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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Immigration Reform Bill Faces Uphill Path in House, Senate; Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is Interviewed About the Immigration Reform Bill; FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office Launch Preliminary Inquiry into Cuomo Admin's Handling of Nursing Home COVID Deaths; Traumatized Women Describe Rape and Beatings at Chinese Internment Camps. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired February 18, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

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SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): And we have to fix it.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With a slim majority in the Senate, Democrats have acknowledged it will be tough to get the ten Republicans needed onboard, leaving some to suggest breaking the bill up into smaller pieces.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you had a refugee bill by itself, I'm not suggesting that, but I would -- there are things that I would deal by itself.

COLLINS: Right now, Biden's top aides aren't saying how they believe the bill will become law or when.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: In terms of the mechanisms or the timeline or the mechanics, you know, we are happy to have that conversation in the weeks ahead.

But today, we're just -- the bill is just being officially introduced.

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COLLINS (on camera): Now, Jake, President Biden has just issued a statement a few minutes ago about why he thinks this proposal is so urgent.

And in part, he says that the last four years of misguided policies have exacerbated the already-broken immigration system and highlighted the critical need for reform. That's his basis for why he thinks this needs to get passed. But, of course, Jake, the United States has not passed a major citizenship bill since Ronald Reagan was in office.

So this idea that Biden and his aides have floated that this could potentially be bipartisan, we should note that Republicans are already signaling that they are not onboard with what Biden is laying out in this proposal.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right. Kaitlan Collins at the White House, thanks so much.

Joining us now, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, he introduced the comprehensive immigration bill today. A reminder, 60 votes are needed to pass this legislation.

And, Senator, you know that better than I do. Sixty votes for this bill as it is seems unlikely. It makes huge changes to immigration law. It expands worker visas so more non-Americans can come to work in the United States. It all but erases restrictions on family-based immigration. It doesn't focus all that much comparatively on border security.

What are you willing to change to get 60 votes in the Senate?

SEN. BOB MENENDEZ (D-NJ): Well, Jake, we will never know how much reform we can achieve if we don't try. I'm not going to wave the white flag before we even start, number one.

Number two, as part of the Gang of Eight in 2013, we were told it couldn't be done. We ended with 68 votes in the United States Senate at the time to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Unfortunately, Speaker Boehner and the Republicans in the House never gave it a vote, so it didn't see the light of day. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about this subject today. It would have been done.

So I think the question is, we want to see robust reform. This legislation is a vision of what ultimately we would like to see immigration reform be like. But we want to see robust reform.

So, we will look at every single avenue in order to achieve as much as we can. So, some of that may be freestanding legislation on the floor, the House of Representatives passed big elements of this legislation in the last Congress. They didn't have a Senate willing to take it up. That's changed now. They didn't have a president leaning in. On the contrary, we had a president who was the worst nightmare for immigrants and rule of law as it relates to those who come to our country in a refugee status, for example.

So, it's a different dynamic. There's work to be done. There's a challenge to be done.

But whether reconciliation is another option for parts of it, whether the appropriation process may be parts of it.

TAPPER: Right.

MENENDEZ: The goal is to achieve as much robust reform as we can.

TAPPER: But, Senator, look, you could have taken that bill that passed the Senate, that John Boehner when he was speaker refused to bring up and you could have introduced that bill, which is a compromise legislation that was hammered out between Democrats and Republicans. But you're not. You guys are doing a different approach. You're offering this very progressive legislation.

What do you say to someone who says that this bill that you introduced today seems more designed for a campaign ad to win votes, of Latino voters and others, than serious legislation that has a chance of getting 60 votes?

MENENDEZ: Well, Jake, I would just say, look, after being in Congress between the House and Senate for nearly three decades, it would be a bad strategy for me to start negotiating on a previously negotiated, you know, piece of legislation. Times have changed. We have different dynamics.

And this bill actually has -- you know, I've talked to some of my Republican colleagues in the Senate. Some of them come from big ag states. They'd like to see the farmer worker provisions taken care of.

Others come from a large meatpacking or poultry plants. They want to see those elements taken care of. Others come from high-tech states and they want to see the visas as it relates to high-tech and making sure that the best and brightest who we have studying in our universities can ultimately stay here and be part of the innovation for America.

So -- but if you want that, then you have to be part of something else. And that's what the negotiation ultimately is all about and getting us to a better point. So I don't think it's a campaign ad and what I do think, it is a blueprint, let's work on how many different elements of the blueprint we can make happen.

TAPPER: So are you against the idea that President Biden seems to be suggesting of breaking this up into pieces and passing those individual pieces?

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This part's on refugees, this part's on farm workers, this part's on high tech workers as opposed to this big, comprehensive haul?

MENENDEZ: Well, what I want to achieve is robust reform. What we can't have is breaking it up into pieces that leaves largely the 11 million undocumented in the country who are doing some of the most difficult jobs, the essential work, so that we could stay home during the pandemic and they were risking their lives every day and doing the work that no one else wanted to do.

So the question is for me, less about process and more about what guarantees us significant elements of that 11 million and the other elements of immigration reform. Look, you know, we want to have border security, but we think that technology, in addition to everything that's already been done.

We have more border patrol than we've ever had. We have -- we spend more on border patrol than we do in all of the other federal law enforcement entities combined.

So it's time to take a new look at how do we ensure the border. For example, drugs coming into the country, they come through legal ports of entry. We just don't have the screening and scanning capacity necessary. That's something that we addressed in this bill. So, it's just a new look on how we deal with an old problem. And I

think that when people take a look at it, some of our colleagues who are concerned about different elements of their economies and the states they represent, they would find some common cause in this.

TAPPER: All right. Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, thanks so much. Hope you will come back as this goes through the process and we will keep tabs on this.

It's an important issue. Obviously didn't get a lot of attention during the last four years. So let's keep coming back on the show and let's keep talking about it.

MENENDEZ: Thank you, Jake. It got attention. It was all the bad attention.

TAPPER: Right, right. Well, there wasn't a lot of legislation, was all I meant.

Coming up, the scandal -- the scandal surrounding New York's Governor Cuomo, COVID, nursing homes, it's taking another very serious turn. That's next.

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TAPPER: Staying with our politics lead. There could be legal, not just political fallout for New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo and his administration. CNN has learned that the FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn have launched a preliminary inquiry into the Cuomo administration for its handling of coronavirus deaths at New York state nursing homes, according to a law enforcement official.

It was last week that the Democratic governor's top aide privately admitted to delaying reporting the number of deaths in nursing homes so that the data could not be used against them by the Trump administration. It was, of course, almost a year ago last March when Cuomo's administration ordered nursing homes to take in any patient, even if they had the coronavirus.

CNN's MJ Lee joins us now.

MJ, what exactly are the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office looking into?

MJ LEE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, just one more sign that the nursing home scandal continues to be a very serious issue for Governor Cuomo. What we know right now is that the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, they are scrutinizing how the Cuomo administration handled the data related to nursing home deaths in their state. What we understand is that it is a preliminary investigation, a preliminary look that they are giving this.

We don't know if they are just looking at the governor, if they're looking at members of the administration, and Cuomo's office has basically said, we have always cooperated with the DOJ and we will continue to do so.

One other fallout that is worth mentioning as well, here in New York, legislators are moving forward as well, trying to strip Cuomo of some of these expanded emergency powers that he has enjoyed throughout the pandemic. So a very clear signal that they are trying to send that Cuomo no longer enjoys their confidence.

And just one other thing that I will quickly note. You remember, he received an Emmy Award last year for these daily COVID press conferences that he held. A lot of people found them really reassuring at a moment when reassurance was exactly what they were looking for. Well, New York legislators are now saying that the academy should take that award back from the governor, that they don't think his handling of the pandemic should be celebrated in that way. Cuomo's office is saying that they're not really going to engage that issue and that they are busy and focused right now in trying to find the pandemic -- fight the pandemic, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. MJ Lee, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up, a victim of unimaginable torture and abuse speaking to CNN to show the world what is actually going on inside a Chinese internment camp. That's next.

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TAPPER: In the world lead today, shocking allegations of gang rape remerging from detention camps in China. The U.S. government is accusing China of the mass internment of up to 2 million members of the mostly Muslim ethnic minority group the Uighurs and other groups in recent years. Part of a policy the U.S. State Department says amounts to genocide.

Beijing, of course, denies this, claiming the camps are actually vocational training centers aimed at creating jobs dispatching out Islamist extremism. But human rights organizations, not to mention survivors of these camps, say that the Chinese government is lying.

A warning, the following report has language that may be disturbing for some viewers.

CNN's Ivan Watson reports.

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IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The traumatized survivor of a nine-month nightmare, Tursunay Ziyawudun, a refugee from China's Xinjiang region, describes the torture and rape she endured after detention in an internment camp.

How is your health today after your experience in the camps?

TURSUNAY ZIYAWUDUN, FORMER XINJIANG CAMP DETAINEE (through translator): I was in a lot of pain and suffered bleeding. After I arrived in the U.S., I had to undergo surgery and my uterus was removed. I suffered a lot of damage.

WATSON: Tursunay is an ethnic Uighur. In March 2018, she says police in Xinjiang detained her at a so-called vocational training center for women.

ZIYAWUDUN: Because I live in Kazakhstan for five years, they wanted me to confess if I was influenced by American propaganda and foreign organizations.

WATSON: During one interrogation, Tursunay says guards beat and kicked her until she blacked out. In the camp, Tursunay says authorities began forcibly implanting female detainees with contraceptives IUDs.

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After a botched procedure led to bleeding, she says she was taken into a room.

ZIYAWUDUN: There were three guards, they inserted a stun baton inside of me and twisted and shocked me it. I passed out.

WATSON: On a separate occasion, she says guards wearing masks once again took her from her cell.

ZIYAWUDUN: In the next room, I heard another girl crying and screaming. I saw about five men going into that room. I thought they were torturing her. But then, I was gang-raped. After that, I realized what they also did to her.

WATSON: Tursunay first revealed these claims in an interview with the BBC.

The Chinese government did not answer our questions about the women named in this report, but Beijing did vehemently deny any human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

WENG WANBIN, CHINESE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: There has never been such a thing as systemic sexual abuse and mistreatment against women. China is a country ruled by law.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why you are here?

WATSON: There's strict state censorship in Xinjiang and police followed and harassed CNN journalists when last they last visited.

Tursunay claims she was held at a facility outside the city of Ghulja. CNN has also obtained rare testimony from another woman who says she worked in a camp near the city of Urumqi.

QELBINUR SIDIK, FORMER TEACHER IN XINJIANG CAMP (through translator): The women had their hair shaved off. They wore gray uniforms with orange vests and printed numbers on them.

WATSON: For 28 years, Qelbinur Sidik worked as an elementary school teacher. In 2017, she says she was ordered to teach mandarin at an internment camp holding thousands of women.

Speaking from relative safety in the Netherlands, Qelbinur says on her first day of work in the camp, she witnessed a disturbing sight.

SIDIK: Two soldiers were carrying a Uighur girl out on a stretcher. There was no spark of life on her face. Later, a female police officer told me the girl died on her way to the hospital due to heavy bleeding.

WATSON: Although Qelbinur did not know the cause of the women's death, she said later, that same female police officer told her male guards routinely gang-raped detainees at the camp. The officer also told her --

SIDIK: When they drank at night, policemen told each other how they raped and tortured girls.

WATSON: In previous reporting on China's mass internment policy in Xinjiang, CNN heard testimony from Gulbahar Jalilova, a citizen of Kazakhstan, who alleges that she endured sexual assault from a guard during prolonged detention in Xinjiang.

CNN cannot independently verify the accounts of these women. China has attacked their credibility, calling these women actors playing victims from Xinjiang.

The Chinese government says no women are abused in the camps. What do you say to the Chinese government?

ZIYAWUDUN: I'm a 43-year-old woman. Do you think this is something I am proud of sharing with the whole world? I would tell them that I'm not afraid of them anymore, because they already killed my soul.

WATSON: She hopes her brave decision to speak out will encourage others to do the same.

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WATSON: But, Jake, speaking out involves a terrible burden. All of the dozens of natives of Xinjiang that I've interviewed over the past couple of years, when they go public, they do so knowing that the Chinese authorities may punish their relatives who are still in Xinjiang -- I mean, parents, siblings, spouses, including the women in this report. The Chinese government, of course, denies that they use relatives as hostages. Beijing continues to insist there are no human rights abuses whatsoever in Xinjiang -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Ivan, thanks so much. Horrible report.

We'll be right back.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the sands --

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TAPPER: In our out of this world lead today, something that has not happened in nine years, just in the last hour, NASA's most sophisticated rover yet successfully landed on the surface of Mars after a 300 million-mile journey. And now we have the first photos taken by the rover as it embarks on its critical mission to find out if Mars has ever sustained life. The landing took incredibly complex choreography, ten years of preparation, and NASA says landing on Mars is hardly easy. Only about 50 percent of all previous attempts succeeded.

Before we go, we want to take a moment to remember just one of the more than 492,000 lives taken by coronavirus in this country.

Mark Glenn Orcullo (ph) was a sailor stationed in Virginia. He was just 42 years old. He served as an aviation equipment technician on the USS Wasp.

Orcullo was originally from the Philippines. One of his commanders told our CNN affiliate WVEC, quote: His commitment to this country was evident through his service as well as his decision to become a U.S. citizen by naturalization, unquote.

The Navy says that Orcullo tested positive for COVID on January 17th. Tragically, he died last Friday.

To his family and friends, our condolences. May his memory be a blessing.

You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @JakeTapper. You can tweet the show @TheLeadCNN.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.

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