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Arrivals to Border Surge on Day Before COVID Expulsion Policy Ends; Biden, Top Lawmakers to Meet Again Friday as Default Looms; Author of Children's Book on Grief Charged with Husband's Murder. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired May 10, 2023 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Well, just moments ago, Senator Dianne Feinstein arrived back on Capitol Hill for the first time since February. She was helped -- as you can see -- out of the car into a wheelchair. The 89-year-old Democrat has been recovering from shingles. In a statement released a short time ago, she said she is still experiencing side effects from the virus and her doctors have advised her to work a lighter schedule.

Her absence from the Senate Judiciary Committee has held up the confirmation of multiple Biden nominated federal judges. That prompted calls within her own party for her to resign. But of course, now she's back up on The Hill -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: More manpower and new rules are coming to the border as Title 42 is on its way out. Under the pandemic-era policy, the U.S. immediately expelled nearly 3 million people arriving undocumented. The policy ends tomorrow night. And migrants have been coming already by the thousands in response. With another 150,000 approximately now waiting at the southern board to try and enter the United States.

Officials have tracked more than 10,000 border encounters since Tuesday. The Homeland Security secretary announced today some 500 additional troops are arriving for warehouse and data collection support. A thousand more officers are going to be assigned to the asylum process and a new rule will go into effect that largely bars those who pass through the border -- or rather who another nation from seeking asylum once they arrive at the border. Here's DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We are clear eyed at about the challenges we are likely to face in the days and weeks ahead, which have the potential to be very difficult. Our plan will deliver results, but it will take time for those results to be fully realized. And it is essential that with all take this into account.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Let's take you to the border now. And CNN's Nick Valencia who's live for us in Brownsville, Texas. And Nick, you've been talking to families who have trekked to the United States throughout all of southern and some parts of Central America. What are they sharing with you?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, many of them are unaware. They claim to be unaware of the ending of Title 42 and those that did have an idea about Title 42 had the wrong idea. They thought it meant that the boarder was going to be closed down entirely so they rushed to get here. At least that's what a group of Venezuelan migrants I spoke to yesterday told me.

I want to set the scene to where we're at here. This is where migrants are brought after they're released on humanitarian parole. These men are waiting for loved ones that they've been separated from. Hoping that they come off of this bus here. This is one of the immigration buses that comes here.

They drop them off with the city of Brownsville and then they cross the street here to one of the many NGOs that's helping out here in the city of Brownsville with basic food, supplies, basic needs. I want to interview -- I want to introduce you to one of the migrants here from Venezuela. William, you were telling me that you've been separated from your wife. What happened?

WILLIAM, MIGRANT FROM VENEZUELA: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He said he got here on Thursday and he was confronted by border patrol.

What happened next?

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He said he's been processed here. But he has no idea where his wife is. Seven days he's been without his wife.

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He said he keep asking the city officials, immigration officials, but no one can give him a straight answer.

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He said he had had two children with him as well, in addition to his wife. Where are your kids?

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He says he has no idea with his children are right now. How old are your children?

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: 10 and 15 years old. Were you aware of Title 42 and they're going to open the border up like before?

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He says, yes, he is.

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He said that's the reason he came here. What do you say to people who say you should stay in your country?

WILLIAM: (speaking in a foreign language)

VALENCIA: He said he's worried about the government there. He's worried about the Maduro regime, which is why he came here. I hope you find your wife.

You know, lots of pain staking stories here from migrants who, you know, from what they tell us are still being separated from their family members. The city is bracing for the end of Title 42 and what they believe will be an influx of migrants. They have a plan in place. The big question though, Boris, is will that plan work?

SANCHEZ: Yes, still an outstanding question, even as the DHS secretary and other federal officials point to Congress and say that some action must be taken. Nick Valencia from Brownsville, Texas, thank you for bringing us that story. Brianna, over to you

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Ahead, new details on what happened inside the White House during these high-stakes negotiations over the debt ceiling. Someone who knows a thing or two about these types of talks is going to join us, next. Stay with CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Finger-pointing, accusations of lying and a whole lot of stubbornness. Yesterday's meeting between President Biden and four leaders of Congress did little to help steer the country away from going off an economic cliff. Both Biden and Speaker McCarthy refusing to make any concessions to raise the debt ceiling. And they will meet again on Friday. But today the president is slamming the Republican approach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There was a very extreme wing of the Republican Party and the House of Representatives referred to themselves now -- I've been calling them this for a while. But now they referred to themselves as the MAGA Republicans. And they've taken control of the House. They've taken control. They had a Speaker who has his job because he yielded to the MAGA element of the party. And they're doing the best of my knowledge, what no other political party has done in the nation's history.

[15:45:00]

They are literally and actively holding the economy hostage by threatening to default on our nation's debt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right, let's talk with someone who was instrumental in the negotiations last time the U.S. risked a default back in 2011. Former deputy chief of staff for Mitch McConnell, Rohit Kumar. he co-leads PWC's Washington National Tax Office. You were instrumental and you may still be traumatized from it I would say. We are right now about 20-ish days away from this cliff. How do you see where we are?

ROHIT KUMAR, FORMER DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR SEN. MCCONNELL: So, I actually feel pretty good about the way the meeting played out yesterday. I was concerned they were going to come out and like actively attack each other. They weren't. We had a -- you know, we had a good meeting. Everyone restated their opening positions. That's not surprising. In every Oval Office meeting I attended, the first meeting, all you get is the public speeches given in private. And that's apparently what happened.

The good news is -- and this is getting less attention -- is they said, well, A, we're going to meet again Friday. And B, in between, the staffs are going to start having a conversation.

Now the White House is saying this is a separate conversation about the budget process for something related to September 30th when the government funding expires.

Republicans are clearly saying, oh, this is a part of the transaction.

Look, in the real world, if they get an agreement on something around the budget, spending caps, rescinding of unspent COVID money, that's going to be part of this transaction. But I think for the moment we're playing this game of, we're talking, but we're not talking in a way you think we're talking.

KEILAR: That's encouraging that you're reading the tea leaves and you're seeing something more optimistic. I do want to play something that your former boss had had to say about Biden's position today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) MINORITY LEADER: I hope President Biden has begun to wake up. Every rank-and-file Democrat in the house and Senate say the president's refusal to negotiate is untenable. The Democrats can't waste anymore time. The White House has to stop sleepwalking toward default and reach a spending deal with the Speaker.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: How do you see this coming to a final agreement?

KUMAR: So, I think somewhere between now and maybe next Friday when the president is anticipated to fly to Japan for the G7 meeting, they need to really have at least some sort of a framework for an agreement. Some sort of high-level kind of principles so that the staff can kind of continue to work on. Because I think it would be difficult for the president to leave if we're still kind of barreling -- the public narrative is, we're barreling towards a default.

As important as that G7 meeting is -- and I don't want to understate the importance of it -- I think the optics of leaving the country in the middle of this get a little bit challenging. So, they'll have this meeting on Friday. They will continue to work through the weekend. And at some point, we're going to start getting some sense of, OK, a deal is looking like it's going to come together.

The other thing that will be important that will happen I think in the next couple weeks is, the last communication from the Treasury Secretary said, we can get to June 1. It might be a little bit more, but being conservative, it's June 1. That little bit of wiggle room is actually not helpful at the end of the day. So, I think need some additional communication from Treasury, either firming up the June 1 deadline or saying, no, it slipped. It's the 2nd, it's the 5th, whatever it is. So that the negotiators know we have a hard deadline. This is what we're working up against.

KEILAR: Why don't you see this as a 2011 repeat?

KUMAR: Well, it may be a 2011 repeat. In the sense that when you get very close to the deadline before we reach an agreement and avoid defaulting on the debt. So, while it's dramatic as 2011 was for me personally, in the end, it actually ended OK in that we avoided default. And that's the thing that's most important.

KEILAR: It cost $1.3 trillion to the economy. Right? I mean, it wasn't completely without injury.

KUMAR: There was some injury to it. And we did get downgraded as a result. And that was not good. Like I said, it's not a great outcome. But look, Zeit fest of the political moment is, you have to be seen as fighting until the bitter end. So, even if they had the deal tomorrow, there's a reasonable chance they would feel like, well, they can't announce it tomorrow. Because then someone is going to say, well, you didn't fight hard enough. You could have held out for another couple of weeks. That's just kind of macro political pressure that this system exerts on the elected officials. Not helpful, but it is very real.

Rohit, it's great to have you and your perspective. Thank you so much.

KUMAR: Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, a murder twist in Utah. A woman who wrote a children's book on grief is now facing murder charges for killing her husband.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: So, she wrote a book about helping children deal with grief after her husband's death. But now police say she actually killed her husband. Police in Utah arrested the author Kouri Richins on charges that she murdered her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl. In a new search warrant says Richins tried to change his life insurance policy before his death. CNN's Nick Watt has been looking into it. Nick, I mean, this is like a twist straight out of the movies here. Tell us what the search warrant said and what we could learn from that.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, what we're look at here is the application for the search warrant made by detective after the medical examiner found that Eric Richins was full of fentanyl when he died. That warrant was eventually granted to search Kouri Richins' phone. And on that phone, detective said there was contact between her and a known drug dealer.

So, what we're learning here, is Kouri Richins claims that the night before her husband died, he had one shot of alcohol, and a THC gummy. She apparently said that she was doing CPR on her husband before the emergency services arrived.

[15:55:00]

But according to this detective, when the emergency people arrived, they said that there was no evidence she'd been doing CPR on Eric. Also, what emerges from this is that Eric Richins knew something was up. He kind of foretold what eventually happened, according to authorities. Let me read from this.

The detective says: I was told by Eric's family members that they suspected his wife had something to do with his death. They advised -- he warned them that if anything happened to him, she was to blame.

And also, a little bit further down, we hear that on Valentine's Day -- this is just a couple of days after Kouri Richins had received a shipment of drugs from the dealer. On Valentine's Day of 2022, his wife brought him a sandwich which after one bite Eric then broke into hives and couldn't breathe. He used his son's EpiPen as well as Benadryl before passing out for several hours -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Goodness. Nick watt, that is quite a story.

SANCHEZ: On Valentine's Day on top of everything. Apparently, the book was published almost one year after the exact day that he passed away. Likely coming to a special episode of "FORENSIC FILES" on HLN soon.

KEILAR: I also think, you know, that if it's proven to be true, just kind of the hubris of writing a book about it, right?

SCIUTTO: And faking -- I mean, in affect faking grief, you know, writing about how children can deal with grief. And, then again, if this turns out to be true, these allegations, you caused the grief.

SANCHEZ: Tough subject material to wrap up on. It has been a busy day here at CNN NEWS CENTRAL. Thank you so much for joining us today. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts after a short break. Stay with CNN.