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Trump Speaks And Signs Laken Riley Act Into Law; White House Rescinds Memo On Federal Aid Freeze; Trump Ordering Guantanamo Bay Facility Be Prepared To House Migrants. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired January 29, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Where's Scott? He just got approved.

Scott, I'm very impressed.

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Got a lot of Democrat votes. He got a lot of Democrat votes. That's great. I don't know, is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'll have to think about that.

Secretary of homeland security, who's going to be fantastic. I know her so well. And I know it's probably not complimentary because she is a woman, but she is tough. Where is she? Where is Kristi?

Kristi, Kristi, great, stand up please. You have such an important job to do.

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Really great. Thank you very much.

And don't let that look fool you. That look is -- she's -- she's tough. And she cannot stand what she's -- that she's having to sit here and even listen to this today.

Another one who's done a job like nobody that I've seen in a long time, Tom Homan. He's my friend, but he is something special.

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He is something special? Right.

And Tom and Kristi, the numbers are unbelievable, what's happened. It's like just shut down. Nobody thought that was even possible. It just shut down. They showed an area that a year ago had thousands and thousands of people rushing into our country. And today there was nobody there. It was like beautiful sight.

And also Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, great guy, great guy. Thank you, John.

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And I also want to thank the bill's sponsors, Senator Katie Britt. Katie, thank you, Katie.

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And Congressman Mike Collins. And, Mike, you were fantastic -- from Georgia. He took -- he took this...

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He loves his state, and he took this very personally, so it's -- thank you very much, Mike.

As well as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. Chuck is here someplace.

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Chuck, thank you very much. You look great.

And House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who is a special guy, a special man.

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And House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green.

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Thank you very much. Thank you, Mark.

And we have many other congressmen and senators, but I'm not going to introduce because this is about your daughter. This is about something that's so important, and we're going to just go along. Thank you.

Also, we have to say Burt Jones is in the room, and Burt is your lieutenant governor, and he was on this like you wouldn't believe.

Thank you very much. I see you sitting there. Thank you very much.

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So we have state, local officials. We have law enforcement organizations. We have everybody. Most of them are in the room or represented in the room, and they're incredible people, and I've never seen them come together like they have for this. I've done many of these, not of this kind, but different bills, different passages having to do with many different things from -- from homeland security, to inter-security, to taxes, to 50 different items. I've never seen such support as you have today, and as your great daughter has today. So I've never seen anything like it, and we have to thank your daughter for that because she's going to save a lot of lives. She's going to be responsible for saving a lot of lives.

So I'd like to just say to the Angel Families, I've been with them and they've been with me from 2015, when I first got this crazy idea in my head to run for president because we can do better as a country. I want to thank so many of the people that are here that have been -- the -- the Angel Moms, and we call them Angel Moms, but they're Angel Families, fathers and sons and daughters. But they've suffered tremendously like you have -- no reason whatsoever.

I want to thank Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, murdered last summer by two illegal alien gang members released into the United States by Joe Biden's open borders, stupid policies.

And thank you very much, Alexis. I want to thank you very much. We had a -- an amazing trip, and we -- it's -- it was really special to meet you and your family. Appreciate it very much. So bad. So sad we have to be here, frankly. And Jocelyn, as you know, is in our hearts, as she was then. It was an amazing day we had, a great day, but it was a day of celebration of somebody that, unfortunately, won't be with us. But she is with us now. You know that.

Here also is Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, killed two years ago by an illegal alien who was let into our country by the last administration's ridiculous, weak policies.

Open border, can you imagine? When I heard "open border", I said, "Oh, that's terrible. They're going to release their prisons all over the world. They're going to release their prisons into our country." That's exactly what happened.

Patty is joined by Rachel's brother, Michael, Rachel's daughter, Clementine and sister-in-law, Shannon. Thank you all for being here. We appreciate it very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

With us as well is the loving family of Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old girl murdered in July, 2022 by the MS-13 illegal alien gang member who is violent, vicious, and they knew it, and they didn't do anything about it. And I want to thank you, too, Kayla's mother, Tammy, and her grandmother, Cathy and her stepfather, Jeremiah, very much.

And finally, I want to thank others who have also suffered this horrible scourge that goes on with young people being killed, and other people, too, but young people, largely young people being killed.

Thank you to Scott Root, the father of Sarah Root, killed at 21 years of age -- think of that, 21 -- by an illegal alien; shouldn't have been in our country; would've never been in our country if we were here. What a sad thing.

To each of these Angel Families, we love you and we stand in awe of your courage and your strength. It's the toughest thing anybody has to go through. Many of the Angel Families here today were betrayed by the last administration, and with this heartless and foolish and really, very, very arrogant and -- and very, very dumb policies, policies that aren't even believable when you talk about common sense. I say we're the party of common sense. But the Democrats also, they have plenty of common sense, and that's why so many are here today and so many supported what we're doing.

The very government that was supposed to protect their daughters instead opened our borders and transported the world's most dangerous criminals straight into their communities. They came from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions from all over the world, not just South America. People think South America. But they come from all over the world. They come from every continent, and they came here by plane, and they were loaded onto buses and they were driven right up to our border, and they drove right through the border, and nobody even said a word to 'em. And in those buses and those cars and those trucks were some of the meanest criminals anywhere in the world.

As of last September, 425,000 illegal alien criminals were roaming free, including 13,099 convicted illegal alien murderers, of which about almost 50 percent killed more than one person, and they were roaming all over the country, in our farms, in our cities.

Under the Trump administration, we're moving with urgency and speed to get these vicious and violent criminals the hell out of our country and to restore law and order to our suburbs, our cities and our towns, and we're going to do it with Tom and with Kristi and with all of the people that are working so hard on this.

This week, compared to a comparable time a year ago -- think of this -- the number of illegal border crossers has already fallen by more than 100 percent. And because the election was coming, they started getting a little bit tougher on the border. They tried to follow our policies and they did much better, but it still was horrible. The numbers were still horrible. So that's 100 percent over those. They only did it because of the election, so they knew -- they knew what they were doing was wrong.

And those who do cross the border -- and you're seeing that every time. All you have to do is turn on your television set or pick up a newspaper or read any form of new media -- because we have a lot in new media today, fortunately, that's letting the word get out. But they're watching these people be captured and removed from our country. ICE arrests have risen by 15 time, 15 times in just a short period.

And over the past eight days, the heroes of ICE and Border Patrol -- I -- we can never forget Border Patrol. Those people, I've gotten to know so many of them. Our border czar, as you remember, never went to the border and never made a phone call. She was the border czar. She never made one phone call. They went to the heads of border. They went to the heads of ICE. "Did you ever get a call?" "No." And she admitted she never made one call, but she was the border czar. And that's exactly what our border was all about.

The heroes of ICE have arrested thousands and thousands of illegal alien criminals, including hundreds of gang members, traffickers, child predators, terrorists and murderers. For the first time in history, we are loading dangerous and illegal aliens into military aircraft and flying them back to the places from which they came. You probably read about Colombia two days ago. They said, no, we're not taking them. And I said, we're going to take them. You're going to take them. You're going to like it too. You're going to take them.

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[14:40:05]

They talked about, we're not going to take people that are in shackles. I said, well, but the people that are in shackles are murderers. They're drug lords. They're rapists. They're very tough people. They make our criminals look like very nice people. That's about the only thing that comes out of this. And I said, could you imagine you're a pilot on the plane and you have your copilot and you're sitting there and you have 150 people, no shackles, and they like to murder people. This is not a good -- this would not be a good flight.

(LAUGHTER)

So actually, so Colombia apologized to us profusely within an hour based on something I said, meaning, you're going to pay tariffs like nobody's ever paid tariffs before. But they -- they actually wanted to terminate his -- his position. Their, essentially, congress met and they were very angry with him. But they actually said they were going to send the presidential plane to pick up these criminals and to bring them because they didn't want to inconvenience us or have us do a second flight. And that's what they did. And I appreciate it.

And I do appreciate the people of Colombia, are wonderful people. And the representatives really acted well. And I appreciated they took back that tough talk. But, you know, we may have tough talk from others, but it's not going to mean anything. They're going to all take them back and they're going to like it too. They're going to like it. They're going to take it back and they're going to like it.

Today I'm also signing an executive order to instruct the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30 000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay. Most people don't even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them, because we don't want them coming back. So we're going to send them out to Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And tough. That's a tough -- that's a tough place to get out of.

Today's signings bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all. And it was just a purely -- it's just an unforced error that we even have to be doing this. Now we need Congress to provide full funding for the complete and total restoration of our sovereign borders, as well as financial support to remove record numbers of illegal aliens.

And these are illegal alien killers, criminals at levels that nobody's ever seen before. And you would have known that. And you were there when I said it. I said, everybody that's bad is going to be thrown. If you look at Venezuela, Venezuela's crime is down 77 percent because they've taken their gang members, their prisoners, their drug dealers, their drug lords, they've shipped them all into the United States. Many other countries, their crime is way down and our crime is not doing well. But we're going to have it do really well very soon. And we're shipping all these people back where they came from.

And now, before I sign the Laken Riley Act into law, I would like to ask Laken's really incredible mother, who I've gotten to know, a very sad day, I got to know her. But this is an amazing tribute to an amazing young person. And if you could come up, Allyson, and say a few words, that would be great.

Thank you very much.

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PHILLIPS: Thank you, President Trump. We would like to thank Senator Katie Britt for her diligent bipartisan work to get this bill through the Senate. We'd also like to thank Congressman Mike Collins for his unwavering passion and for leading on the Laken Riley Act from the start.

Our family will forever be grateful for the prayers of the people across our nation and for helping to get this legislation into law. We also want to thank President Trump for the promises he made to us. He said he would secure our borders and that he would never forget about Laken. And he hasn't. He's a man of his word. And we trust that he will fight for the American people.

Most importantly, I want to thank our Lord and savior Jesus Christ because without his sacrifices, Laken's story would have ended on that horrific day that she was taken from us, but because of him, we can continue living, knowing that we will see Laken again.

There's no amount of change that will ever bring back our precious Laken. Our hope moving forward is that her life saves lives. We're so thankful that her passion for helping others and her legacy for doing good in the name of Jesus Christ will carry on.

Thank you.

TRUMP: Thank you.

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(CROSS-TALK)

Thank you. I'm going to sign this in honor of Laken Riley. Go on (inaudible) some of the people that we love (inaudible) been so instrumental. OK? OK.

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(CROSS-TALK)

QUESTION: ... government funding -- can you take a question on government funding (inaudible)?

TRUMP: I don't think this is appropriate time really. I respect that, but I don't think it's appropriate. I could just tell you government is doing very well and we're cutting way back, but this is not the appropriate time. Thank you. OK?

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[14:46:31]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: And you're watching there as President Trump leaves signing his first piece of legislation into law, the Laken Riley Act. There with family members of Laken Riley. An emotional moment there for the family.

Also, though, the president making some news in the -- on the immigration front, saying that he has ordered Guantanamo Bay to be prepared for to house migrants. He says 30,000 beds.

Also, Boris, he -- he had a number of kind of he wanted to take essentially a victory lap on some of his -- his immigration measures, some of which the stats are just not -- not correct.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Notably, the president there saying that ICE arrests are up 15 times. We're going to fact-check that in just a moment.

You're absolutely right, Jessica, that, in large part, this was a victory lap for President Trump as he took a moment to dedicate this bill signing to Laken Riley, that 22-year-old slain nursing student.

He described her as unbelievable, repeatedly referenced her mom in the crowd.

Notable that the president did not want to take questions on federal funding at the end of this ceremony after he signed the bill.

But to start his remarks, he actually referenced a number of executive orders, not the least of which is this order regarding federal workers. He described people that we're working from home as not being productive.

He referred to studies that say they've gone through the motions for years, and now the federal government is requiring them to work from home. We'll dig into all of those details in a moment.

But the president there also blamed the media for confusion related to this freeze of federal funding programs, grants and loans. It was lawmakers, including Republicans, who expressed uncertainty about exactly what it meant for programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels.

This comes just moments after the White House rescinded through OMB this order that froze trillions of dollars in federal funds.

Let's dig deeper into the details of everything we just heard -- DEAN: A lot here, yes.

SANCHEZ: -- from President Trump.

I believe we have Jeff Zeleny live for us at the White House who has been tracking all of this. We have Priscilla Alvarez to break down news on the immigration front. Elliot Williams is also with us to break down the legal implications of implementing this bill.

Jeff, let's start with you.

What stood out from this news that President Trump just made?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Boris, I think, to your point there, you said the -- the president referenced the -- the making room at Guantanamo Bay for 30,000 beds.

That is something that we've not heard from him directly. But Priscilla will talk about that more in a moment, I'm sure.

But as for the federal funding, I mean, what we saw there was the president trying to have the upper hand and say this was not a reversal, again, blaming it on the confusion that was sown, not taking responsibility for the confusion that his government was playing the leading role in here.

And we have heard so much backlash and a pushback from lawmakers of both parties saying that constituents simply were concerned and worried about the funding for loans and grants that really affect so many parts of American life.

[14:50:05]

But the president there making clear, he said, we're merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy. Well, the reality is the Office of Management and Budget, as you said, has rescinded that order to do a broad freeze over $3 trillion in government spending.

A federal judge last evening put a pause on that, essentially saying, hold up, we will wait until Monday when both sides can sort of argue this case.

But the White House rescinding that perhaps out of fear that they might not be on solid legal ground there. That is what many folks were thinking.

But also making clear that he is leaving in place those executive orders he signed last week on the funding for foreign aid, on the funding to eliminate programs for diversity, equity and inclusion.

So a much more narrowed freeze of programs, rather than that broad brush that he painted that really caused so much alarm.

But there is no doubt this is a significant moment for signing this bipartisan bill into legislation. Some Democrats, obviously, also came on board. They know immigration was a major concern in the campaign. It's something that they are struggling to sort of come to terms with.

So the president really, on day nine, signing a piece of legislation which is no small feat as well. But certainly for the rest of the fact-checking, there is much, much to break down -- Boris and Jessica?

DEAN: So let's do some of that.

Yes, Jeff, thank you so much for bringing us up to speed on that piece of it.

Let's go to Priscilla Alvarez now, who follows this immigration policy so closely.

Priscilla, I'm going to kind of let you take it away. But certainly the top notes here, the Guantanamo Bay news that he's ordering that to be prepared to House migrants.

And also some of the statistics he was giving, as Boris mentioned, specifically, that there have been 15 times the amount of ICE arrests just are not correct.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, of course, this has been a signature issue for President Trump. And he took this moment to take that victory lap as he was signing this first bill on immigration.

And in the course of those remarks, he made news about the use of the -- of Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants.

Now, just for some context here, at -- Guantanamo Bay does have a migrant operation center. That has been the case for years. Typically, it has been used when migrants are intercepted at sea by Coast Guard, so in the Caribbean, to temporarily hold them and repatriate them.

Now, over the years, including under the Biden administration, it was reviewed again because of concerns of multiple surges. But they did not take this route of growing it to hold more migrants.

But what the president said there was that it would be used for 30,000 beds. Now, that is a considerable number of beds.

And there are still a lot of details here, because intercepting people at sea and then holding them temporarily there to repatriate them would be different than if this were to be used, for example, for people who are arrested in the interior of the United States.

So we will still be collecting more information and details on how exactly that's going to work.

But it is telling of something that the administration is already grappling with, which is, of course, detention space. While they have increased arrests over the last several days -- and I'll get into that in a moment -- they also are quite limited in how much detention space they have.

This has been true for many administrations, simply because Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been historically underfunded. So in some respects, this, along with news last night that they would

be using a military base to hold immigrants, is telling of the way that they are building out this immigration enforcement apparatus and looking to the Defense Department to do exactly that.

Now, in terms of the arrests, yes, there has been an increase of arrests in the interior of the United States over the last several days. The daily numbers have been higher than they were, going up to about 1000 or more. That's more than Biden administration over the last year of about 300 arrests.

There is a question there of sustainability. And they have also been deploying DOJ agencies to also augment these operations. And the numbers, of course, of those -- of who exactly is making up the totals, we're still trying to get a better breakdown.

Of course, they say it's public safety and national security threats, but certainly the numbers have gone up, just not by 15 times.

Then I want to get into, he said nobody trying to get in at the border. The president is right. There's not that many people trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The numbers have plummeted since last summer. But there are still border crossings.

Of course, it has become increasingly difficult for those crossing because asylum access has essentially been sealed off at the U.S.- Mexico border. But clearly, the president, taking a moment there to -- to applaud Tom Homan, the border czar, and his Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem.

[14:55:00]

So he appears to be happy with the results he's seeing so far as the White House is, of course, applying a lot of pressure to those out on the field to deliver.

SANCHEZ: Elliot, quickly to you.

The legality of sending migrants to Guantanamo Bay from the continental U.S., as Priscilla pointed out, folks that were -- basically crossed at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, have been sent there in the past. Notably, a lot of Cubans.

I do wonder what the process is like to fill those 30,000 beds.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right. The issue, the biggest legal issue, Boris, isn't just the use of the space. It's, number one, how is it being paid for?

And number two, who are the personnel processing those bodies? Military, under our law, is generally prohibited from engaging in domestic civil enforcement, including immigration enforcement.

So the question would be, who is processing these folks at Guantanamo Bay? And I am certain that Congress, if not outside groups, will have questions as to how these folks are being housed at Guantanamo Bay. But just the mere use of the space, yes, the government does have some

latitude to do that. And to Priscillas point, when we're talking about 30,000 beds, that's nearly doubling the bed capacity, nearly doubling the bed capacity.

DEAN: Uh-oh. We lost Elliot.

SANCHEZ: Oh.

DEAN: Almost got the whole point there.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

DEAN: But -- but thanks to Elliot Williams. Sorry, we lost you.

SANCHEZ: Our thanks to Elliot, Priscilla and Jeff.

Still to come, Senators grilling President Trump's controversial pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. What RFK Jr said about vaccines and other critical topics, coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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