeportation.com

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Intro

0:10 Teaser

1:08 Host intro

2:29 Mike Howell

4:27 Who sets the frame

6:23 Sanctuary cars

13:30 Detention and the courts

18:32 Midterms and worksites

23:21 The NGO machine

31:30 The amnesty trap