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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Obama to Talk Immigration in Texas; Undocumented Children in Limbo; Many Immigrant Kids Not Represented by Lawyers in Deportation Hearings; Authorities Reenact Hot-Car Death; Cyber Investigations by Police

Aired July 09, 2014 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Tell us what you think.

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(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: That's it for this hour. I'm Michaela Pereira. Thanks for joining us.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman. "LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD" starts like right --

PEREIRA: Now.

BERMAN: Now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: President Obama heads to Texas today. Ground zero. In the mounting immigration crisis. A flood of refugees. Thousands of children fleeing untold violence south of the border.

The president asking Congress for billions. But is money the answer to this humanitarian disaster?

Plus, re-enacting a toddler's last breath. Investigators reportedly returned to the parking lot where little Cooper Harris spent seven hours strapped in a hot SUV under the sweltering Georgia sun.

This hour, on CNN, how new forensics could aid the murder case against his father.

And what if your home were once a suspected serial killer's torture chamber and you knew nothing about it? One woman's horrifying discovery and whether the fine print on her lease means she is simply stuck living in a nightmare.

Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. It is Wednesday, July 9th. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

We want to begin with the president, Mr. Obama is headed to face the Texas heat, as he traveled to the epicenter of the immigration crisis this afternoon. The state's federal facilities along the U.S./Mexico border are simply overwhelmed with a surge of undocumented children, mostly from Central America. But the president will not be anywhere near that border today. Instead, he will be in Dallas, several hours drive north. He'll be meeting with one of his toughest critics, the Texas governor, Rick Perry.

This visit comes as the president is calling on Congress to approve $3.7 billion in emergency federal aid for this problem.

Senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta is following the political fallout. He is live in Washington at the White House. But I want to start with Ed Lavandera who is live in Texas, Dallas, to be exact, with a closer look at how this situation managed to reach epic proportions.

Take it from there, Ed.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Ashleigh. Well, this is a situation that as many politicians try to debate on how to bring everything to an end, the reality is that there is no quick solution to all of this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Fifty-two thousand, that's how many unaccompanied children the Department of Homeland Security says have crossed into the United States just since October. It's right at double the amount from the same period a year earlier. Many are caught by Border Patrol and placed here, at detention facilities where they are held, screened and cataloged, but then what?

A 2008 law passed with bipartisan support and signed by then President Bush in the final days of his presidency is complicating the issue. It's called the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. The law prohibits a quick deportation for children from non-bordering countries and requires they receive an opportunity before an immigration judge to determine their future status.

JAIME TREVINO, ATTORNEY, CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF DALLAS: It could be anywhere from a year to a little more than a year before the kids actually end up going to immigration court and seeing a judge. They can have several hearings throughout their entire immigration court process. So it really just depends on the child and the remedies and, you know, what is -- if they have representation.

LAVANDERA: It was intended to prevent child sex trafficking but the recent flood of migrants has produced unintended consequences. The Obama administration says the law is limiting its ability to deal with the crisis and is asking Congress for changes to help expedite the deportation process.

The hearings will determine if the children will qualify for humanitarian relief and be allowed to stay but according to White House officials, most will not so they will be deported. But that's not expected to be easy either. A judge's deportation order must be carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement which has its own priorities on who should be deported.

TREVINO: Children are going to generally be on the lower end of the spectrum because, you know, what's a 5-year-old kid -- what kind of crime can he really commit in the United States versus, you know, maybe somebody who drug trafficking or some other undesirable crime?

LAVANDERA: Meaning these children could be caught in legal limbo for some time to come.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA: But, Ashleigh, the fact is that many of these migrants have a very tough legal hurdle to jump over. And many of the experts who are well-versed on immigration law say that any kind of applications for asylum will be a very difficult case that brought violence in your home country probably isn't enough to win that asylum case.

BANFIELD: Really? Wow. That's a shock, because I, all through your piece, was wondering, when I see the sign saying, stop illegal immigrants, I kept wondering if these are illegal immigrants or if these are refugees, and whether using those terms in a court battle might make the difference.

And I'm not going to put that to you, Ed. Instead, I'm going to ask you this. Rick Perry has been so critical of this president. And now there have been other Democrats who are jumping on this idea of balking at the $3.7 million appropriations request.

Has Rick Perry suggested anything along those lines or is he thrilled with the idea of that kind of money coming towards this problem in his state?

LAVANDERA: He hasn't come out -- I haven't seen anything that he's come out, maybe he'll do that today after he meets with President Obama. But following what Rick Perry has said over the last couple of years here in Texas, he's been much more focused on the security aspect of it and the violent aspect of it. And you've seen that initial reaction was to step up Texas Guard troops along the border, as well as sending a surge of state police down to monitor the border as well.

But that's been kind of one of his initial reactions and one of the things that he's talked about the most. So it will be interesting to see later today --

BANFIELD: Yes.

LAVANDERA: -- what kind of comments he makes on those -- the request for billions of dollars to solve this crisis.

BANFIELD: I sure hope people yell that question to him and that he does actually take up that answer. And let me just take it right to the middle screen where Jim Acosta is standing by live. That's obviously a question that would be fascinating to hear him respond to. But in the meantime, Jim, the president has got to be hearing the cacophony, at least the small ones, to start with, of other Democrats who are also questioning exactly how the allotments are going to be made in this $$3.7 billion emergency request for appropriations money.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

BANFIELD: That can't sound good when he's already got a whole other side and all these optics issues that are playing up today.

ACOSTA: Yes, I don't want to overstate it too much. I mean, I definitely think he's going to have to convince Democrats to go along with this request. Not only from a financial standpoint, but there are a lot of Democrats actually who are uncomfortable with giving this administration new legal authorities to expedite the deportations of these kids. Especially members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. They're not eager to do that.

We did hear earlier Henry Cuellar say earlier this morning on CNN that we just can't trust the president when it comes to this appropriations request, they have to go and look at it, look through it. Really that argument is being made much more strenuously on the Republican side. They are basically slamming the door on the president's face at this point when it comes to this budget request.

And my sense of it right now, Ashleigh, is that the president is not going to get this money right away. It is going to take some negotiations between the president and Capitol Hill. We heard John Boehner, the House speaker say earlier this morning that he believes more money needs to go to border enforcement. And he doesn't seen enough of that in this legislation. It sounds a little bit like, you know, a microcosm of the overall debate for comprehensive immigration reform, which is something that's very frustrating to officials over at this White House.

They feel like, you know, yes, they are sort of throwing a band-aid at this, but in their view, if immigration reform had been passed in the first place, perhaps they wouldn't be hearing so many complaints from Republicans. And so they're in a very tight spot right now.

BANFIELD: Well, it will be fascinating to see how this plays out today.

Jim Acosta, as always thank you. Ed Lavandera, working hard in Texas for us as well. Thank you to both of you.

What is the solution to this crisis? Here's a hint, it ain't easy. This is so much more complex than just undocumented immigrants coming to America to steal jobs, as so many people have been complaining, writing signs, "Go home, leave." A lot of those people on those buses are families fleeing Central America because their lives are in danger.

Not a whole lot different than war refugees. Few people meet them on the border and send them back. We're going to profile one family so that you can see the exact story

that they faced when they ran for their lives for the U.S. border. And you're going to be able to weigh the possible solutions for yourself.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Welcome back to LEGAL VIEW. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. 60,000 to 80,000 undocumented children are expected to cross the U.S. border this year. And many of them are coming without their parents. They are hoping to find a better life. And they're hoping, many of them, to escape the violent gangs who are running rampant and murderously through their countries in Central America. But once they're in the United States, most of them are being told that they will be sent back home. Regardless of what's happening in that home.

Kyung Lah is along the U.S./Mexico border with one family's struggle to survive.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Petrona brought her son Rudy illegally to the U.S., not for a better life, but simply a chance to live.

(On camera): What do you want for your family?

(Voice-over): "To live safe," she says. Guatemalan gangs had threatened to kidnap her toddler unless she paid them.

Guatemalan gangs fund themselves with drugs and kidnappings. In fact there are rulers in some towns. They'd already broken both the legs of Petrona's father, she says, and killed another child in the family. So she ran. Two weeks ago, she paid a guy $200 to take her to the U.S. border. But she was arrested shortly after she crossed the river into Texas. She and her son joined thousands of other mothers and children in these packed detention centers. Tens of thousands of them expected to cross illegally this year.

To cope with the influx of Central Americans like Petrona, the government flew her and about 100 others to El Centro. Buses drove them to the Border Patrol center to be fingerprinted, have their picture taken and given notice to appear in court. Petrona's court is in the state of Washington where her husband lives.

She waits at a shelter to head north to her husband, also undocumented. Petrona says he fled Guatemala a year ago because the gangs tried to kill him.

CINDY ALSA, NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE: I have two that are leaving to Washington to see. One is going to Nebraska.

LAH: Neighborhood House, the nonprofit sheltering the women and children, says all the undocumented immigrants they're helping are leaving California on buses paid for by their families.

MAYOR PRO TEM EFRAIM SILVA, EL CENTRO, CALIFORNIA: Whether we want to or not, they're here.

LAH: El Centro's incoming mayor says unlike Murrieta, which has seen loud protests of the undocumented immigrants coming to their Border Patrol station, his city will help them.

SILVA: What happens to them is up to the federal judges to decide. It's not up to us to decide. And so we owe them a responsibility to provide a safe environment.

LAH (on camera): You can't go back?

PETRONA, UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT: No.

LAH (voice-over): She won't go back, says Petrona. Whether she's welcome in the U.S. or not, her son will at least be alive, living in the shadows.

(On camera): So what happens to her now? She does have that court date in Washington. Will she show up? She didn't want to answer that. The nonprofit helping the undocumented immigrants say they believe that most will appear before these judges, but opponents say that's simply naive. Why would they? They're out. They're in America. The risk of deportation, say opponents, is simply too high.

Kyung Lah, CNN, along the U.S./Mexico international border.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: And joining me now is Wendy Young, who is an advocate for undocumented children. She's the president of a group called Kids in Need of Defense, the acronym spells KIND.

Wendy, in "The Wall Street Journal," you wrote a piece with a former head of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying that our immigration system fails to provide any legal support for undocumented immigrants, especially children.

And I think this might be surprising for a lot of people to understand, but when they go into these hearings, they truly -- some kids as young as 5-years-old are standing there before a judge, barely understanding anything that they're hearing. It's not in their language, and they don't have lawyers.

WENDY YOUNG, PRESIDENT, KIDS IN NEED OF DEFENSE: That's absolutely correct, and it's really surreal when you witness this.

The child is appearing before a robed immigration judge in a very formal courtroom setting. There's a prosecutor from the Department of Homeland Security arguing for the child's release and there the child stands alone.

I literally saw a 5-year-old in that courtroom with no lawyer by her side, clutching a doll while the judge tried to ask her questions about why she was in the United States.

BANFIELD: Well, let me ask you this, because it's really -- it's just wrenching to see some of those images of people protesting these buses. I understand they're upset.

I'm not totally sure they understand the depth of this problem, that these aren't people cheating their way into the country so that they can, you know, steal resources and free education and free health care.

A lot of these people are running for their lives as Kyung Lah so aptly pointed out.

What is the difference when someone goes into one of these hearings and either is called an immigrant, an illegal immigrant, or is called a refugee? Is there a difference?

YOUNG: There's a very different set of policies and laws that govern how we treat refugees as opposed to immigrants. Immigrants, it's a voluntary movement. Refugees are fleeing for their lives, as you heard from the prior report.

So we have a special obligation under our laws to adjudicate the cases and see if they do, in fact, have a well-founded fear of persecution and should be provided protection in the United States or if they can go home safely, then that can then happen, but this requires a full, fair and objective hearing before an immigration judge.

BANFIELD: I just want to read something quickly that came into my inbox just before you joined us on air, that is that the American Immigration Counsel has released that groups are suing the federal government over the failure to provide legal representation for children placed into these deportation proceedings. It's a group of organizations, including the civil liberties union, among others.

Let me ask you this. If some of this appropriation money, if the president's successful getting it, is able to secure more representation for this procedure, for these hearings, you have empirical proof that a lawyer makes a difference.

Many who appear without lawyers are sent back. Many who appear with lawyers get to stay. Is that correct?

YOUNG: That's correct. This is what my organization does. We match children with pro bono or volunteer lawyers.

In our experiences, these children do, in fact, appear for their proceedings if they're represented by counsel. The lawyer can educate the child about the system, reassure them appearing in court is something they shouldn't be afraid of and at the end of the day they may gain status through this process.

Counsel is essential, both because it's the right thing to do for these children, but also because it makes the court process much more effective and it does ensure the kid shows up for court.

BANFIELD: Wendy Young, thank you, for the work you do as well it. It's critical work. These are kids. Let's not forget, they're kids.

I just want to add one thing here before I go to break. For any you out there about to tweet me saying I think immigration is just fine, stop right there. That's not what this is about.

If you've ever been in a war zone, and I have, and I have seen refugees pouring over borders, half their families murdered. They're running for their lives. It is devastating. It's devastating.

God help if you're ever in need of help and you show up and there's a bus telling you to get out. This is America. Just read what we're about. Just read.

Next on LEGAL VIEW, investigators reportedly return to the alleged crime scene for a reenactment to find out just how hot it got inside that SUV where a Georgia toddler died.

Plus, a law enforcement expert shares how forensic technology on smart phones may be used in the murder case against the little boy's dad.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Many new developments to tell you about in the case of the Georgia toddler who died in that hot SUV.

Police turned over Justin Harris' car to the district attorney's office, apparently to go through a series of heat tests. The testing happened in the parking lot of the Home Depot where Harris worked, sort of a recreation of the crime scene.

Ross Harris is now charged with his son Cooper's murder. Here's what authorities were trying to find out. How hot did it get inside that vehicle that day? Because we know the temperature topped 92 degrees on the day Cooper died.

And how long might it have taken for Cooper to die? How long did that little baby suffer?

Victor Blackwell joined me live from the CNN Center now in Atlanta. So many questions about this, all the while, as the investigators and the d.a. are trying to mount their case against Justin Harris, all sorts of online activity is starting to emerge about what he was up to in the year leading up to this.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Let's start with that reenactment. We just learned from a source that tells us, yes, that vehicle, the very vehicle that Cooper was trapped in for seven hours, was returned to the Home Depot parking lot.

We know from WAGA in Atlanta that they drove that vehicle throughout the parking lot to simulate Ross Harris' drive in to work and then parked it in the very spot where it was on the 18th of June where that child was trapped for so many hours and died.

We know the district attorney's office is trying to find out what temperatures were reached inside that vehicle. Experts say it got up to 130, 140 degrees, potentially. For the purposes of this pending trial, they want, of course, temperature readings.

It was returned to the Cobb County police department at 5:00 p.m. yesterday so they now have it again. No guarantee that it will stay there. It could go back ton the d.a. for continued testing.

The d.a.'s office will not comment on their findings. They tell us to comment on what they found in their investigation would compromise their investigation, but we know they had it from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. to find out how hot it really got inside that SUV.

BANFIELD: And that's roughly the hours that the SUV was parked that day with Cooper inside.

Can you move on to that online activity? Because clearly everyone involved in investigating this case has been scouring for whatever that person, Justin Harris, was doing online and not just that day but for weeks, months, and perhaps even years prior.

BLACKWELL: And you'll remember the lead investigator here, Phil Stoddard, said that there's a second persona. There's a second life of Ross Harris.

Well, we found a Web site, Scout.com, his profile there. This second persona, apparently his name is R.J., or at least he goes by those initial, because that's the screen name.

We know Ross Harris is 33, but the age of this person, 27-years-old. Three photographs of a man that looks much like Ross Harris, we have those photographs. Here's one of them.

And there's a message there that he asks people to reach out to him. And he writes simply, "Message me. I'm harmless."

Well, I'm sure the investigators in Cobb County would disagree with that.

BANFIELD: Fascinating, nonetheless, almost every single thing that you can find out. And it can cut both ways too in any kind of case.

Victor Blackwell, great job, thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

So police have a really big job on their hand. Clearly what Victor laid out is the tip of the iceberg. They've even said it themselves.

Tracking down the forensics on the computer evidence, the phone, every single piece of electronic evidence needs to be combed.

Joining me now is Sergeant Troy Lawrence with the Fort Worth, Texas, police department. He trains law enforcement in cyber forensic investigations.

This is -- Sergeant, this is so much the cutting edge of crime fighting. It is such a piece of -- it's a critical tool in the arsenal in trying to get these convictions. It's a massive, massive undertaking.

Can you walk me through what these investigators are likely doing right now and what they're looking at, what die vices?

SERGEANT TROY LAWRENCE, FORT WORTH, TEXAS, POLICE DEPARTMENT: I don't have any information about this case in particular, but I would imagine a law enforcement agency would be combing through computers and cell phones that were available to the defendant at the time of the offense.

BANFIELD: And the cell phones are critical, aren't they, because it's only been in the last decade that they've become ubiquitous?

Everybody's got them, and we tend to almost forget what we're writing and that it lives in perpetuity. Is that the boon that officers look for, the handheld device?

LAWRENCE: Yes, we're seeing more cell phones than computers from our suspects. Everybody has a computer now -- I'm sorry. Everybody has a cell phone now, and they're almost all smart phones, so they have access to the Internet so they can be used to surf online.

They can use applications to communication with people around the world. They can text. They can make phone calls. And they can do basically anything a computer can do.

BANFIELD: So when you hear --

LAWRENCE: -- average over 600 phones --

BANFIELD: Go ahead.

LAWRENCE: I was going to say, we're averaging over 600 phones a year, just here, and about 300 computers a year.

BANFIELD: Wow, that's an enormous amount of material. Hopefully you have the officers to staff that.

Can I ask you about the social networking as well? Because one of the revelations in this case today is that this defendant had quite an active social profile, many different profiles online, and oftentimes these things come into court cases and they can cut either way.

When you're looking and you're trying to decipher a forensic profile of a suspect, the accused, what does the social networking tell you? Where do you go with it? What are you looking for?

LAWRENCE: Well, you're looking for any information that can give you leads to the case. Some of these are stored locally on the phone. Some are stored in the cloud at the network where the application is housed.

We try to go through the computers and find any types of chats that might be remaining, even if they've been deleted.

As far as cell phones, sometimes those deleted chats are available in databases we can recover. It just depends on the case as to what we look for.

BANFIELD: It's fascinating stuff, and like I said, it's a Herculean effort in so many of these cases with the amount of digital presence people have nowadays. Sergeant Troy Lawrence, thank so much for being with us. Nice to have you.

LAWRENCE: Thanks, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: There's another hearing that's scheduled today for Aaron Hernandez. And we're learning he may very well be contemplating a specific, new murder defense. It's something called diminished capacity.

You've heard about it before. It's essentially being less capable of knowing right from wrong but not legally insane.

So how do the facts of Hernandez's case play into that strategy? You're going to hear about it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)