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U.S. Border Encounters Down Since Title 42's End; Victims' Families Sue Social Media Companies Over Buffalo Mass Shooting; DeSantis In Iowa: Focusing On "Past" Could Cost GOP In 2024. Aired 11- 11:30a ET

Aired May 15, 2023 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Their legal teams are telling us they want to make sure this never happens again.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Get ready for traffic and lying to the airport. AAA is expecting a boom and travelers for Memorial Day. More than 42 million Americans are expected to be on the move. The steps airlines and travelers are taking to prepare those major stories and more coming in right here to CNN News Central.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a fresh look at the southern border. This was El Paso, you can see it right there. Wow. I mean relatively sparse, really sparse, very calm. This is what the White House had hoped for especially when there were scenes like this, just one week ago migrants lining up before the expiration of Title 42.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warns it is too early to know if the migrant surge has peaked. While that's going on, there are new examples of political maneuvering. The governor of Texas sent a bus carrying migrants to the vice president's residence in Washington, D.C. We have teams at the border and at the White House.

Let's begin at the White House. CNN's Arlette Saenz is there. What are you hearing from people inside the building behind you, Arlette, about what they're seeing?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, President Biden said that the situation at the border is going better than expected after he himself has had predicted it would be a chaotic few days after the lifting of Title 42. Now the Biden administration has been touting the fact that there has been a drop in the number of border encounters since Title 42 ended just take a look at the numbers.

On Saturday, there were 4,200 encounters at the border and Friday 6,300, compare that to just before Title 42 lifted when the number of border encounters were hovering around 10,000. Now we are expecting to receive an update shortly from the Department of Homeland Security about the situation down at the border.

But you heard yesterday the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas really trying to argue that the plans and messaging that the administration had put in place in the lead up to lift the lifting of Title 42 has led to some of this drop in the encounters. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We have communicated very clearly a vitally important message to the individuals who are thinking of arriving at our southern border. There is a lawful, safe and orderly way to arrive in the United States. That is through the pathways that President Biden has expanded in an unprecedented way. And then there's a consequence if one does not use those lawful pathways.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: The big question going forward is whether this decrease in the number of encounters is something that's simply temporary or if it's part of a longer term trends. Now the White House has really been pushing back on the political criticism they've been receiving from both Democrats and Republicans.

They are also still grappling with legal challenges to their Title 42 policies. Chief among those is that federal judge down in Florida, which blocked the Biden's administration's plan to release some migrants from CBP custody without court dates.

That judge had ordered that program to be halted for 14 days. We're now about four days into that. The Biden administration is expected to appeal that very quickly. But it's simply one of the tools that the administration had been trying and hoping to use to try to alleviate the overcrowding or capacity issues at some of these facilities and shelters. Those shelters could be a major challenge for the White House going forward.

A top border patrol official had warned that if they don't have that tool in place, they could see over 45,000 migrants in CBP facilities and shelters by the end of the month. So that is one thing that the administration will be watching at this moment as they're still grappling with the lifting of Title 42.

BERMAN: All right, Arlette Saenz at the White House, Arlette standby, keep us posted. Let's get out of Polo Sandoval. He is in El Paso, near the border. Polo, what are you seeing this morning?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So John, here's the now based on what we're hearing from multiple sources, and of course, when government officials. Apprehensions they have dropped considerably, as we just heard from Arlette, however, the strain on the system on the DHS processing facility and certainly on those non-profit shelters, it's certainly strained and it continues and all you have to do is look behind me just to context is key here.

The number of migrants that you see behind me, these are individuals that have been recently apprehended, and processed and released leading up to the expiration of Title 42. So what you see here are mainly single adult males and there's a few women as well. That because of families are the ones that are being housed in shelters. They're basically in the state of limbo, right? They've been released by the federal authorities and they're expecting to travel out of here in the not too distant future.

[11:05:09]

There's a 22-year-old Venezuelan man and tell me, he's already paid for his own bus ticket to Denver, Colorado spoke to another gentleman who said he's just waiting for his younger brother 17 years old to be released from detention before he also follows that same path and heads to Colorado as well, where they plan to temporarily live during the duration of their asylum proceedings.

So that really goes to show you the situation on the ground right now is the reason why we've seen people sleep on the sidewalk, which is a relatively small number compared to last week is because they don't fit in some of these shelters anymore. Those shelters dedicated to women and children, we had an opportunity to visit one over the weekend. And so it just kind of gives you an idea of what the situation is like on the ground.

Key, the key metric here will be the rate of release. So basically the number of migrants that are released by DHS officials, if it's a sort of a controlled flow, then it allows the non-profit's on the ground here to be able to manage these individuals and give them the assistance they need to continue with their travels because that's the number that's going to continue to increase. That as asylum seekers settling into communities throughout the country, whether it's Denver, where we've talked about it at length for the last year, New York City.

Polo Sandoval for us in El Paso. Polo, thank you for being there. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Just last hour, President Biden said he had no update on the debt ceiling talks. Deadline for a potential default is looming right now for those -- for the debt ceiling to be passed. Sources have told CNN the president is expected to meet with congressional leaders tomorrow on the debt ceiling. We heard over the weekend. Biden being very upbeat about it, but last hour Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy downplayed the debt limit talk saying both sides were still far apart.

CNN's Lauren Fox is on Capitol Hill for us. This is very different from what we heard from President Biden on Sunday, where he seemed to have some hope they could get it done. And we're now just two weeks away. What are you hearing?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, over the weekend, there were continuing conversations among staff, they actually met for three hours on Saturday, Sara, and while the Progress was slow behind the scenes sources, and I was talking to said that they were making some progress. Then this morning, you had the house speaker, Kevin McCarthy, saying to our colleagues that he believes that these negotiations are actually going nowhere fast. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: As this thing fall apart, it doesn't seem to me that that they want it, it just seems that they want to look like they're in a meeting, but they're not going to -- we're not talking anything serious. In the meantime, we just watched the CEO come out saying we're $100 million further in there. It seems more likely to want to default on a deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And time is obviously running short. Sara, like you said the country may hit its deadline on June 1st. That really doesn't give congressional leaders much time to find a consensus on this issue. And one of the things that is playing out is concern that it's going to take time up here on Capitol Hill to pass these bills through the House, through the Senate and get them signed by the President, assuming a negotiation. And a framework can even be agreed upon House Speaker McCarthy said that he thinks that they have to have a deal in hand by this weekend, in order to ensure that they have the time that they need on the floor to get this all through before that June 1st deadline.

We are expected to get an update from the Treasury later this week on whether or not that is indeed the date or whether there might be some more time. But obviously, Sara, there's not a whole lot of time to waste.

SIDNER: Yes, the clock is ticking and going down fast. Thank you so much, Lauren Fox, they're on Capitol Hill for us. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up on CNN News Central, the families of three of the victims killed and one survivor of the Buffalo supermarket massacre had filed suit against a list of social media companies now. Was the gunman radicalized online and was it the company's fault?

[11:09:04]

Plus, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, they were both supposed to be in Iowa this weekend, but only one of them made it. How's it all playing with Iowa voters right now? We'll get to it. And later the presidential election in Turkey, it looks like it's headed to a runoff. Whoever wins the impact will be felt far beyond Turkey's borders.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: More than 35,000 students across 80 schools in Oakland, California will be back inside classrooms tomorrow. A teachers union says their seven day strike has now come to an end. Educators say a two and a half year tentative agreement has been reached with a 15.5 percent salary increase for most of the teachers. The two parties also settled a series of social and educational reforms referred to as common good goals. A 19-year-old and a 20-year-old were killed and five other teenagers were injured in a shooting in Yuma, Arizona. Police say the response to calls of shots fired on Saturday night. They haven't made any arrests in that case or released a suspected motive at this point. There have now been 224 mass shootings in the United States this year alone.

Vice Media is filing for bankruptcy protection as its leaders prepare to sell the company it publishes news and technology websites like Motherboard and Refinery29. But the filing comes after Vice canceled its flagship show Vice News Tonight and at the layoff dozens of people. John?

[11:15:08]

BERMAN: All right, thanks Sara. New this morning the families of three of the victims killed in last year's mass shooting at a buffalo grocery store are suing several social media companies in a wrongful death lawsuit. So last hour, Kate spoke to a lawyer representing these families and he says the platforms including Meta's Snapchat, Discord and YouTube, he says they irresponsibly shared livestream video of the massacre and that they should be held accountable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN ELMORE, ATTORNEY FOR FAMILIES OF VICTIMS KILLED IN BUFFALO SHOOTING: The video live shooting of our clients getting their -- loved ones getting their brains blown out in this top shooting was shared over 3 million times. Why did that happen? Because of irresponsible social media that was getting maximization of user engagement and making a lot of money from their advertisers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, CNN's Omar Jimenez is here now. Omar, explain the contours of what could be a very significant lawsuit.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Of course, I mean, so many people, too many people are looking at this and are saying, well, could this apply to likely our case. Basically what they're saying here, the lawsuit alleges that this shooter was radicalized by what he was seeing on social media. And part of the lawsuit says that's because this was a person that was not raised by a racist family that as far as they knew, he had no personal history of negative interactions with black people.

And the suit says specifically that the shooter explicitly acknowledged that the racist, anti-Semitic and violence promoting material he encountered on social media caused his radicalization, motivated him to commit racial violence and provided the training equipment and expertise to plan and implement the massacre of May 14th, 2022. But it's not just that, but it's also about how this livestream proliferated, excuse me, how it went from Twitch to 4chan to Reddit to Facebook.

And the suit alleges, in part that these social media platforms were profiting off of not just hosting this content, but also potentially amplifying it, as well, as we heard from that lawyer that this video has been viewed over 3 million times across multiple different platforms, so all of those factors are playing into this lawsuit here.

BERMAN: One of the things that we often hear from people who study this is that the next mass shooter often takes cues from events whether or not he finds that information online or elsewhere. But it's something that seems to perpetuate itself. What did the social media company say about this?

JIMENEZ: Yes, so obviously, this is a scrutiny. They've been under for four years now at this point. And so all of them in some form, Meta, Facebook, Snapchat, they say they've invested in technology to detect and remove extremist posts, especially when it comes to violence. But we're talking about a lot of content here.

Snapchat, in particular said in regards to this case, that we deliberately designed Snapchat differently from traditional social media platforms, and don't allow unvetted content to go viral or be algorithmically promoted. Instead, we vet all content before it can reach a large audience, which helps protect against the discovery of potentially harmful or dangerous content.

And that, of course, is the main crux here of what this lawsuit is arguing, did whatever algorithm the shooter was in, amplify, or basically pull on that dark seed of thought until it became reality. And again, it's first of its kind, or at least a very rare one. And you can imagine that many people are looking at how this unfolds to say, well, was this a factor also in the shooting that may have affected my community?

BERMAN: Look, I suspect there are a lot of people watching this, as you say for the president, it might set unfortunately, we see so much of this now that any decision here could have a wide ranging impact. Omar Jimenez, terrific to see you. Thank you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: So it was set to be something of a political face off, former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis both plan to visit Iowa for events over the weekend. Due to weather, Trump had to cancel. And during his trip DeSantis made an unscheduled stop in Des Moines, just a half mile from where Trump was supposed to be.

And are there ever coincidences in politics? CNN's Dana Bash. She joins me now to talk more about this. So Dana, in addition to the interesting travel itineraries that could have been this weekend between Trump and DeSantis, it's also continues to be fascinating how DeSantis resists taking on Trump directly, something that might work now, but that's going to be clearly impossible to continue to do throughout this primary.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It very, very difficult. You're exactly right. When DeSantis was talking about Trump, he still was doing it in very veiled terminology, saying we can't look back, we have to look forward instead of saying no, the election wasn't stolen or know what the former president says. There's no evidence to back it up. So he's very reluctant on that

front. What he did differently, Kate, yesterday or over the weekend I should say that he hadn't done before was number one retail politics, which it sounds pretty straightforward and rudimentary when you're talking about vying for, potentially vying for candidacy in the state of Iowa.

[11:20:22]

But that's not something that he is known to like or be good at. He did it. And he clearly was listening to critics about the fact that he, Ron DeSantis I'm talking about of course, had been too standoffish. But also the fact that he and his camp -- potential campaign was so agile and switching their itinerary and going where Donald Trump was supposed to go, is definitely giving Republicans who are already pushing DeSantis aside and donors who are pushing DeSantis aside saying he's not even going to be able to start before he officially started the race saying, maybe he does have more of it on a national stage than we thought, but it's one event, one trip, one example.

BOLDUAN: Let me play for with the bit that you were just mentioning. This is what not taking on directly yet taking on kind of sort of looks like these days from Ron DeSantis. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): If we make 2024 election, a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures, and if we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board. If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus the election on the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: What I also hear in that Dana is we -- is the message of we need new ideas, we need to look forward. It's something we have heard from other potential Republican candidates, Governor Chris Sununu is one that comes to mind who we've heard him say this over and over again, as he's kind of laying the groundwork potentially for a presidential run. But how do Iowa Republicans hear this?

BASH: Well, you know, it's interesting, because, yes, there's so many ways because he's being so intentionally vague. There are a lot of ways to read this, in addition to the questions about the former president refusing to admit that he lost the 2020 election, another is generational, which I think is what you're getting at by comparing DeSantis to Sununu, both governors in their 40s and of important states. And so yes, there is a possibility, a very real possibility that there are voters in Iowa who will go to the Iowa caucuses who are looking for that next generation.

And you remember, back in 2016, the last time there were real Iowa caucuses on the Republican side, Donald Trump didn't win. It was Ted Cruz, who won I was there Donald Trump did not take that very well. But I have to say, since then, talk to Iowa Republicans, Donald Trump has become even more popular. So that makes it hard to answer your question about how much the generational or that looking forward argument is going to play among Republican voters now.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And there's plenty of time to continue to take the temperature of Iowa caucus goers for sure. It's great to see you, Dana, thank you. Sara?

BASH: You too, Kate.

[11:23:29]

SIDNER: Still ahead on CNN News Central, the presidential election in Turkey is headed to a run off. The results could have a major impact globally, and specifically here in the United States. We'll explain why. Also, there's important new information this morning about sugar substitute turns out, they may not be as effective as hoped for people trying to lose weight. Details on that straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: The expected surge in migrants crossing the southern border after the end of the Title 42 has not happened. Last week during the final days of the COVID-era public health policy crossings were topping some 10,000 people per day.

Now they're just over 4,000 in response to the dramatic drop, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned it is too early to know if border crossings have peaked still, U.S. cities on the border and beyond are dealing with a major influx of migrants.

Local leaders in places like New York and Denver are asking for federal resources to help with housing and resources for those migrants. Joining me now to discuss is the mayor of Denver, Colorado. Michael Hancock, thank you so much for joining us at this hour.

MAYOR MICHAEL HANCOCK (D), DENVER: Absolutely. Glad to be with you.

SIDNER: All right. Let me ask you this, border officials are saying, look, we're not seeing this huge surge that we were worried about after the end of Title 42. But there was a surge before that. Are you seeing any relief in the number of migrants that have flocked to your city?

[11:29:46]

Yes, so over the last four days, we actually have seen a bit of a low. But we are cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to see -- continue to see this number. But this is you know, we expected to see kind of a surge in the latter part of May and early June. So we'll wait to see what happens. But in the meantime, we'll continue to serve those who are here and do what we can prepare for a potential influx.