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Trump Calls for Deportation of Migrants Without Judges or Court Cases; More Protests Expected Over Family Separations; Supreme Court Upholds Most Disputed Maps in Texas Redistricting Fight; Growing Anger and Division in U.S. Politics. Aired 10-10:30a ET
Aired June 25, 2018 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:00:02] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Sam Kiley, thank you for being live for us in Istanbul on this incredibly important election. We appreciate it.
We have a lot to get to. Let's get started.
Top of the hour. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York.
This morning, President Trump throwing another roadblock in immigration negotiations as thousands of children sit in shelters still separated from their undocumented parents. Moments ago, the president saying the U.S. should not hire more judges to help process these immigration cases on the southern border, despite some key members of his own party pushing exactly that.
Meanwhile, more than 2,000 kids are still being held away from their parents and despite the administration's newly released plan to reunite these families there are no clear details on how or when that could happen.
Our Abby Phillip is live for us outside of the White House.
We're hearing a lot from the president this morning on immigration. What else is he saying?
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Poppy. president really doubling down on his hard-line immigration rhetoric just days after signing an executive order that he has said was intended to show heart by allowing families to be reunited and now he seems to be fixated on this issue of immigration judges, saying that the only solution to the problem at the border is to allow people to be deported immediately without any due process whatsoever.
He says they should be stopped at the border and told they can't come back in. Illegal immigration will be stopped in its tracks, he says, if that happens. But as you mentioned, even Republican lawmakers have recommended not thousands but hundreds of new immigration judges to deal with a long-standing backlog of immigration cases that has only been made worse by the president's zero tolerance policy at the border.
And while all of this is happening, there are still some questions that remain to be answered about the -- the plans to reunite families who have already been separated. We have some new guidance from the Trump administration about what might happen to them in this process, and it could be lengthy, according to this.
The families and the children will be kept in custody while their parents are going through their legal process, and if the parents are deported, then the families will be reunited and they can be deported together or the parent can choose to be deported alone. But if the parent is released, HHS says that they will reunite the parents if the parents apply to be the child's sponsor. That process can be lengthy, it can take weeks. And there is still questions about how quickly these parents, some 2,000 children, can be reunited with their parents in this process -- Poppy.
HARLOW: And, Abby, we also know that as the U.S. deals with these families and these children, in terms of -- ahead of any of the hearings, it can be months, right, until those hearings happen, they're planning to hold some of them on these temporary camps on military bases. What is Defense Secretary James Mattis saying about that?
PHILLIP: That's right. There is not the capacity at the moment to house families or even perhaps all the individuals who are coming over from across the border, so James Mattis has followed the directive from the president to find space in U.S. military facilities here in the United States.
We don't know exactly where they are going to be, but we do know that in recent weeks HHS officials have toured sites in Texas and in Arkansas and these will be camps that the Defense Department has built in the past for other occasions, for the people who have been victims of hurricanes, for refugees and other countries, and Mattis calls it logistical support, but they are preparing clearly to house thousands of families together as the Trump administration figures out how to keep families together and not continue to separate them at the border, Poppy.
HARLOW: Abby Phillip at the White House, thank you very much for that.
Meantime, lawmakers are touring some of these shelters and detention centers where these undocumented immigrants and children are being held. This as protest at the port of entry in Tornillo, Texas, are expected to continue.
Dianne Gallagher is there. And Dianne, I know you're set in just a few hours to tour some of these facilities. But one of the key talking points from Democrats has been, well, these ports of entry don't actually work for asylum seekers, there are rules, they're lined up, they're not able to get in. I mean, what are you seeing on the ground?
DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're not seeing that per se right now, Poppy. We've seen plenty of vehicles and even people on foot coming through this Tornillo port of entry this morning once it opened at 6:00. Everyone we spoke to who had come in through Mexico, we talked to those on foot and in vehicles, said they didn't see any lines of people waiting. But that is what we've heard not just from individuals, but from charity and advocacy organizations that are working with these individuals here.
They said that they come here, they're rejected or were made to wait for seeking asylum and then they go and turn around and try to come through another area at which point they are intercepted as being crossing illegally.
Now you mentioned those protests, well, we're expecting another one here today, a little bit later this morning. It's been happening about every single day for a week here at Tornillo. We don't think it's going to be anything like what we saw over the weekend. Here in Tornillo, hundreds of people showed up to not just express their solidarity with the children at the tent city here,
[10:05:05] But also their anger at the Trump administration for slowing the reunification process in their eyes and also for really just enacting the zero tolerance policy to begin with. It was really that same kind of scene across the state of Texas as well as other states where these temporary shelters housing these children are.
Now we're going to get a chance to see the tent city in about an hour now. I'm going to go inside, once again, no cameras, no phones, no recording devices, just a pen and paper and we're not really sure how much we'll get to see because lawmakers who went in there over the weekend said that they were pretty restrictive. They looked at a lot of it over closed-circuit television, they didn't nearly get to interact with children.
We'll update you once we (INAUDIBLE), but we don't have high expectations for transparency or really being able to access anything.
HARLOW: Dianne, let us know what you do find. Thank you for being here.
And joining me now is CNN legal analyst Paul Callan, also Sonia Nazario, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist focusing on these issues. She's also the author of "Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Audacity to Reunite with His Mother."
Thank you for being here to both of you.
SONIA NAZARIO, AUTHOR, "ENRIQUE'S JOURNEY": Thank you.
PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Thank you.
HARLOW: And Sonia, I should note you do have an opinion piece about this in "The Times" and we'll get into that in a moment. But on the legal question, Paul Callan, to you, the president saying that the solution to our immigration problem is not due process, that these undocumented immigrants should not have legal representation, which, by the way, they're not guaranteed, they don't often get legal representation, but that we should have, quote, "no judges or court cases." Just bring them back to where they came from. Legally? CALLAN: Well, his suggestion just doesn't work under U.S. law because
the moment somebody touches U.S. soil, they just step over the border into the United States, they have a due process right to a hearing before a judge as to whether they should be deported. And that's U.S. law and that derives really from the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, by the way, which gives this right not just to American citizens, but to any person on U.S. soil. So the president has to deal with this as it exists and he's not willing to face up to it.
HARLOW: In terms of more immigration judges, this is something that the president has said we should not have. But, Sonia, it is something that some -- you know, the biggest named Republicans in the Senate are calling for, Senator Ted Cruz is calling for it, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Just listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, they want to hire now 5,000 more judges so that a person puts a toe in the land, we have to go to trial. This is crazy what we're doing. I don't want judges, I want Border Patrol, I want ICE. We don't want judges.
SEN. RON JOHNSON (R), WISCONSIN: What one possible --
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Senator --
JOHNSON: -- fix is increase the number of immigration laws by about 225 judges. Right now we only have 350. 74 at the border. We need to increase that.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R), TEXAS: I introduced legislation this week that mandates kids stay with their parents, that doubles the number of federal immigration judges. We need more resources to process cases to adjudicate them quickly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: But, Sonia, you oppose, for example, what Senator Cruz is proposing. You say more judges doesn't help these families. Why?
NAZARIO: Well, it would be good to have more judges because we have a huge backlog of cases before the immigration courts and it takes years for these cases to get through the courts and people are -- rankle at the idea that people can stay here for years while these cases are proceeding.
HARLOW: Right.
NAZARIO: I understand that. And the need for law and order and the rule of law. However, what Ted Cruz wants to do is basically gut this due process by saying that you have to have these court cases through the courts in 14 days. It is impossible to process an asylum claim in a fair way in 14 days. Most lawyers tell you it takes a year, minimum, to be able to come up with the witness reports and get police reports from countries four countries away.
HARLOW: So --
NAZARIO: It's simply impossible to do it in that time frame and have a fair process. He's trying to gut the process.
HARLOW: I'm glad you bring that up because, Paul, that presents quite a difficult legal challenge because of the Flores agreement. You can't hold children for more than 20 days.
CALLAN: Yes.
HARLOW: But --
(CROSSTALK)
HARLOW: But if it takes a year, as Sonia is arguing, to really have a fair hearing and a fair trial, and for these migrants to get some sort of legal representation through legal aid or if they can afford private legal representation, you've got -- and you want the parents with the children, then you've got to hold them together for a year or however long it takes. So -- and that's what resulted in catch and release, right?
CALLAN: Absolutely. And that's why -- this is not a new problem. You know, President Bush dealt with it, President Obama dealt with it, it's been going on for about 16 years where these numbers of refugees, and we should be talking about them as political refugees, not undocumented or migrants.
[10:10:06] When they make a political asylum claim, U.S. law calls them a refugee and gives them certain rights. And -- but the system as you've just said, it just isn't set up to deal with children who are with their parents, so prior presidents when the numbers got too high, they said, you know what, we're going to release them, pending their hearings because, yes, of course, you can't do one of these hearings in 14 days, they have to bring witnesses in from their prior country to show that they suffered from a political system of violence and a threat to them based on their gender, race or religion or other factors.
HARLOW: So, Sonia, to that, the counterargument to catch and release, as you know, is, well, they don't show up for court. And that's not totally factual. A number of them do show up for court. Some of them don't show up for court. Can you fact check that for us in terms of, you know, the percentage that we're looking at on those that actually do come back to have these hearings.
NAZARIO: Well, there is an alternative. A humane effective alternative to locking families up. Locking families up doesn't work because it harms children. And this has been demonstrated time and again in studies. They revert to bed wetting, they -- a 9-year-old girl wanting to breast-feed again, they're terrified by this. These children come from neighborhoods and I think the point that Paul is making is very important.
I spent a lot of time in these neighborhoods in Central America, where 8, 9, 10-year-old boys are forcibly recruited into gangs, where girls are told you're going to be the girlfriend of the gang leader. I spent time in a neighborhood where the gang so controlled the streets that one day they were playing soccer with the head of someone they had decapitated.
These are not economic migrants. People coming for a better life. These are folks who are coming, fleeing for their lives in large part. And in World War II, we turned back a ship with 900 Jews aboard. I'm Jewish. Hundreds of those Jews were returned to Germany and were murdered in the holocaust. We did not allow Anne Frank's family to come to this country. We've all read the diary of Anne Frank and she was murdered. And we said after World War II, we were a leader in protecting refugees and saying never again.
And yet this is what we are doing now. This is abrogating our core values as Americans. We will protect people who are running from harm. This is not a large number of people. We're talking 15 --
HARLOW: But is the solution --
NAZARIO: Yes, we're talking --
HARLOW: Is the solution, catch and release, what existed before?
NAZARIO: The solution is a case management program that the U.S. had a pilot with in 2016, that was canceled by the Trump administration a year ago. You release people and you assign them a case manager. They help them get legal representation, help them get housing, but they also instruct them on when they have to show up to court and the importance in showing up to court. And 99 percent of those people did show up to court. It works.
HARLOW: OK.
NAZARIO: And we have other two programs that use ankle monitors. 96 percent of those folks showed up to court. They were released with their children, much more humane, and they're much more likely to get legal representation if they're not in these very isolated family detention centers that we have.
HARLOW: Thank you, both, for being here. We'll keep talking about it and you will both be back on this.
Paul Callan, Sonia Nazario, thank you very, very much.
Still to come, searching, searching, searching for civility. Name calling, public shaming now becoming the political norm on both sides.
Plus, President Trump on the campaign trail tonight in South Carolina, will the boost -- he's going to boost one of his earliest backers. How much is it going to help?
Also, in just minutes the teen who was shot and killed nu police in East Pittsburgh will be laid to rest. Antwon Rose, you see him right there. This as protesters continue to take to the streets. Hear from his family ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:17:56] HARLOW: We have more breaking news this morning on the Supreme Court. Let's go straight to Jessica Schneider.
And Jessica, this decision has to deal with redistricting, voting maps essentially drawn in Texas. What did the justices decide?
JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Another gerrymandering case front and center at the Supreme Court this morning. The Supreme Court ruling that three out of the four districts in Texas, the voting districts that were challenged, three or four of them may stand. These were districts that were challenged by plaintiffs who said that they were intentionally discriminated against when these districts were being drawn.
So the Supreme Court upholding three of four of those districts, but saying that one of the state legislative districts, the way it was drawn, was not in fact proper. So this is a case that really dates back all the way to 2011, these plaintiffs have been fighting it for several years now saying that the way that these state maps were drawn, they say that they diluted the voting strength of African- Americans, as well as Latinos.
They say that the way that maps were drawn just weren't equitable, but, Poppy, today, the Supreme Court upholding three of four of those districts and yet another gerrymandering case, a lot of them have been here at the court, some of them partisan gerrymandering.
HARLOW: Right.
SCHNEIDER: But today we are dealing with the issue of racial gerrymandering.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCHNEIDER: And the Supreme Court upholding most of the districts that were challenged in Texas -- Poppy.
HARLOW: And notable that last week the high court really sidestepped the two cases having to do with political gerrymandering by coming down with a decision on this one on the lines of race.
Jessica Schneider, thank you. We appreciate it.
What is happening in America? Civility out, shaming and shunning in. On the same weekend White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is asked to leave a restaurant. Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters says don't let the public shaming stop with Sanders.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[10:20:01] HARLOW: The congressman pushing more division in a nation already seemingly divided.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD: Shame, shame, shame.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Protesters yelling shame at DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant. President Trump name-calling at a political rally.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I won't do it. Wacky Jacky. I think somebody said she's in Nevada right now, campaigning with Pocahontas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: And Hollywood is not helping.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAMANTHA BEE, HOST, "FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE": Do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
ROBERT DE NIRO, ACTOR: I'm going to say one thing. (EXPLETIVE DELETED) Trump.
SETH ROGEN, COMEDIAN: They said our dad wants to meet you. And I turned around and Paul Ryan was walking towards me. And I said, no way, man.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Roseanne's tweets turn racist and a former Trump adviser apologizes after saying this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID BOSSIE, FORMER TRUMP DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Michael Hayden posted a picture of Auschwitz.
(CROSSTALK)
JOEL PAYNE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes, that liberal Michael Hayden, yes. That screaming liberal Michael Hayden.
BOSSIE: Look, you're out of your cotton-picking mind.
PAYNE: Cotton-picking mind? Brother, let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. I got some --
BOSSIE: You're out of your mind.
PAYNE: I've got some relatives who picked cotton. OK. And I'm not going to allow you to attack like me that on TV.
BOSSIE: Attack you how?
PAYNE: I'm not out of my cotton-picking mind.
BOSSIE: You're out of your mind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: This is America. 2018. I could go on. But this is all just in the last few weeks. Let's talk about civility. With me now, David Gergen, CNN senior political analyst and former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, and Salena Zito, our CNN contributor, is also here.
David Gergen, you have lived through a lot, you have advised a lot of presidents, you have seen a lot. But where are we today?
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: We're adrift and the country is very, very much on boil, I think. The emotions are running very high on all sides. There are large number of people on both coasts who think Trump is totally unethical, that he's a moron, all the other kind of epithets one can think about. And there are people in his base who not only are strongly formed, but they're more strongly formed now and they're fed up with what a press and the left they think has been carping, doesn't give them any credit whether for the economy and North Korea.
And gradually I think both sides have now reached the point where they're so frustrated and so fed up and so impatient for change that this could lead almost anywhere. It is extraordinarily divisive. I cannot remember a time -- the anti-war movement in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, you know, in the '60s and early '70s, both of those were much more civil in tone. Even the anti-war movement was more civil on tone, but certainly the civil rights movement among the people who are protesting.
HARLOW: Salena, to that point, I mean, you can oppose the policy and you should be vocal about what you believe. But kicking Sarah Sanders out of a restaurant, trying to eat over the weekend, doesn't change policy. So that happened. And then Maxine Waters, the Democrat in Congress, is, you know, giving this speech at a rally and she calls for further division. And then you've got the Republican Party, though, giving this president in a new Gallup poll a 90 percent approval rating. And he is the epitome of division, right? I mean, he wouldn't argue that he's divisive.
SALENA ZITO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: No.
HARLOW: He won't argue against that. So how do you explain all this?
ZITO: Well, first of all, the good news. I mean, that whole clip was just disheartening, right? I mean, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, you're watching that and it makes your heart hurt.
I will tell you the good news is I just drove from Savannah to Pittsburgh on the back roads, like 900 miles, 13 hours on the road, and I didn't see anybody -- I haven't met people of all, you know, political persuasions, races, you didn't see people interacting, behaving that way with each other. So that's the good news.
I think sometimes what happens on social media and on the news, we see these things amplified. So as David said, we have had great, you know, divisive moments and political moments in history throughout this -- you know, throughout our history in this country. But the problem is twofold. First of all, social media, as I just said, and the constant news coverage amplifies it and makes it bigger and makes it, you know, puts it in your living room.
HARLOW: So --
ZITO: But, you know, I -- the problem, I think, for people that are going towards Trump's coalition is that the people that have the most power and culture are the people that live in the coasts. They're the ones in pop culture, right? They're the ones that are more part of the media, more part of Hollywood, and those kinds of things that, like de Niro said or Maxine Waters said, pushes people who might not even really like Trump a lot, but pushes them away from the Democrats because they feel as though --
[10:25:03] HARLOW: Right.
ZITO: -- their culture is being disrespected.
HARLOW: So to that point, here is what Glenn Beck said to Brian Stelter about exactly that this weekend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GLENN BECK, CEO, THEBLAZE: Don't you understand what you're doing? You're driving people into the arms of Donald Trump. You're driving them into it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZITO: Yes.
HARLOW: David? David Gergen, what do you think?
GERGEN: Listen, I do think that cultural issue is a fair point. Our culture does not -- has never been very -- you know, Hollywood culture never very sympathetic, for example, to the pro-life movement. It is not very sympathetic to the Tea Party Movement. And there are a lot of Americans who feel like they've been treated as second class citizens. But I must tell you, we have never had a president who is -- lit the fire and put the country on boil more than this one.
I think if, you know, the culture has been here for a long time. What has dramatically changed is the nature of our leadership. And the incivility in Washington, now incivility preceded Donald Trump to Washington. It was there long before he got there, the polarization and all the breakdown of norms was there. But it's accelerated, deep and has become much more poisonous.
You know, we're beginning to see threats to the way we live with each other. We're beginning to see threats to the whole idea we hold a democracy, that we may have our disagreements, but we basically have the same values.
HARLOW: You know, Salena, former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia and current sitting justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could not have disagreed more --
ZITO: Right.
HARLOW: -- when it came to the law and the Constitution. But they were dear friends.
ZITO: Yes.
HARLOW: And they were able to have dinner and have a discourse despite being on the opposite side of almost every issue. How does this country get back to being like that friendship?
ZITO: I do see that everywhere. I see that a lot, so it's not gone. But what is amplified is what we see on the news, you know, what we see on social media, those things that divide us. I mean, I -- to David's point, and what is in "The Great Revolt," Donald Trump did not cause what is going on, this populism that is going on. He's just the result of it. And if we don't pay attention to it, if we don't address it in a meaningful way it continues long beyond his presidency.
I think that's, like, the important lesson in the great revolt and the important lesson of what is going on is this continues, and I think we need to address it more effectively, more thoughtfully.
HARLOW: Of course "the great Revolt," your new book, Salena Zito, thank you for being here. And David Gergen, always good to have you.
Hundreds of families have been lined up at the U.S.-Mexico border for weeks seeking asylum. What they're saying amid all of this confusion over family separation. A live report ahead.
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