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Family of Murdered Relative Doesn't Want Trump Speech; Soccer Game Original Terror Target, Not Brussels; Clinton, Sanders Hold Rallies; Firefighters Go Beyond Call of Duty to Save Own. Aired 2:30- 3p ET

Aired April 11, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:34:07] PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: A New York family whose relative was murdered in a hate crime says they don't want Donald Trump giving any speeches in their town. Trump has been invited to headline a GOP headliner on Long Island this Thursday, just steps away from a Latino man was stabbed to death. Marcelo Lucero was an Ecuadorian immigrant attacked by a gang of white teens back in 2008. Seven teens were convicted in his murder. Prosecutors say the boys routinely targeted and assaulted Latino men. Now Trump will be speaking at a dance hall on the same street as that crime scene, and the town's immigrant community is outraged.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. ALLAN RAMIREZ, LATINO IMMIGRANT ADVOCATE: High school kids used to go out in this town as a form of sport, beano hoping, which meant looking for Mexicans at night and beating them up and the next morning they would get together and talk about how many beaners, Mexicans, they had beaten up. One night on this spot, they killed Joselo's brother, Marcelo Lucero. To invite Donald Trump to speak but few hundred yards from this spot where his brother was killed as a result of a hate crime is an outrage for the immigrant community. This is sacred ground for the immigrant community that has suffered so much at the hands of those who have hatred in their hearts against the immigrant community and for Donald Trump to come and speak here is sacrilegious. It is akin to inviting Osama bin Laden to speak at Ground Zero. We will not stand for it and we ask that this event be canceled because it doesn't belong here. It desecrates the memory of Marcelo Lucero. His brother died here because of hate speech. And now Donald Trump wants to continue that type of hate speech at the national level. We know what happens when that kind of speech takes place in a place like this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:36:24] BROWN: And joining me now is Joselo Lucero, Marcelo's brother.

Thank you very much for being here. We really appreciate it.

We heard there from Reverend Ramirez. But what is your message for Donald Trump? Why is it so important for you that this event is cancelled?

JOSELO LUCERO, BROTHER OF HATE CRIME VICTIM MARCELO LUCERO: First of all, thank you for inviting me. One of the things I want to make sure, you know, the people, the Hispanic community, especially my family, community in general, don't be affected or -- for the terrible message Mr. Donald Trump has. You know, he's spreading so many against the minorities, against the women, immigrants in general, to have him here inviting a fund-raiser which is outrageous for me. You know, for the last seven years, my family and my community were trying to recuperate what happened to my brother. It's a flash back, you know. All this week, I feel like if we go back to zero again, to have Mr. Donald Trump.

BROWN: So do you have any idea why the GOP picked that dance hall for this event? Do you think they had this in mind, that it was so close to the crime scene of where your brother was killed?

LUCERO: You know, in my personal opinion, I believe so. They have this in mind. I don't know why they are thinking about this because you know this place should be a holy place which my community had to be working so hard. As a human being, you know, it has to be a limit, you know, and this limit is don't -- he should not be.

BROWN: Do you think this venue was selected on purpose? Have you reached out and received a response from the county GOP party about changing the venue?

LUCERO: I don't have any communication with them. Absolute nothing. I don't have any phone call from them. Besides that, I'm not talking about who I am against. I'm not against any Republican or -- I'm against what the people that represent -- that represent the groups. You know, and this moment, Mr. Donald Trump is spreading hate wars, hate speech all over the country, and national, local level. But we have this -- we have this for, you know, eight years ago when he was represented as an executive in Long Island, he spread his hate against immigrants. Consequence of that, it was my brother's death and my community's fear.

BROWN: All right. Well, as far as we know, though, that event will continue to move forward, unless we hear otherwise.

Joselo Lucero, thank you very much for coming on and sharing your thoughts.

LUCERO: Thank you so much. Remember, something, you know, my community suffers so much, my mother died as a consequence of this, because my mother was -- when my brother was killed a year later, she suffered so much depression, it ended up, you know, life. So I don't want somebody else to go through with the same issues, the same pain I'm going through. Thank you.

[14:40:12] BROWN: I'm sorry to hear that.

Joselo Lucero, thank you.

LUCERO: Thank you. BROWN: Up next, right here in the NEWSROOM, the so-called man in the hat, Brussels bombing suspect, is in custody and apparently spilling lots of details about other plots they had in mind. So is it a risk in revealing those confessions to the public. Former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, joins me next.

Also, Donald Trump calling the Colorado convention rigged and crooked. One of his supporters in Colorado is taking it a step further, turning his Republican Party registration into a pile of ashes.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:44:39] BROWN: And we are back with our breaking news. A shocking revelation from the man accused of not one but two of Europe's deadly terror attacks. Mohamed Abrini, the man in the so- called hat, singing like a bird apparently. The terrorists who carried out the attacks were initially plotting to hit France again. Sources are telling CNN that the upcoming Euro 2016 Soccer Championships were among the targets. As this ISIS cell watched how quickly the investigation into last year's attacks in Paris was moving, they switched gears and put Brussels in the crosshairs instead.

Joining me now, Mike Rogers, CNN national security commentator and former Republican House Intelligence chairman.

So it's my first question is, you look at all this information Belgian prosecutors are releasing about what he confessed to them. How could that information impact other people and their networks? The same happened with Salah Abdeslam, they released him from his confession, and a few days later, we saw the attack.

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: There's some speculation, I think it's good speculation, of the first release from the confession. Some say was that a signal to go ahead with the event. I think it ramped up the pressure to do something. I think the terrorists who conducted the attacks believed at one point they might be getting on to us, we're not sure is, let's juvenile ramp up one of the other operations we'd preplanned. Some of these had preplanning, but never been executed. I think the airport attack was one of thse. So that's what you see.

I'm a little surprised that the Brussels -- as a former FBI agent, the Brussels prosecutors are already talking about information he provided. You would hope that that would get into the hands of investigators first and allow the investigators to do their work first before this public notion that he's cooperating, giving details.

BROWN: The U.S. has done pretty differently.

ROGERS: Yeah, we would do it much differently.

BROWN: What stuck out to me is the targets they picked out initially were not in Belgium, they were in France. They thought they could go back to France from Belgium. Where's the border security in all of this?

ROGERS: It tells you the E.U. has this big problem. They're starting to get this notion, which you can travel very easily -- and it was designed when the. E.U. came into place, they would talk openly about trying to have a U.S.-type of a system --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: But in order to have that, you have to check the E.U. zone border?

ROGERS: Well, exactly, that's the part they missed, especially on the migrant problem, the process for security, huge numbers of bad paper. Recently, they came up with 4000 of these residency stamps to Greece, meaning they looked identical. Even professionals were having a hard time. Meaning they had these stamps that were for sale. You get the right passport, put a residency stamp in it, and now you can go from Greece to Turkey to France. They had this huge stolen paper, good paper, that causes bad guys to do bad things, and you have this new standard of being able to travel across Europe with minimal checking along the way, and it was a recipe for disaster.

BROWN: Right, and I was interviewing someone last week at the Terrorist Screening Center and they said they don't routinely use the data the U.S. shares with them about potential terrorists.

ROGERS: They have been stuck on this hangover on privacy. They based it on in the old days -- this is a World War II hangover for them -- that their intelligence services were to protect the state against the citizens. They never made that flip that their intelligence and law enforcement services are now to protect the citizens against external threats. So all of their rules, their regulation and their policy is intelligence services and law enforcement are bad by assumption, and let's make it hard for them to do what they need to do, and that's what they have to get over.

BROWN: You look at the way it's set up now, pre-9/11 in the United States, we had a similar issue.

ROGERS: Yes, sure did.

BROWN: 9/11 was our wake-up call. This was a wake-up call for Europe.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGERS: We hope.

BROWN: Yes, we hope. Let me just ask you this. Abrini, he was involved with the Paris attacks based on evidence collected, and then he goes on, right under the Belgium's nose, and is part of another attack in Brussels. How big of an intelligence failure is that?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: And what does that represent to you in terms of the problem over there?

ROGERS: It's about sharing. So the Turks said that they provided information on all of -- at least --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: They said they provided names though.

ROGERS: Well, but the name was able to be traced back to the cell, had you had an aggressive law enforcement agency tracking down that lead. You give a name like that to the FBI or the New York police --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Yep, we have one database.

ROGERS: You bet. They're going to go down, they're going to work. They're going to put leather on the street, as they would say, to run down this lead. They take it that serious. They didn't do that. It tells you there's this cultural problem, right? They don't know how to integrate information coming from outside agencies and take that information and turn it into an internal law enforcement lead. That's a huge problem. In Brussels, they have something like six different districts, lots of in-fighting. All of that spells disaster.

BROWN: Right. But this goes back to my original point that the U.S. now has this comprehensive terror database that we developed after 9/11. We shared that information with the Europeans.

ROGERS: Right.

BROWN: So, you know, theoretically, if they had checked his name against the comprehensive database here, right, that could have flagged him?

ROGERS: Could have flagged him and --

(CROSSTALK)

ROGERS: And it's always a big if, because they're very good at changing identities --

BROWN: Exactly.

[14:49:57] ROGERS: -- surreptitiously staying at places where their may not be associated to be. All of the things they're trying to do to cover their tracks, they're doing them. A good law enforcement agency will take that data and collate it with what they have and then try to isolate the investigation. That's how we would do it, certainly here. And that's where they need to be doing it there.

The problem is that's not the way they're constructed. Again, they have weakened law enforcement intelligence services' capabilities to do these investigations, because they always believed, after world war ii -- remember, the Stasi was bad, they came after citizens, not bad guys. So their rules and their regulations, well errs on the side of privacy and keeping them back. The threat is different. The agencies today are very different. They need to make that cultural shift.

BROWN: So the cultural shift, policy changes --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: -- you know, that kind of thing.

Mike Rogers, thank you so much for breaking this down for us.

ROGERS: Thank you.

BROWN: By the way, right now, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are holding events in New York just days before they face off on CNN. Let's listen in.

(CHEERING)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I), VERMONT & DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Pope Francis, to my mind, has been an incredible leader --

(CHEERING)

SANDERS: -- in talking about massive levels of income and wealth equality all over the world, talking about outrageous levels of youth unemployment, of youth poverty, talking about what happens to all the people who are isolated and alone and don't have the money they need to live with dignity. And I applaud the pope for speaking out on those issues.

(CHEERING)

SANDERS: What he wants, what he is working on is the concept of how we create a moral economy, and economy that addresses the needs of not just the greed of the people on top.

(CHEERING)

SANDERS: Let me be very clear and tell the billionaire class in this country their days when they get it all are going to end.

(CHEERING)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: -- on the seller of that ammunition was thrown out, and gave an opening to the NRA, which had defended the suit on behalf of the online site, to once again intimidate, and say to the judge, this couple should have never brought this suit because we have a law that gives special immunity to gun makers and sellers online, offline, anywhere. So impose attorney fees on them for trying to not ask for money -- their lawsuit was to get an injunction, which didn't ask for a penny for them -- to try to prevent this online seller from continuing to just send whatever was ordered to anybody. And so, instead, the NRA got the --

BROWN: There we hear Hillary Clinton speaking. Also Bernie Sanders, holding a dueling rally. Just days from now, they face off on CNN in the New York debate. More on that just ahead.

Plus, heroic firefighters going beyond the call of duty to save one of their own. The video is chilling and you won't want to miss it.

And Donald Trump seems to be trying a new strategy, staying out of the spotlight. Is it working?

Back after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:58:12] BROWN: A California woman faces up to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to an arson fire that nearly killed of Fresno's bravest. Video of him plunging through a burning roof went viral and footage also captured the heroic response of his fellow firefighters who went beyond the call of duty.

CNN's Stephanie Elam has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This dramatic cell phone video captured it all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Firefighter down! Firefighter down!

ELAM: A firefighter's worst nightmare.

(on camera): Is this the first time you've come back?

COREY CALINIK (ph), FIREFIGHTER: Yes, just kind of -- it's a little surreal right now.

ELAM: Corey Calinik (ph) doesn't think of himself as a hero.

CALINIK (ph): I just happened to be at the right spot at the right time.

ELAM: But what he and his fellow firefighters did to save the life of the fire captain, Pete Dern, is nothing short of heroic.

Watch Dern climb on to the roof of a garage, take a few steps, and then plunge into the smoky structure.

(SCREAMING)

CALINIK (ph): All I had on as a tool was a pipe pole and I just beat the heck out of the garage door. Immediately, when I started pulling, I looked over and there was four other guys that started pulling.

ELAM: Calinik (ph) then grabbed a hose and headed inside.

CALINIK (ph): The only thing I could recognize of him was the silhouette of the bottle that we carry on our back. Everything else was just charred and black.

ELAM: It took less than a minute and a half for Calinik (ph) and four other firefighters to rescue Dern.

UNIDENTIFIED FIREFIGHTER: Peter, stay with me, buddy.

ELAM: A quick response that was almost not quick enough. Dern's mask was seconds from failing.

KERRI DONIS, CHIEF, FRESNO, CALIFORNIA, FIRE DEPARTMENT: He would have then inhaled super-heated gases and smoke and that could have singed his lungs.

ELAM: Dern suffered third and fourth-degree burns over 70 percent of his body. Unable to attend a ceremony honoring the men who saved his life, Dern's wife, Kelly, read a letter on his behalf.

KELLY DERN, WIFE OF FIREFIGHTER CAPTAIN PETE DERN: You gave my wife back her husband, my daughter back her dad, my mom back her son --