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Immigration Crackdown; Trump May Invite January 6 Convicts to White House; Trump Targets DEI. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired January 22, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:15]

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Donald Trump's war on DEI is on, the president slashing jobs that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government, as its crackdown on immigration ramps up, with a threat for any state or local official who refuses to get on board.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus: from prison to the White House. January 6 convicts could soon be hosted at the executive mansion, our latest reporting.

And an unprecedented deep freeze, towns along the Gulf Coast paralyzed by a winter storm. And record-breaking snow in the Sunshine State?

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

HILL: We are following a very busy day here in Washington, as President Trump moves full steam ahead to reshape the government on now day three of his return to the White House.

Just hours from now, a major deadline in Trump's effort to gut the federal government of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. His administration is directing all DEI staffers across all federal agencies be placed on leave by 5:00 p.m. today. DEI offices, trainings, and Web sites, they are all set to shutter.

Meantime, we may be seeing the first signs of a divide between Trump and Elon Musk, as the tech billionaire bashes his boss' massive A.I. project. There's also more fallout from Trump's pardons of those convicted in the January 6 insurrection. We are now hearing administration officials are discussing whether to invite some of them to the White House.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is at the White House for us following all of these developments.

So, first of all, Jeff, let's start with this war against DEI. What specifically is the intended message here?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica, by the close of business today, the president has directed all diversity, equity and inclusion programs to be dismantled, effectively shuttled or shattered and shuttered, whichever word you would like to use. Look, this is what is just one more example of those executive orders

that were signed on Monday. Now they are taking effect. The government is now becoming the government of this president. And this should be no surprise. He talked about on the campaign trail as well.

So what they are doing is placing all these DEI workers on administrative leave starting at 5:00 p.m. And, after next week, some of them may be dismissed. Of course, many of these employees have the protections of the federal government. This is not the end of this. This is just the beginning of this process.

But, Erica, perhaps even more interesting, the president with this executive order also sending the message to the private sector, encouraging them to do the same. Of course, the bigger picture to all of this, Republicans and the president have been railing against the DEI effort. So they say they have been -- essentially have gone overboard.

So now he is taking this step, but certainly many questions about what the effect this actually will have on individual people, policies and employees of this government.

HILL: Yes, absolutely.

I also want to ask you about this sort of shift, I guess public shift, that we're seeing from Elon Musk, these comments about this A.I. initiative and these billions that were pledged. Is it a rift?

ZELENY: Erica, this is incredibly interesting. Yesterday -- just a bit of the backstory here, yesterday, the president standing with three CEOs who were pledging $100 billion, up to $500 billion potentially to build investment infrastructure for A.I. data centers. It was the high point of the president's agenda yesterday. He called it tremendous. He called it monumental.

Well, a short time after that, Elon Musk, who, of course, is an adviser to this president, he's been at his side for days and really for the last couple months, he effectively belittled it. He said these companies don't have the money for this. They can't do this.

Of course, the backstory to all of this is, Elon Musk has been at a war with Sam Altman and OpenAI back and forth, so just another example here of the conflicts that come when these titans of business come together here, but very unusual for Elon Musk to be criticizing the president's big initiative yesterday.

The White House has not had a comment on Elon Musk's comments.

HILL: Yes, that is also interesting in and of itself, the no comment there.

Donald Trump has been facing backlash, of course, since he announced these pardons and commutations for a number of the January 6 defendants. But now there is a discussion, as I understand it, that some of them may actually be visiting the White House and potentially meeting Donald Trump? ZELENY: We are told that that is a discussion that's under way.

Of course, this has been one of the biggest decisions the president has made since taking office, issuing that mass pardon on Monday evening here. We saw it happening live. He was in the Oval Office. And now, of course, he may be inviting some of those defendants, the convicted defendants here. It's unclear who, unclear how many.

[13:05:07]

But this is something that has also been controversial within some ranks of the president's own party. And it's not that some pardons were not warranted in the eyes of some, but it was that no distinction was made between the violence that was done versus the others.

But, in any case, there could be some of those defendants, those convicted defendants, coming here to have a conversation at some point. The president has been in touch with many of these defendants over several months. They often were the subject of campaign rallies. He called them hostages. Of course, they were not.

So it would not be at all surprising that there would be a meeting of some kind at some point here at the White House -- Erica.

HILL: Jeff Zeleny with the very latest for us.

Thanks, Jeff -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Right now, we're seeing President Trump's immigration crackdown ramping up. CNN has learned that the U.S. military is ordering thousands more active-duty troops to the southern border. Thousands are already there.

And, in a new memo, the Justice Department is laying out plans to potentially prosecute state and local officials who resist enforcing Trump's immigration policies. The threat comes as federal authorities get the green light to make arrests in schools and churches, places that were previously considered protected areas.

Meantime, roughly 10,000 refugees who were set to travel to the United States have just had their flights canceled, according to a State Department memo.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez joins us now with the latest.

Priscilla, let's start with what you're learning about more troops heading to the U.S. border.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the key there is the more.

So the Pentagon has assisted along the U.S. southern border for years, but now we're expecting them to step up their presence on the heels of President Trump's executive order earlier this week. So what does that look like? Well, sources tell me that they can assist in multiple ways. They can

help with readiness, operational readiness, assisting Border Patrol with that, so that they can also be on the front lines, which is where they and the president has said he wants them to be, relinquishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been helping a lot on the U.S. southern border and letting them go back to the interior and focus on arrests, then too helping with intelligence, so watching flows and threats, and also air support, so augmenting those air operations.

So a lot of this is just putting more of the Pentagon resources to help with the Border Patrol agents on the U.S. southern border. The question that we still have, though, is, how much money is the Department of Homeland Security going to be able to take from them? That is really a big part of a national emergency declaration. That is still an answer.

But, certainly, this is an attempt by the administration to just shore up more resources on the border.

SANCHEZ: And tell us about this new reporting on the refugees who were slated to travel to the U.S. after waiting for years. They now have had their flights canceled.

ALVAREZ: They have.

I mean, this was happening over the course of just hours last night. I obtained a memo from the State Department to its resettlement partner, saying, if you had previously scheduled flights, those are now canceled. There will be no new travel bookings.

And the cases that are being processed, they're not going to be processed anymore. That is suspended for the time being. What does that mean? Well, this program is essentially shuttered now; 10,000 people who have gone through a yearslong and very cumbersome process to come to the United States will no longer be able to until that is turned back on again.

But this has been quite stunning for a lot of resettlement partners, who actually expected that the executive order was going to take effect on January 27. That's what it said in the text. But they got this message last night saying, if anyone had flights, they're out of luck.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

Priscilla Alvarez, thanks so much for the update.

Joining us right now is the former acting deputy secretary of homeland security under Donald Trump, Ken Cuccinelli.

Ken, thank you so much for being with us.

I first want to ask you about this new memo from the Justice Department laying out these plans to potentially prosecute state and local officials who don't help the administration's deportation efforts.

KEN CUCCINELLI, FORMER ACTING DEPUTY SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Right.

SANCHEZ: What kind of penalties might people be looking at?

CUCCINELLI: So this, I think, is a DOJ follow-on to the Tom Homan comments during the transition, when you had people like Governor Pritzker and the mayor of Denver saying we're going to stand in the way.

And, of course, that violates the harboring illegal aliens federal statute. So I think that's what this is directed to. It does take an affirmative act to violate the federal law in terms of impeding the federal government from removing illegal aliens.

So all their big talk is not illegal. But if they take affirmative actions to actually stop the federal government or slow it down, that could in fact violate federal law. That's what I believe this memo is directed to. And I think it's to make it very clear to state and local officials across the country that, even if you're not going to cooperate, if you actually get in the way, you will subject yourself to criminal prosecution.

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SANCHEZ: I also want to ask you about the revised policy that would allow ICE agents and essentially deportation forces to enter schools and churches.

This morning, I actually heard from some concerned parents who had gotten letters from their children's school outlining how administrators would respond if ICE agents showed up inquiring about students or staff. I'm just curious, what would you say to the parents who fear their kids might see a friend or a teacher deported right in front of them?

CUCCINELLI: Yes, this obviously signals a tougher approach than in the first Trump administration.

Of course, President Trump talked about this tougher approach during the campaign. And this is just one of the many ways that it is going to unfold. And I don't think you're going to see huge numbers of pickups at any of these what used to be called sensitive locations.

Nonetheless, I think the president is signaling that no place is off- limits and that we're going to be as efficient and fast and effective as possible in deporting as many people as we can. And the reality is that places or occurrences like crimes more commonly discussed where people may present themselves and it may be already known that they're not here legally is an efficient way to identify folks and to deport them.

And I realize that people can be uncomfortable with that, but this president has promised to deport more people than any president in history. And that's going to take an awful lot of new undertakings that we haven't seen in our adult lifetimes in terms of deportation practices.

SANCHEZ: I'm also curious about a question of how some of these efforts are going to be funded.

Our reporting indicates that ice is underfunded and that more complex operations like larger sweeps, raids, so to speak, they might have to wait until there are additional resources. And if that has to come from Congress, I wonder what you think Republicans should offer Democrats in blue areas, even sanctuary cities, to secure that kind of funding.

CUCCINELLI: Well, we're near the earliest part of the fiscal year, so I have -- if I were in the administration, I would be gambling that my Republican allies in Congress can deliver more money later in the year.

And I would be front-loading those budgets to commence the acceleration of these efforts now. If all you had was the budget in place now, I agree with your statement, they'd have to pace themselves out. But I think they're going to be pressing ahead, and I think they're going to front-load their current budgets, so that they can conduct more operations now and get started sooner and faster, because it's going to take a long time to ramp up to meaningful efficiencies in the deportation space in particular, not so much on the border, but in the deportation space.

SANCHEZ: Sure. It'll be interesting to see how that is handled by Congress.

I do want to ask about something that you, I know, have spent a long time working on, and that is this effort to do away with birthright citizenship. This executive order that President Trump signed essentially rewriting or reinterpreting the 14th Amendment, it states that the 14th Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone in the United States, but it has, repeatedly, in 1898, in 1982.

Do you expect that this E.O. is actually going to hold up in court?

CUCCINELLI: Well, no, I mean, your premise is incorrect.

The Supreme Court has addressed this subject once. It was the 1898 case you're referring to, and the parents there were the equivalent of green card holders. They were legally present in the United States. This has not been decided in a situation where the child born in the United States did not have parents either of whom were legally present in the United States.

And so the president is acting on the second half of that proportion of the 14th Amendment that says that people born here have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Well, that was understood at the time when that -- when the 14th Amendment was passed, same year, by the way, as the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which addressed the subject with similar language, not subject to other authority, meaning that they weren't a citizen of another country. Well, these people obviously are. And so this will be the beginning of

a legal contest by those who think the president's interpretation is correct, obviously, the administration, and those who wish to contest it. And now it will be decided by courts, but it never has been before. That's why it is open to his executive action.

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SANCHEZ: Well, then help me understand how that fits into the context of Plyler v. Doe back in 1982. The majority rule that people in the country illegally -- confirmed that the 14th Amendment's protection extended to anyone, citizen or stranger who is subject to the laws of a state.

It essentially suggests that people who are in the country, who are born in this country have citizenship regardless of who their parents are, does it not?

CUCCINELLI: No, that is not what was decided in Plyler v. Doe.

The application of the 14th Amendment's protections doesn't mean that, upon birth, someone is a citizen. That's not the protections that were at issue in Plyler v. Doe. So we're going to have this decided during this Trump administration, and each of us may have a different view of how this is likely to come out.

(CROSSTALK)

CUCCINELLI: But whatever that is, it's going to be settled for the rest of American history.

SANCHEZ: You do acknowledge that this is an uncommon reading of the 14th Amendment, no?

CUCCINELLI: It wasn't an uncommon reading in 1866. It has become uncommon over the years because of nothing more than conventional wisdom. But will -- the law is the law. In theory, it's not supposed to have changed since it was implemented.

And if that's the case, the president is going to win this case.

SANCHEZ: It is a unique reading of the law.

I do wonder if you think that the administration is hoping that a more conservative Supreme Court, who has gone against precedent before, might not see the conventional wisdom, as you describe it. Is this an attempt to get the court to do away with precedent?

CUCCINELLI: Well, there is no precedent to do away with, so no.

However, this is the most originalist court we have ever had, and if they view it in terms it was intended in 1866, then I think the president is going to win this case.

SANCHEZ: All right, Ken Cuccinelli, we have to leave the conversation there. I appreciate you sharing your perspective. CUCCINELLI: Good to be with you.

SANCHEZ: We have some breaking news into CNN.

National police say that at least two students have been shot at Antioch High School. Officials say a student shot them in the school cafeteria before turning the weapon ON themselves. They say the shooter is no longer a threat. We're, of course, tracking this story out of Tennessee. We're going to get you more information as we get it.

We understand that agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say they are also responding to the scene. Again, the breaking news, two people shot at a school in Nashville, the shooter, though, no longer a threat.

Also still to come on CNN NEWS CENTRAL: As January 6 defendants are pardoned and released from custody or probation, not every defendant is on board. We're actually going to speak to one who refused to accept a pardon from President Trump.

Plus, Trump's pick for defense secretary is defending himself against new allegations. Will that impact his confirmation vote in the Senate?

And, later, much of the South is having a second snow day as the bitterly cold temperatures continue. Snow in the Sunshine State, hard to believe.

We will be right back.

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SANCHEZ: The fallout from President Trump's pardon of hundreds of January 6 criminals continues.

We're learning the Justice Department is notifying Capitol Police officers who testified in court that the J6 offenders they helped to convict are getting out of prison. One of the officers attacked, former Capitol Police Staff Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, posted these screenshots of Justice Department calls and e-mails that he's received since President Donald Trump granted mass clemency to the January 6 criminals.

Now we're hearing from one of the most serious offenders of that day, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys.

Let's go to CNN's Katelyn Polantz with the details. She's outside the D.C. jail where the defendants are being released.

Katelyn, tell us about this interview that Tarrio gave to Alex Jones.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Boris, Enrique Tarrio is serving a sentence of 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy, now the recipient of a full pardon. And all of the people who were still doing time in federal prisons

across the country because of January 6 Capitol riot crimes, they have been released. They're out, whether their sentence was commuted or, like the vast majority, like 1,000 people or more, including Tarrio, they have been released from prison.

Here at the D.C. jail, people are being let out because they are here very likely because they're still awaiting proceedings in their cases. So they are not pardoned recipients. They're people that Donald Trump wants to have his Justice Department dismiss their cases. Those people are coming out very sporadically.

And so there still are people being held in the D.C. jail who are either facing charges related to January 6 or were awaiting sentencing, having been convicted by a jury or pled guilty. We are waiting to see what the judges do there.

But Enrique Tarrio was a little different than the people who come out of this jail and are received with open arms, hugs, prayers, songs of their supporters. Enrique Tarrio had something much different to say. Here's him with Alex Jones yesterday after his release.

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(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ENRIQUE TARRIO, PROUD BOYS LEADER: The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars and they need to be prosecuted. We need people like Pam Bondi, Kash Patel and the rest of Trump's Cabinet to right all these wrongs.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

POLANTZ: That said, this is not just up to the executive branch. There are judges overseeing the pending cases, more than 300, that Donald Trump and his Justice Department want to have dismissed against Capitol rioters.

And one judge there this afternoon is essentially pushing back on the part of the judiciary. One of the first people to speak out from the federal bench in D.C. that handled the 1,500 or so of these cases in the system for the past several years, Judge Kollar-Kotelly, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a senior judge.

She wrote in an order dismissing a case saying: "I'm going to do what the executive branch wants me to do here, dismiss this case. But, first, I want to record for posterity these facts. Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens.

"Those records are immutable and represent the truth no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies. What role law enforcement played that day and the heroism of each officer who responded cannot be altered or ignored."

Judge Kollar-Kotelly ends her writing about January 6, saying: "The bear spray -- standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, the police officers carried out their duty to protect on January 6" -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Katelyn Polantz outside the jail in the nation's capital, thank you so much -- Erica.

HILL: Well, our next guest refused to accept President Trump's pardon for her actions on January 6.

Pam Hemphill served two months in federal prison after pleading guilty to trespassing, picketing, and parading inside the Capitol on that day.

Pam, as I noted, you rejected this offer of a pardon from President Trump. What's been the reaction to your decision?

PAM HEMPHILL, REJECTED OFFER FOR JANUARY 6 PARDON: You mean from other people?

HILL: Just from other people, yes. What have you heard?

HEMPHILL: The reaction, we -- well, a lot of people have been telling me to take the pardon. And then others are very happy that I'm not.

But this has to do with part of my amends. Otherwise, you're going along with the -- they're trying to rewrite history that January 6 was not an insurrection. And I don't want to be a part of that. It was an insurrection. It was a riot. It would be a slap in the face to the Capitol Police and to the rule of law.

No, I don't want any part of no pardon. And we're looking into how to get that -- who I talk to. I have talked to my attorney, and I have let my probation officer know that I will not be accepting this pardon. It's only going to help with their gaslighting, their propaganda that the DOJ was weaponized against them.

It's going to make it worse. And Trump -- and it's not true. The DOJ was not weaponized against me. In fact, I had a wonderful judge, Lamberth. And I'm lucky I didn't get more time. But I don't want any part of no pardon.

HILL: We have also just learned earlier today that the White House is now in discussions to potentially host some of the people who were pardoned by President Trump.

What do you think that message sends, a White House visit?

HEMPHILL: That they're trying to rewrite history, that what we saw with our own eyes did not really happen the way that media is saying it happened.

And it -- I mean, the far right, their narrative -- lookit, I have got a letter written to Congress. I hope they bring me in and let me read my letter of what happened that day. It's just so shameful, just so disgusting to even think that they would be invited to the White House.

I just heard that too, and it disgusts me. Those are criminals.

(CROSSTALK)

HEMPHILL: But what do we have? Trump's a criminal. Of course he's going to invite the criminals.

HILL: You noted you wrote that letter.

You want it -- you would like to come speak with Congress. Speaker Johnson actually just spoke with my colleague Manu Raju and addressed specifically these pardons.

I think you will find this part of his response interesting. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): I think what -- that the -- what was made clear all along is that peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished. There was a weaponization of the Justice Department.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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