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President Trump and Republican Senator in Twitter Duel; White House Lays Out Requests for Extending DACA; "Remain with Spain" Rally; Harvey Weinstein Fired by His Own Company; Las Vegas Shooter Left Behind Target Calculations; San Juan Mayor Begs for More Aid; The Economic Impact of Ending DACA Protections. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired October 09, 2017 - 00:00   ET

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

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[00:00:11] GEORGE HOWELL, CNN ANCHOR: A war of words in Washington -- a growing feud playing out over Twitter between the U.S. President and one of the most powerful Republican senators.

Protests on the streets of Barcelona, this time the large crowds rallying against separating from Spain.

And his movies made millions but now Harvey Weinstein finds himself booted from the very company that he founded; this, after allegations of sexual harassment.

Live from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, we want to welcome viewers around the World.

I'm George Howell.

And CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.

Around the world, good day to you.

First a Twitter fight between the U.S. President and a respected member of his own party. Just a few hours ago, Senator Bob Corker slammed the U.S. President Donald Trump in an interview with the "New York Times". Mr. Corker said the President was treating his office like a reality show and making Twitter threats that could put the United States on a path to World War III. Corker also said this, quote, "He concerns me. He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation. This interview followed a day of back and forth Twitter fights between these two men.

It started when Mr. Trump said that Senator Corker begged for his endorsement but Corker said the President urged him to reconsider his decision to retire when his term expires next year. That led to more insults and Senator Corker calling the White House quote, "an adult day care center".

But the President wasn't the only member of his administration making headlines this day. The U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reignited President Trump's attacks on the NFL over protests during the national anthem. CNN's Ryan Nobles has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The White House wading into a number of controversies this weekend: one involving the NFL yet again and another involving a Republican senator.

First on the NFL. For the fourth week in a row both the President and the Vice President voicing their displeasure with NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and inequality.

The Vice President was actually at an NFL football game -- his hometown Indianapolis Colts. He tweeted a picture of him standing during the national anthem. But when he noticed that some San Francisco 49ers were not standing he left the game.

He fired out a series of tweets explaining his reasoning why. Not much later after that, the President himself took credit for the Vice President's move tweeting quote, "I asked VP Pence to leave the stadium if any players kneeled disrespecting our country. I'm proud of him and second lady Pence."

After the game, a member of the San Francisco 49ers said that he thought this whole thing was planned ahead of time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC REID, 49ERS PLAYER: My honest reaction -- does anybody know the last time he's been at football game? Ok. With that being said he tweeted out a three-year-old photo of him at a Colts game.

So with the information that I have, the last time he's been to a Colts game was three years ago. So this looked like a PR stunt. He knew our team has had the most players protest. He knew that we were probably going to do it again.

So this is what systemic oppression looks like. A man with power comes to the game, tweets couple of things out and leaves the game was an attempt to suborn our efforts.

It's really disheartening when everything that you were raised on, everything that I was raised to be the best person I could be, to help people that need help and the Vice President of the United States is trying to confuse the message that we're trying to put out there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBLES: And the President was busy on Twitter, criticizing a member of his own party, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker who's not seeking re- election; the President suggesting that Corker had come to him begging for his endorsement. And when the President told him no, he decided not to run again.

Corker has been critical of the President this week suggesting that his closest administration officials like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis are the only thing keeping the country from chaos.

Now Corker's office flatly rejects this version of events from the White House. In a statement, Todd Womack, the chief of staff to Bob Corker said quote, "The President called Senator Corker on Monday afternoon and asked him to reconsider his decision to not seek re- election and reaffirm that he would have endorsed him as he has said many times before."

Now even though Corker is not seeking reelection, he will be in the Senate until the end of 2018 and the President needs as many Republican votes as he can if he wants to pass big ticket items like tax reform and if they attempt another run at health care reform.

Ryan Nobles, CNN -- at the White House.

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[00:04:58] HOWELL: Let's now bring in Julian Zelizer, CNN political analyst, historian and professor at Princeton University. It's good to have you with us this hour -- Julian.

JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Thanks.

HOWELL: Let's start with this dustup between Senator Bob Corker and President Trump. Corker firing back, calling the White House an adult day care center, but again, President Trump displaying clear division within his own party.

ZELIZER: I mean it's a remarkable interaction (AUDIO GAP) that there's often dustups between the members of their own party in Congress historically. But this goes beyond a dispute over policy or a little dispute over how the President is handling something.

This is pretty pointed words coming from a senior Republican and it reflects the growing tensions that have emerged between the Republicans on Capitol Hill and the White House. Again, both about policy but also about the demeanor of the President on issues like foreign policy.

HOWELL: Let's talk about the Vice President Mike Pence leaving the football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers after some of the players on the field there knelt during the national anthem. Pence tweeted that he did not want to dignify that event. But again a player with the 49ers described it as a PR stunt.

ZELIZER: I think at this point the administration is doing more to make this an issue than the players. This really started as a protest, not against the anthem or not against the troops but calling for criminal justice reform. It grew out of all of the horrendous shootings that we saw over the years.

But the President and now the Vice President have turned this into some kind of culture war, have turned it into a debate over patriotism and national values. And in some ways it's not surprising we hear some of this from the Vice President and President this weekend. Whenever there is trouble, these kinds of issues are go-to issues for the administration.

HOWELL: Julian -- finally let's talk about DACA. You know, we're learning that the White House has a list of priorities for any deal to protect young, undocumented immigrants. There will be provisions to include making it harder for unaccompanied minors to enter the country in legally, money for the President's border wall and cuts to legal immigration.

But with these sticking points, how likely is it for Democrats to go for any of this.

ZELIZER: I think it will depend more on what the President is willing to let go of. Putting these principles on the table -- these are hard-line, anti-immigration provisions that he is insisting on. And he is insisting on these in exchange for essentially putting into effect a program that's been in place for a while that he dismantled.

So this is going to be hard for many Democrats to swallow. This is exacting, again a very stringent set of requirements that would curb immigration including for children who are fleeing dangerous situations. I think the give will have to come from the President.

HOWELL: Julian Zelizer -- thank you so much for your insight today.

ZELIZER: Thanks for having me.

HOWELL: And now to the growing crisis over Catalonia's push for independence from Spain. Catalonia's regional president is set to address his parliament Tuesday but hundreds of thousands of Catalans are demanding that Spain remain that it stay part of that country. They've turned out in Barcelona and other Spanish cities Sunday to make their voices heard.

We get more now from CNN's Atika Shubert in Barcelona.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As you can see, it's a huge crowd. I mean thousands of people are out today and we're walking along with the march to get to the end point here.

We've had a chance to talk to a number of people here today. And the one thing they keep telling me is that they don't want to make a choice between being Spanish and Catalan. For a lot of people here, they say they feel that they are both.

Take a listen to what some of the people we talked to said.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why we are here because -- we are here because we are Spanish and we don't want that Catalonia will be a new state, out of the common market in Europe.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We cannot accept the vote that happened outside the democracy of Spain.

There should be more dialogue among the politicians in order to avoid this confrontation in the Catalan and Spanish society.

SHUBERT: Well, the rally is coming to an end and we've heard from organizers here eloquent, impassioned speeches for unity to keep Catalonia as part of Spain.

Now as for how many turned out today, organizers say more 900,000 came out on the street. The city police say it was more than 350,000. Frankly it is hard to see from our vantage point but it was clear that hundreds of thousands came out in a show of support for unity to keep Catalonia a part of Spain.

[00:09:59] At the moment however, this remains a political standoff with political leaders from both sides not backing down.

Atika Shubert, CNN -- Barcelona.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: Atika Shubert -- thank you for the reporting.

Let's have some context now from Dominic Thomas. Dominic is the chair of the Department of French and Francophone Studies at the University of California Los Angeles, live for us in Los Angeles this hour.

It's good to have you with us -- Dominic.

All eyes are on what happens next on Tuesday with the Catalan leader expected to address the regional parliament. But obviously the session planned for Monday, that's been suspended due to the constitutional court.

The question now moving forward -- what do you expect he will say? How far will he go? Or will he stop short of actually declaring independence.

DOMINIC THOMAS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES: Right. Well, today is a Monday in Spain. He was scheduled to speak before that parliamentary body. And the constitutional court in Madrid, the government has prevented him from doing that.

And so the opportunity he has Tuesday is to speak to that parliament to give them an update on that situation. And many people believe and he seems to be moving in that direction that he will use this opportunity to declare or to announce the results of the referendum which as far as he was concerned were overwhelmingly in favor of independence and to take that opportunity to declare that.

Now this is a really problematic situation because the Madrid government, of course, declared the referendum unconstitutional, illegal and that of course, meant -- and said that they would intervene and seize the ballot boxes and we saw them do that in tremendous scenes of violence.

But of course, on that particular occasion, many people stayed home and didn't vote. So the whole question of the mandate that he would have in speaking before that parliament and declaring independence would be challenged.

And as we saw today from Atika Shubert's report that the turnout in Barcelona and across Spain and to talk about Spain and unity and to sort of express the voice of those who would not want this referendum to go ahead was also overwhelming powerful.

HOWELL: That's right. Hundreds of thousands of people on the streets there in Barcelona pushing for unity for Catalonia, for Spain and to remain united. Spain's prime minister though saying that he is prepared to do anything within the law to ensure this declaration of independence, if it were to be proclaimed, leads to nothing.

He said -- reported to have said that; even considering the option to suspend Catalonia's autonomous status.

THOMAS: Right. And so this is what happened is that on both sides, there's been some bad and some wholly planned out behavior for Madrid to come in, of course.

And with such powerful and show violence in suppressing the vote the other day, of course, helped fuel so many of the arguments of the yes referendum vote of those who wanted to separate and leave and help them with that.

And what we're seeing in just under a week is this tremendous surge of support for people coming out and saying no, you know, we don't want Catalonia to leave.

Not only has the prime minister spoken that was so extraordinary. And earlier last week was the fact that the King of Spain even. After all, let's not forget the constitutional monarchy, when they're saying that the King does not traditionally speak out, he came out and spoke today.

And on the rally today there were big hitting political figures, the Nobel Prize Mario Vargas Llosa, who's a Peruvian novelist and also politician with Spanish citizenship spoke at the rally and talked about -- talked about the fact that this call for independence is nothing short of the return of the kind of describing nationalities, nationalism and that Europe has been fighting over the last few years.

HOWELL: A lot of questions what happens next on Tuesday. What would it mean for the E.U. if something like this were to happen? All eyes ahead for Tuesday.

Dominic Thomas -- thank you for your time. We'll, of course, stay in touch with you.

THOMAS: Thank you.

HOWELL: Still ahead here on NEWSROOM, Harvey Weinstein gets the push- out of the company that he founded after a report alleging decades of sexual harassment. We'll bring you the details.

Plus, the reason this man opened fire on a festival, a crowd of people last week in Las Vegas -- it's still a mystery. How his high-stakes gambling habits could be involved -- as CNN NEWSROOM pushes forward.

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HOWELL: Welcome back to NEWSROOM.

A powerful Hollywood mogul is kicked out of the film production company that he helped to co-found. Harvey Weinstein is feeling the pressure just three days after a bombshell report by the "New York Times" that alleged decades of sexual harassment against employees.

Our Brian Stelter has more of that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Harvey Weinstein fired from the Weinstein Company. It's a headline that was hard to imagine a week ago.

But in the wake of a "New York Times" investigation into a pattern of improper behavior in his past, the Weinstein Company board decided on Sunday to terminate Harvey Weinstein's contract.

Now here's part of the statement from the board of directors which includes Harvey's brother Bob. The company said quote, "In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days, the directors of the company have informed him that his employment is terminated effective immediately."

That announcement coming Sunday evening after a weekend when this crisis deepened for the Weinstein Company.

For a moment let's go back to Thursday. That's when the "New York Times" published its investigation into Weinstein. They found a pattern of behavior involving actresses, assistants and models spanning decades.

Now this kind of harassment, though alleged in the "Times" story had been whispered about in Hollywood for years but it had not been made public in an op-ed (ph) reported on this way before. Some say it's because Weinstein had so much power he was able to keep people quiet. He was able to quash unflattering news stories.

[00:20:04] Now when the "Times" story came out on Thursday, Weinstein denied some of the claims but acknowledged he had behaved improperly in some cases. He also said he was sorry for causing people pain and said he would seek professional help.

On Friday the Weinstein Company board said we support his decision to take a leave of absence. We know he has some things to work through. But back then the board kept the door open for him to possibly return in the future.

On Sunday that door slammed closed. What happened in between Friday and Sunday? Well, there's a couple of things that happened.

Number one, a couple of Weinstein's advisers quit so they wouldn't work for him anymore. And number two, there were more investigations by more news outlets happening.

The Weinstein Company aware that there could be more allegations from more women coming in public pretty soon. So, the Weinstein Company now breaking from its co-founder. There's no immediate comment from Harvey Weinstein.

We'll see how many in Hollywood choose to support him or criticize him or stay silent about this embarrassing scandal.

Brian Stelter, CNN -- New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: Brian -- thank you for the report.

Now to the U.S. state of Nevada. Authorities there are learning more about the deadly mass shooting last week in Las Vegas, Nevada. They say that the gunman, Stephen Paddock planned his crime carefully, killing 58 people, wounding more than 500 others. But they still don't know why.

CNN's Stephanie Elam has the very latest from Las Vegas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Investigators now telling us that the notepad found inside the shooter's room had number on it. No words, just numbers. And they believe now that those were calculations.

Take a listen to what David Newton from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department had to say about this on CBS.

DAVID NEWTON, LAS VEGAS METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT: He had written -- he must have done the calculations or gone online or something to figure it out of what his altitude was going to be and how high up he was. How far out the crowd was going to be and what at that distance, what his drop of his bullet was going to be.

ELAM: No, while that is one other clue that has been solved, it's not helping investigators figure out what this 64-year-old man's motive was for this massacre that happened over a week ago now. They continue to look for any reason why this man would have done this.

But in other news, I can tell you that Jason Aldean, the country superstar who was performing at the time when this massacre began, he flew back to Las Vegas after performing on "Saturday Night Live", came back to Vegas to meet with some of the victims who were still in critical condition at the University Medical Center hoping to maybe cheer them on, give them a little lift to their spirits as they embark on the long road to recovery.

Stephanie Elam, CNN -- Las Vegas, Nevada.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: Stephanie -- thank you.

Now, as for the gunman, authorities are still trying to piece together why this retired accountant with no criminal record accumulated such an arsenal of weapons and then opened fire on this crowd. So far, they know that he had a gambling habit.

CNN's Sara Sidner looks into that and his world of high-stakes betting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Authorities say Keller Stephen Paddock was doing what he normally did in Vegas before his massacre began.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, we are aware he was gambling.

SIDNER: A retiree, he was living off real estate investments and had long been betting big money at casinos.

ERIC PADDOCK, BROTHER OF STEPHEN PADDOCK: He was a big fish at the Atlantis, in Reno.

SIDNER: Eric Paddock, Stephen's brother witnessed just how big of a gambler Stephen was when they visited the Atlantis Casino Resort and Spa in Reno.

PADDOCK: I mean we took over the whole top floor of the hotel. That's only in the record. My family, we -- he brought us to Vegas and Reno and we took the whole top floor of the Atlantis Hotel, you know. This is how he was -- this was the kind of gambling --

SIDNER: But he had also been spotted at high-roller events in Las Vegas, according to Vegas insider Anthony Curtis.

What does it mean to be a high-roller? How much do you actually have to spend to be in that category?

ANTHONY CURTIS, PUBLISHER, LAS VEGAS ADVISOR: You know, it's kind of interesting -- the high-roller strata is different for different places. But when you're talking about the sort of places that Paddock played, you've got to be able to really be a big better.

He was playing 25 denominators on video poker, times five so he was betting $125,000 a hand, playing at a rate of about close to a thousand hands an hour -- $800,000 for a thousand hands an hour. So he was running $100,000 through the machine every hour.

SIDNER: Paddocks game of choice, video poker.

What kind of a player do you have to be if you're using video poker as your way to try to win big?

CURTIS: Well, video poker is a subset of the slots. But it's like a thinking man's game because instead of just pulling handles or pushing buttons, you have to make decisions.

So video poker is for people who want to think and try to change the odds and put them in their direction using their head.

SIDNER: So meticulous, well-informed, intelligent, mathematical?

CURTIS: Yes.

SIDNER: Curtis says video poker is a game that would be attractive to loners and Paddock was not known to socialize with other high rollers though they recognize his picture.

[00:25:00] But Paddock certainly managed close relationships with at least one person, his girlfriend Marilou Danley, who worked at Atlantis as a high-limit hostess.

PADDOCK: He loved her.

SIDNER: He bought her a ticket home to the Philippines and even wired her $100,000 some time before the shooting according to her statement read by her attorney.

MATT LOMBARD, ATTORNEY FOR MARILOU DANLEY: While there, he wired me money which he said was for me to buy a house for me and my family. I was grateful but honestly, I was worried that first, the unexpected trip home and then the money was a way of breaking up with me.

SIDNER: He was clearly planning something much more sinister -- a shooting she says she knew nothing about.

In the end he killed more than 50 people and himself. But authorities now say it appears he initially planned to survive and escape.

Still with all that authorities now know about Paddock, the details do not answer one important question. Why did he do it? That remains a mystery.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: And question of why certainly a burning question for so many people.

Sara Sidner reporting there for us.

Still ahead here on NEWSROOM, the U.S. President lashing out against critics who say that his government isn't doing enough in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico while the island is begging for critical supplies.

And Hurricane Nate brought flooding. It brought power outages to the U.S. Gulf Coast on Sunday but officials say they're grateful. We'll explain why.

You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

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HOWELL (voice-over): Welcome back to our viewers around the world. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. It is good to have you with us. I'm George Howell with the headlines we're following for you this hour.

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The mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, is begging the United States for more help, this more than two weeks after Hurricane Maria slammed into the U.S. territory. It left behind widespread destruction. You can see this.

Carmen Yulin-Cruz tweeted this earlier.

"Power collapses in San Juan hospital with two patients being transferred out. I've requested support from FEMA. Nothing."

FEMA administrator Brock Long responded on ABC's "This Week" -- listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROCK LONG, FEMA ADMINISTRATOR: We filtered out the mayor a long time ago. We don't have time for the political noise. The bottom line is that we are making progress every day in conjunction with the government.

And in regards to the power failure, we're restringing a very fragile system every day. As we make progress, simple thunderstorms pass through, knock the progress out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOWELL: Brock Long saying that he filtered out the mayor, also mentioning that the power grid knocked out by Hurricane Maria since the storm hit on September 20th, just over 11 percent of electricity has been restored to Puerto Rico.

U.S. president Donald Trump is defending his response to Puerto Rico's crisis. On Sunday night he tweeted this, quote, "Nobody could have done what I've done for Puerto Rico with so little appreciation. So much work," he says.

He also shared an apparent Defense Department video starting with the words, quote, "what the fake media," as he describes it, "will not show you in Puerto Rico."

Our Leyla Santiago is on the ground speaking with real people, speaking to people on the island, who are most vulnerable and hospitals are still without power, patients still without medicine. Here's her report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Still a strong sense of desperation, hospitals telling us that they are operating on a day-by- day basis. They are still, two and a half weeks after the storm, finding it difficult to get their hands on what they need -- water, diesel for those generators.

As a matter of fact, when we visited one hospital in (INAUDIBLE), we noticed FEMA stopped by but only to assess their needs. The only delivery we saw was diesel. And it was a delivery the hospital scheduled and paid for. Workers told me it was going to last them just a day and a half.

As a matter of fact, earlier this week, patients had to be evacuated to the U.S. Navy ship Comfort because of a generator failure. And the doctor of one of those patients told me the person was connected to a ventilator.

That's why it was so important to get more help.

Do you think you'll get that help?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We hope so.

SANTIAGO: Do you need the help?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

SANTIAGO: And because hospitals are struggling, many who are already sick, already vulnerable, are trying to get off the island.

I met an 8-year-old boy named Diego. And he has rare disorder. His mother has really been struggling to find the medications that he needs to stay alive. And, thankfully, through the help of some private donor, the family was able to get on a charter flight to get to Florida and get more help -- not everyone as lucky -- Leyla Santiago, CNN, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: Leyla Santiago, bringing us the stories of real people who need help there on that island.

In the meantime the U.S. Gulf Coast breathing a sigh of relief after Hurricane Nate spared that region from the catastrophic damage that we've seen earlier in the Caribbean from other storms.

Hurricane Nate made landfall in the U.S. overnight Sunday and though it wasn't nearly as strong as Irma or Maria, it knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of homes on the Gulf Coast, also causing storm surges and flooding in some areas.

Before it approached the United States, Nate was a tropical storm that hit Central America with heavy rains, it brought landslides and flash floods. That storm killed at least 28 people. Nate is now a tropical depression.

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HOWELL: Still ahead, young undocumented immigrants who started businesses in the United States thanks to the DACA legal protections, now they could lose it all if the U.S. government forces them to live in the shadows again.

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HOWELL: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM, I'm George Howell.

As we discussed earlier, thousands of undocumented young immigrants in the United States are now in a legal limbo. Their futures depend upon whether Congress will keep protections to them under what's called the DACA program.

But the Trump White House is now asking lawmakers for aggressive immigration concessions, including money for the border wall that the president wants to build. CNN spoke with two young immigrants who fear losing the very business that they started.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not taking jobs, we're just competing for them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can have my job if you could do it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Mustafa Ganim (ph) and Daniela Velez (ph), here in the U.S. through no fault of their own.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our backgrounds set us up to kind of have that fight in us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The business needs me to help it bring growth, to help bring diversity.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Brought the U.S. illegally by their parents.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want to be able to pour back into our families, pour it back into our communities.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can't do my job. Then what job am I stealing from you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Now as the fate of DACA hangs in the balance, their futures do, too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was about 9 years old when my parents decided to come to America. And we get on the plane and all I remember was me saying, thank you to the hostess. That's all I knew in English.

We came here to this apartment and I remember my mother sending us down and was like, we're not going back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was born in Egypt. And we migrated to the States when I was 7 years old. We came here really in pursuit of the American dream.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Research says more than 5 percent of DACA recipients have started their own businesses. That's almost double the overall U.S. rate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Today's event is for Sophia Vergara (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Mustafa (ph) started an event staffing company, a little over a year ago, that employs nearly 30 people.

What do you say to the people who say that you as someone here with DACA are taking Americans' jobs?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I grew up playing baseball. And baseball, for whatever you wanted, you were given a shot to earn what you want, the best man wins. So it's not that we're seeking any jobs. We're competing. We're creating jobs in the process.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): Daniela works a 9-5 and has started her own business on the side. It's called Innovative Lab Designs and lets students who can't make it to classes at school take them online.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Students will buy the kits and take physics lab at home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't know if Daniela's going to be here in two years.

What would it mean if she had to one day leave?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We look around the country at other two-year schools, four-year schools. They're not doing this probably because I don't have a Danielle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The relationship with my father has been very special to me. One day he had a massive heart attack and passed away.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think that a lot of why you're pursuing the American dream is for him?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. And my mom. I guess, through this business, I was able to retire her (INAUDIBLE). Like I said, I don't do things for me. It's not so much for myself. My thing is being able to accomplish something and bring it back for my family, bring it back for my community.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Part of me says, yes, I want to stay here. But then another part of me, it's like, how can we go back living in the shadows when we had a taste of what it is to be in the light?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: That story from CNN digital reporter Vanessa Yurkevich (ph). Thank you for the report.

Still ahead here, you're watching NEWSROOM. Thanks for being with us. "WORLD SPORT" up next and I'll be back at the top of the hour with more news from around the world. You're watching CNN, the world's news leader.