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Reuters: At Least 290 Dead After Air India Crash; Survivor Of India Plane Crash: "It Happened So Quickly"; Trump Signals Potential Immigration Policy Shifts To Help Farmers; Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired June 12, 2025 - 01:00   ET

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

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[13:01:04]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: We do have breaking news. A London-bound passenger plane carrying 242 people crashed moments after it took off from an airport India. And the exact number of deaths and injuries on the ground at this point is still unknown. But police say that at least one passenger on board did survive.

BORIS SANCHEZ: And we are just hours away from another possible escalation. U.S. Northern Command says that Marines will soon be deployed in Los Angeles. And CNN is learning new details behind the president's use of the military for immigration enforcement. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

We are following this breaking news out of India, where a commercial airliner with 242 people on board crashed just moments after takeoff. Reuters is now reporting that at least two hundred and ninety people have died. They're citing officials saying the death toll includes students as well on the ground in a medical building that the jetliner crashed into. Officials also say at least one passenger on the plane did survive.

We're told he's a British national and just moments ago Indian officials met with him at the hospital where he is being treated. You see in this picture here the crash caught on camera. We want to warn you the video may be distressing here. It shows the plane losing altitude just after takeoff and gliding right into the ground there. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner igniting in a huge fireball and smoke plume. And this was the chaotic scene on the ground as rescue crews and residents were using hoses to try to douse the flames.

The plane hit a medical college where students had gathered in a dining hall for lunch. As many as 60 medical students at this point have been transported to hospitals in the area. There's still several other people who are missing. The Air India flight had just taken off from India's western city of Ahmadabad and it was bound for London's Gatwick Airport.

CNN's Nada Bashir is with us now from Gatwick. Nada, what are you learning about the crash and the passengers? NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, we are still getting more

information as it comes in from authorities in India and, of course, internationally. This has truly become a multinational investigation, but there are still mounting questions as to what led to this crash, and of course, real concern over the fate of the passengers and crew members on board and also those in the surrounding area that were impacted by the crash.

Now, what we know at this stage is that among the 242 passengers and crew members on board that Flight 169 were Indian nationals, 53 were British nationals, there were seven Portuguese nationals, and one Canadian national. And of course, we've been hearing throughout the day warnings from police officials and other authorities that there were fears that the majority of those on board that flight had been killed.

Now this remarkable news that there is believed to be one survivor. There are still questions as to whether there may be any further survivors. We had heard earlier in the day from the Air India chief suggesting that there had been some who were injured and then taken on to local hospitals for urgent care. But at this stage, no clarity just yet on the total number of casualties in the split between passengers, crew members, and of course, those that have been impacted in the local area.

What we do know, according to Reuters, citing local police officials, is that at least 290 people have been killed. And as you mentioned, the tragic news, of course, that this crash directly impacted a hostel for a local medical college that had been struck. Students gathered in the dining hall at the time of the crash, and that dozens have been taken to hospital suffering injuries.

We've heard from the Indian Medical Association and the Medical Students Network saying that at least three have been killed. But again, we are still waiting for those final details from officials with regards to the total Casualty Council will certainly be getting more updates throughout the day.

[13:05:15]

What can be said here from London where the plane had been due to land just outside of London and Gatwick airport at around 6:30 p.m. local time, is that there has been a clear response not only from airport officials but also, of course from the government.

Here at Gatwick, they have set up what is being described as a reception center, so somewhere for family members and relatives to go to in order to receive updates and also to, of course, receive support. Many of them will be briefed. The British government has expressed that it is coordinating very closely with authorities India.

And we know, of course, at this stage that a air accident investigation team from the U.K. will be traveling to India to support that investigation.

KEILAR: All right, Nada, thank you so much for that. We are joined now from the scene of this deadly crash by Arunima. She is a news editor for CNN News 18 in India. Arunima, can you give us a sense of the situation and what's happening now?

ARUNIMA, NEWS EDITOR, CNN NEWS 18: So I'm coming to you live from the hostel mess. This is the undergraduate hostel where the doctors were just preparing for lunch. The building is where the mess was situated, and you see the kind of mess that now remains of that hostel building. Home Minister of India, the Interior Minister Amit Shah has just visited and taken a firsthand inspection.

There's a tire right at the end where the stairs are. It's a little dark there so maybe you will not be able to catch a glimpse of that. But if I pan left, I can show you this is the remains of the aircraft. This is the baggage hold. This is where the baggage was stored. And if I zoom in further and I can show you the remains of the baggages of the belongings of those who were on that ill-fated aircraft.

There is a snack box there. There's also a football that perhaps a child was carrying there. There are personal belongings. There was also one holy book, a Bhagavad Gita which is the holy book of the Hindus that was also found in this particular area. So this is where the crash, the first half of the crash happened around 1:41 in the afternoon, India time.

This is where the cargo hotel hold as well as the tail end of the aircraft crashed. And then on my right is the residential area for the doctors. This is a medical college where the crash happened. This stretch of buildings that you see, that's where, you know, the doctors were and the second half of the plane, the two wings, crashed towards that side, and that is where the fuselage as well, the fuel tank of the aircraft carrying almost 1.25 lakh liters of fuel. That is where that crash happened.

And as a result of that crash and the fuel tank breaking apart, a number of people who were inside the quarters, they were engulfed in fire. I was speaking to a few survivors, first responders, people who operate the ambulance in this medical college premises. They said they pulled out at least 25 people with their back on fire, some who had their limbs and their clothes on fire. And it was a huge ball of fire.

So this tragedy actually unfolded at two level. One, as far as the survivor goes, you know, as far as the passengers of the aircraft are concerned, they managed to, you know, one of them managed to survive because he jumped out of the emergency exit. But this was where the first half of the tragedy unfolded at the mess premises. And then the second part of the tragedy unfolded just a few steps ahead at the staff quarters of the doctors there also, we are told a few people lost their lives. We are still waiting for the exact numbers.

KEILAR: Arunima, are officials securing the area there?

ARUNIMA: I will, I will just show you the area once again. So I've showed you these premises, this part where the hospital, you know, mess was. This is the mess for the undergraduates. We'll try and show you what remains. Let's zoom in once again. Debris, furnitures, the doctors had come there, the undergraduate

doctors had come here to have their meal. That's when the crash happened. This white little part of the aircraft, this is where. Which holds the baggage, and then there is the luggage on the other side. If I zoom in, I can show you that's the luggage.

And then if I come side of the staff quarter, (inaudible) as far as the staff quarter goes, there's a lot of meat and I can still hear speaking to you --

KEILAR: All right, Arunima, we are having a breakup of your signal, but we thank you so much. Just an incredible scene there as they've gone through so much from this Air India crash. We'll get more information on this. Boris?

[13:10:13]

SANCHEZ: Yes. Let's get some perspective now with CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie. David, thanks so much for joining us. Obviously, a devastating crash. Are you surprised that there was one passenger on board who apparently survived?

DAVIS SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: That's a miraculous story of survival, that's for sure. It doesn't surprise me that if there was a survivor who was in the back of the aircraft, that's probably the most survivable spot to have been, because you can see in the pictures that the tail of the aircraft is kind of preserved and sitting up on top of the building a little bit. So that would have been the only survivable place. But, yeah, it's very surprising.

SANCHEZ: Well, it's even more surprising. My understanding is that he was in seat 11A. We looked at a diagram online of what the plane looks like. He was just ahead of the wing, right in front of what appears to be a bulkhead and an emergency exit. You were describing the back of the plane being perhaps the most survivable spot, but I guess it's even more astounding that someone was able to walk away from this.

SOUCIE: Yeah. Especially in that seat 11. You know, that's right where the spar of the wing would go under, and it would be a solid place for the aircraft to hit the ground. But as far as survivability above it, that's incredibly surprising.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Given what we know about the crash so far. This mayday call, a signal being lost at roughly 625 feet, and the crash happening within a minute after takeoff. What is that overall picture suggest to you about what might have gone wrong?

SOUCIE: Well, the fact that there was a mayday call that quickly after. The rules around using the word mayday mean that you're imminently losing control of the aircraft. You cannot recover. And that's what the Mayday, Mayday means. So that happened.

Why the signal was lost at 630 feet, I'm not sure. I don't have answer for that. But I do have a concern about the configuration of the airplane. And after they took off. And you can see it's pretty clear that the flaps are not down on the aircraft and that the landing gear is out. And that's just the exact opposite of what you would expect to see at that altitude. The landing gear should have been withdrawn and the flaps should have been down still to make that aircraft climb. And that's not what happened here.

So that's the first thing I'd be looking at in the accident and in the records of the black box is to see what configuration the airplane was in and when.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, in the video, it seems to sort of sink. And obviously, it appears that the pilot at some point felt that there was no way out and signal for mayday. As you said, this is the first crash involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner since it entered into service roughly 15 years ago. What should we understand about that model safety record? What stands out to you about it?

SOUCIE: Well, that model, I was actually involved in some of the certification of that when I was with the FAA, and it was really intriguing. It's sophisticated, it's technologically advanced to where it actually has sensors in the wings that sense the stresses on the wings, and those will be recorded in the black box as well. There's so much information available with this accident, but again, it has had no failures, no fatalities, no whole losses from an accident at all since it was made.

It had some problems up in front with some batteries initially when it first came out, but those have been resolved. And there was some also concerns about the way that it's put together. And during the Boeing investigation, some of those things aired. But neither of those would have anything to do with this aircraft accident, that I could tell.

But this aircraft has had just a wonderful safety record, as does Air India as well. They have had no fatalities prior to this moment.

SANCHEZ: I also wonder about the scope of the investigation. We know that the NTSB is sending investigators from the United States. Given that there are so many nationalities involved and, candidly, so many fatalities, I wonder how an investigation like this works, what the role of the NTSB would be.

SOUCIE: Well, it starts with the investigator in charge, and by treaty, that's going to be India, because that was the operator of the aircraft and it occurred there. So the Director General will appoint an investigator in charge. That investigator in charge will invite everybody else to come to the meetings. And right now, the NTSB will be there because they are of the country where the aircraft is manufactured, obviously, but we'll also see Boeing there. They'll have representatives there, the engine manufacturers, I believe it's Rolls Royce, and this one will be there.

Pretty much everybody that has anything to do with the building of the aircraft or the operation of the aircraft will be part of this team. And it will be a long and intense investigation.

[13:15:04] But like I said, the black box has a lot more information on this particular model than it would on other models. So it's going to really enhance the investigation and make it go quicker, I'm sure.

SANCHEZ: David Soucie, thanks so much for the perspective. As we watch these live images from Ahmedabad, India, you can see crews are already on the ground looking through the wreckage of this deadly flight. At least 290 people killed as this India airplane crashes. We're going to have much more on this throughout the afternoon.

Plus, President Trump says there was an urgent need to send troops into Los Angeles, but CNN has new reporting that the administration's plans to use the military for immigration enforcement has been months in the making. Months. We have the details when we come back.

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[13:20:13]

SANCHEZ: New today, as protests against President Trump's immigration crackdown spread from coast to coast, Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he's deployed more than 5,000 National Guard members across his state to, quote, "maintain law and order." As part of the move, Abbott cited what he calls lawlessness in LA, where some 700 Marines have completed training and are expected to be deployed by tomorrow. They'll be joining more than 4,000 National Guard members mobilized by the president for immigration enforcement, a strategy that we've learned has been in the works for months.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez joins us now. So, Priscilla, this bolsters the idea that the administration seems to have been seeking this fight.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One of the major developments that we saw over the last few days after the president had deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles is that there were troops that were surrounding what appeared to be an ICE operation. So immigration authorities detaining an individual and guard standing around them. That was a remarkable development because we have never seen that before. Even if we've seen National Guard involved in border security, they're usually at a distance and in supporting status. In this case, they appeared to be part of this operation.

Now, they were not arresting anyone. I think that's an important clarification. They're rather serving as sort of a security perimeter. Now, I asked the White House border czar about this, and he told me that this was, quote, "a needed expansion." He went on to tell me, we're trying to use all available resources.

That's why we're bringing all these other different agencies, ATF, FBI, US Marshals, we got a hell of a job ahead of us. They're talking about arrests in the interior of the United States. But all of this, Boris, really stems from a desire within the administration for the last several months to have more involvement not only of federal agencies but also of the US Military. And we have seen some public signals of that. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, had also asked the

Pentagon for 20,000 National Guard troops for detention support, transportation support, among other enforcement measures. So there has been this push within the administration to get to a point where National Guard would be involved in one way or another with immigration enforcement in the interior of the United States. So we seem to be getting a pretty preview of that in Los Angeles, and that could very much fan out to other parts of the country.

There have also been discussions about how to engage consenting states that, for example, like Texas is deploying National Guard to also partake in this immigration enforcement pushed by the administration. It is ultimately a concession that they just don't have enough resources on their own with, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would otherwise be the key agency here charged with detaining undocumented immigrants. So certainly, we're seeing them broaden or at least as the border czar explained it, expand on their immigration push with other entities, including the military.

SANCHEZ: Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much for that update. Brianna.

KEILAR: And John Amaya is with us now. He served as ICE deputy chief of staff during the Obama administration. Thank you so much for being with us. And you hear President Trump or you see really in a social media post he said farmers in the hospitality industry, hotels, et cetera are complaining that, quote, "our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very long, very good, longtime workers away from them with those jobs being almost impossible to replace." He says that changes are coming. How are you reading that?

JOHN AMAYA, FORMER ICE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: Well, he's trying to have it both ways. He's trying to show some form of empathy for certain industries, which of course would benefit his own down in Florida. But you can't provide a full on military assault of sorts in major cities like Los Angeles and then try to tell the community that it's going to be okay because he's really looking into alleviating or repairing the broken immigration system that's been handed to us for well over 30 years.

KEILAR: And he also said in the post that undocumented criminals are now applying for those jobs, which seems like it would give him some justification for why he would back off of this tack of work site raids. What do you make of that? Is that true?

AMAYA: Yeah, well, I think words and definitions matter. The reality is that civil immigration laws are governed by Title 8 of the United States Code. U.S. Code, as most people know, is the body of law that governs everything that we do in the United States. Title 18 is the Criminal Code, criminal laws, and procedures. And if someone were to read carefully what Title 8 says, especially 1325, which is the actual violation of coming into the country impermissibly throughout, you know, the border and not in the appropriate place of entry, you would see that would yield you a violation, a penalty of anywhere from $50 to $250.

[13:25:10]

It's a civil penalty equivalent to a speeding ticket. Yet we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to militarize our cities, our streets, which is completely unnecessary. And if anyone could pay attention to this, including my former colleague Tom Homan, he'd remember that under the Obama administration, we swiftly were able to process people, ensure they had due process, and still remove them at record rates. Now, whether or not the United States community and citizens were happy with those results, we were able to do it in cooperation with local law enforcement, to include LAPD, and we didn't need military presence.

KEILAR: What are you seeing? Just broadly speaking? Because when President Obama was in the White House, there were a lot of immigration advocates who were quite unhappy with him. They dubbed him the deporter in chief, as you are well aware. So what are the parts of this policy, broadly or specifically, that you think is or is not working?

AMAYA: Yeah, well, again, I think militarizing our streets is the wrong approach, the wrong answer. But we have to remember that this is a reality TV-created chaos. It's what the President has a history with. He's good at it. He's very effective. And I think it's also, if you will, a very effective strategy to ensure that we're talking about something else.

Right now, you and I are talking about immigration enforcement. We're not talking about his beautiful bill. We're not talking about how millions of Americans are going to lose health care. We're not talking about how, you know, the very, very --

KEILAR: You think it's just a distraction?

AMAYA: I think it's absolutely a distraction. Because the reality is they cannot deport, they cannot arrest 3,000 people a day without sweeping in legal permanent residents and U.S. Citizens.

I've seen it. I've had clients call me about it. Their kids are going to college and major universities around the country. They work part- time at a bar. They work part-time at a restaurant. They're U.S. Citizens, and they're getting swept up in immigration raids because the directive from the top down is to take in as many numbers as possible, figure them out later, but they want the headcounts right away.

KEILAR: What is the thing that gets them swept up?

AMAYA: Well, you know, if for people who understand immigration enforcement, there are these things called collaterals, and those are the people who happen to be in a residence, at a restaurant, at a place of business, who may not be the target, but they are there and they become collateral damage. They get swept up.

You find one person who's a target, you find one person who's actually here impermissibly, and you arrest everyone else and you sort them out later. KEILAR: And Homan sort of speaks to that. He was on MSNBC this week.

He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, not everyone that is being arrested by ICE has a criminal record. But ICE goes to the street to find the, quote, "bad guys". And they're often with others who are not in the country, who are in the country illegally but are not necessarily criminally -- criminal targets. And they're going to arrest all of them. What do you make of how he's describing that?

AMAYA: Well, I mean, he knows the truth. He knows the truth. And the truth is that the worst of the worst, the real bad guys, they don't work 9:00 to 5:00. They're not working out in the fields picking your lettuce and cabbage and your fruits and vegetables. They're not out there, you know, cutting to pieces your chicken that's going to get served at dinner. The bad guys are hidden. They're living in the shadows. They're exploiting the actual community that now is being targeted.

And so if they were really concerned about going after bad guys after real criminals, they wouldn't ask the FBI to overlook terrorist investigations. They wouldn't ask DEA to overlook drug trafficking. They wouldn't ask ATF to overlook weapons smuggling.

They let them do their job instead of pursuing this myth that we are flooded in the streets of America with criminal aliens everywhere. Let them do their job.

KEILAR: John Amaya, thank you so much for being with us. We do appreciate it.

AMAYA: My pleasure.

KEILAR: And still ahead, we are back to our breaking news. This Air India flight to London with 242 people on board crashing moments after takeoff. Emergency crews are on the scene now. We're going to have an update next.

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