Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

119 Dead in Texas Floods, at Least 160 Still Missing; Ex-FBI Agent Says He Was Singled Out Over Friendship with Trump Critic; Detainees Report Harsh Conditions at Florida Detention Center. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired July 09, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Nearly one week after the deadliest freshwater floods Texas has seen in a century, more than 160 people remain missing. The majority of them reported here where we are now in Kerr County. The death toll has climbed now to 119.

Among those lost is Jane Ragsdale, the co-owner of the Heart of the Hills Camp seen here after flooding. Jane was also its director and was recorded performing with her campers. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANE RAGSDALE, CO-OWNER, HEART O' THE HILLS CAMP (singing): When you sing, you say life is good today. So keep singing till we meet again.

SANCHEZ: Keep singing till we meet again, words that now hold extra meaning. The camp was between sessions, and fortunately no campers were in residence when the waters hit.

I want to speak now with one of Jane's friends, Jack Haberer. He's the retired pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville. Sir, thanks so much for being with us. I just want to start with how you are remembering Jane right now.

What comes to mind when you think of her and her legacy?

JACK HABERER, FRIEND OF FLOOD VICTIM JANE RAGSDALE: Thank you, Boris, for welcoming me. Jane has -- when I came here five years ago during COVID, she was one of the first to welcome me. She was a member of our church board, board of elders, one of the leaders of the church.

And like everybody that's known her, when you meet her, she becomes your best friend. She was so friendly, effusively friendly, thoughtful, caring, intuitive, reading people so well and knowing just the right things to say at the right time. Just an amazing presence to be with.

SANCHEZ: I also read that some 200 parishioners gathered at your church in part to remember her and the others that were lost. Talk to us about what you're hearing from members of the community after having endured something like this. HABERER: Well, everybody's just shocked. And she's one of the most well-known people of all those that have died. She's just happened to be so evident all around, A, because of Camp of the Hills where she was owner and director, but also because of the many other roles she played in the community, leading a lot of other kinds of mission as well as what's there at the camp.

SANCHEZ: Talk to us about that.

HABERER: Well, she 19 years ago, some folks down in Guatemala had an incredibly awful flooding experience. Ironically, they caused a psychologist from the U.S. to go over there to begin to work in the southeast part of the country. About nine years later, ten years later, Jane went there to introduce her son to speaking in Spanish because she was a Spanish and journalism major who had actually done journalism work in Guatemala. Well, he went only one year, but she fell in love with the people in this little town of Guayabales and helped them to begin to rebuild. Has been back every year since, raising the money to do that, getting other people to volunteer to do that.

And so she's had such a position outside this community as well as within it.

SANCHEZ: That is so remarkable to hear about her efforts there. I wonder, as you see the news that at least 119 have perished, that it's possible that more than 160 remain missing, what your message is to the community at a time like this?

[15:35:00]

HABERER: Well, the obvious thing is tie a knot and hang on and hang on especially to one another. This is a time of bonding, coming together with others. Yes, there will be times to do investigations and studies of what went wrong so we can avoid it for the future to make other improvements.

But right now, simply being with one another, caring for one another. There's a service event being planned by Young Life tonight at a major stadium for folks to come and just pray and be present with one another. Those kinds of gatherings, in large scale, in congregations of different faiths, in smaller scale, and among family members, extended family members, they need, we need each other better than that, more than ever.

SANCHEZ: One more question for you. I know that at times like this, folks look for leaders, and they look for accountability in part because what's happened is so staggering and disorienting, so much so that it would lead some to question their faith. I wonder what you would say to folks who are looking for meaning out of something that appears senseless.

HABERER: The greatest cause for people to lose their faith in God is when events like this happen. How could a loving God allow this, and how could a powerful God not be able to stop it? That is the most difficult question for faith, for everybody and everywhere. We have to wrestle through those problems, through the questions, talk them out, discuss them out. You can come back and say, well, how could a world exist as well as it does in general without an intelligent design behind it? So we can argue that point back and forth.

But still, the existential reality is, oh, my gosh, how do I deal with this? Where does my faith stand? And we just have to pray our way, cry our way, talk our way through it.

We can find our hope coming out of it, but it's understandable and right to feel the despair and loss and sadness that is so present among us even now.

SANCHEZ: Jack Haberer, so great to get your perspective. Thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.

HABERER: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Stay with CNN NEWS CENTRAL. We're back in just a few minutes.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: And this just in, CNN has confirmed the FBI is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for possible false statements to Congress. President Trump was asked about it a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: James Comey and John Brennan now under criminal investigation related to the Trump-Russia probe. Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I know nothing about it other than what I read today, but I will tell you I think they're very dishonest people. I think they're crooked as hell, and maybe they have to pay a price for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: I want to bring in now Mike Feinberg. Mike is a former senior FBI counterintelligence agent, and he explains how he was forced to resign from the bureau in a revealing lawfare article titled, "Goodbye to All That".

Great to see you, Mike. Before we get to your article and all your thoughts on that, I do want to ask you about this now criminal investigation into James Comey, John Brennan. What's your reaction to this?

MIKE FEINBERG, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: So I'm in a bit of an odd position because, as you know, I'm no longer inside of the FBI, so I really only know as much as you or your viewers from the popular reporting. But I think the questions that people need to be asking about this matter, both investigations, is whether the procedural safeguards and policies that exist governing the opening of sensitive or politically-tinged cases were followed and whether there were any suggestions or interference by purely political actors that led to the opening of these matters.

WHITFIELD: OK, fair enough. OK, so let me now talk about your resignation, why you decided to do so, your resignation from the FBI. You say your boss called you, you know, asking if you were friends with former FBI official Peter Strzok, who played a senior role in the early Russia-Trump campaign investigation.

And then FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino informed your boss that he was halting and reversing your career. Did you see that coming?

FEINBERG: No, I did not see it at all. You know, I was aware that a number of FBI officials were being pushed out in a way that is substituting subject-matter expertise for sort of ideological purity, but I never in a million years thought that a mere social friendship with a former executive would be leveraged against me and would be able to overcome all my accomplishments, skill sets, and achievements that I was able to enact for the country and the Constitution over the past 16 years.

[15:45:00]

WHITFIELD: And given your expertise, your 16 years' experience, your institutional knowledge, why did you feel that it was more advantageous for you to leave rather than staying, taking a demotion that, I guess, they were offering?

FEINBERG: So, I was in a bit of a weird position, and as I was processing what was happening, I talked to a number of employment lawyers to figure out whether this was something I could fight. And the general consensus was that I could, but that it was going to take a very long time, and the senior leadership of the Bureau would be able to make my life miserable in the interim. And it would have turned me into a very bitter, frustrated, and angry person.

And when this all happened, my wife was seven, seven-and-a-half months into a very high-risk pregnancy. The person that fighting this would have turned me into is not who she needed in her third trimester, and it is certainly not who my son is going to need during the first few years of his life.

WHITFIELD: Yes, those were some very tough choices. I mean, you say FBI leadership, you know, was taking on investigations that were, I'm quoting now, clearly political in character, end quote. Why should that, in your view, concern all Americans, even those who may agree with political-leaning motivations and investigations that are led by political leanings?

FEINBERG: So, look, it's inevitable in our system of government that the FBI and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies are going to be led by political appointees. That's just how our systems work and how it has for nearly 250 years. But what the American people need to be assured of is that when investigative authorities or the threat of detention or violence is used by the state, that it is being done so solely on the basis of whether laws have been broken.

And every time that we open an investigation, for politically motivated reasons, that sort of trust becomes eroded, and our institutions suffer, and people are less likely to cooperate with them going forward, and as a result, everybody is sort of made less safe.

WHITFIELD: Quickly, do you believe the mission of being a public servant is being changed or that there is irreparable harm being posed to that dedication, that mission as a public servant?

FEINBERG: The criticisms I have of the FBI today are directed solely at its senior leadership. I have immense faith in the integrity and judgment of the workforce of agents, analysts, and professional staff who make up its ranks. They took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and I have zero doubt that they will do so.

I just hope that there is not a concerted effort to chip away at that resolve.

WHITFIELD: All right. Mike Feinberg, thanks so much for being with us. All the best to you and your growing family.

FEINBERG: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Still to come, allegations of inhumane conditions at the so-called Alligator Alcatraz Detention Facility in Florida. The wife of one detainee says bugs and unbearable heat are just the tip of the iceberg.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The wife of a man being held at the migrant detention center in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz says detainees are facing inhumane conditions. She says mosquitoes, unbearable heat and humidity, no power, no access to showers are just some of the issues there. She also says her husband has not had access to an attorney since being detained and transported to this makeshift facility.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is joining us right now. So what is DHS saying about this?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Department of Homeland Security is saying that this is a facility that is being managed by Florida, but this has also been a facility that they have touted repeatedly because of how quickly it was set up and also because it offers them yet another space to detain those immigrants who are arrested in the United States.

Now, this earned its name because of where it is. In the Florida Everglades, it is an area that is surrounded by alligators, other wildlife, marshes, and that is where they said they were cutting costs because it was the sort of embedded security because of the wildlife there. Now, these, as you may have seen through the images, are tents. They are soft-sided facilities. This is where the president as well as the senior Trump officials visited last week where they walked through, and it gave us a little bit of a sense of not only what it looks like on the exterior but also in the interior where it has these bunk beds and it has these cages where people are being held.

Now, this is a place that is expected to hold up to 5,000 people, but already we're hearing that hundreds are there, and that is how we are also hearing about the conditions in the short span of time it's already been open.

Mosquitoes, heat and humidity, when the A.C. is working, extreme cold, lack of basic necessities. That is what detainees are telling their relatives who are now talking to the media to share what they are hearing about these conditions inside of this facility.

Now, in this particular case, this was a wife of a man currently being held. He's a Guatemalan man, 43 years old. They were encountered by a Florida wildlife officer in late June when they were fishing, and they were detained because they're undocumented. And the father, in this case, continued to be detained and then was sent to this new facility.

[15:55:00]

So we're still gathering more details as to who is going to be sent to these facilities, how it grows over time, but already there are issues that are arising.

Briefly, I want to mention the full statement from the Department of Homeland Security, which said that under President Trump's leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people's mandate for mass deportations of criminal, illegal aliens.

It is these types of facilities, Fred, that they are going to lean on more as they make these arrests.

WHITFIELD: Did DHS respond to this one wife's complaint about no access to attorneys or representation?

ALVAREZ: This is the statement that they are offering on that, and they also note that detention standards for Immigration and Customs Enforcement are high, and that is true, but at the same time, when you have these very quick facilities that come up, sometimes issues arise, and that is what detainees are describing to their relatives.

WHITFIELD: All right, Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We are back out live in Texas, where more than 119 people have died and more than 160 remain missing.

[16:00:00] One of the stories we've continued to tell is the tragedy that unfolded at Camp Mystic, that all-girls Christian camp, where at least 27 young campers and counselors perished.

One of them was 8-year-old Virginia Wynne Naylor. Her family says that she was staying in Camp Mystic's Bubble Inn when the flood hit.

They tell CNN they started a nonprofit in Wynn's honor in hopes of replacing grief with hope. Wynne's family says she had a, quote, great love of the outdoors, a love for God, a love for her community. This is how our girls dance through this world. This is how they will be remembered.

Thank you so much for joining us on CNN NEWS CENTRAL this afternoon. The news continues in just a moment.

THE ARENA with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

END