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Severe Weather Warning; A Provision of Immigration Law Allows Some Minors to Stay in the U.S. Legally; Consequences of Gun Violence

Aired July 08, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you so much. We begin with severe weather here, breaking news in the world of weather. Chad Myers, we're going to you with some news on tornadoes in Cleveland. What's going on?

CHAD MYERS, METEOROLOGIST: Just on the southern tier there, Valley City has trees down and also roof damage from a big storm that went right over the top of them. If you are Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and east of there, there's going to be a significant severe weather event tonight. Let me get right to it. There's the tornado warning, just expired one minute ago, but there was a tornado, I believe probably on the ground near Valley City into the southern sections there of Cleveland. It's a severe thunderstorm warning now, not a tornado warning. A lot of the rotation has stopped with it, but there will be more rotation in some of these storms all day long as they charge to the east, into Pennsylvania, and possibly even into the big cities along I-95 later on this afternoon.

BALDWIN: Chad Myers, thank you so much. And now to the proposed price tag for addressing the immigration crisis along the U.S./Mexican border has now climbed to almost $4 billion. President Obama today requested $3.7 billion from lawmakers, and here's the breakdown for you. So that includes almost $2 billion to care for the thousands of children in U.S. custody. About $1 billion for the detention and removal of illegal immigrants. $433 million for Border Patrol agents, and $64 million for new judicial teams to process all of these cases. So far, the government has been housing all these kids in facilities all along the border here. All the way, you see the map in yellow, all the way from California through to Texas, in emergency shelters, on military bases, and going forward, even public school buildings. President Obama heads to Texas tomorrow. A meeting with the Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is now planned, but no trip to the border is scheduled as of yet for the president.

But political talks and billions in government spending will not solve of course everything in play here, and immigration -- be it legal and illegal -- will always be with us. So before we talk about the politics and the policy of this, here is a 75-second refresher on immigration, the big picture, from our friends at CNN.com.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Decades ago, the word immigration conjured up images of boats at Ellis Island, of course the Statue of Liberty. Today, it's a different story. The issue is more heated, more politicized, more complicated. Immigrants are now entering the U.S. from every corner. Miami to Seattle, L.A. to New York, and especially along the Mexican border. We're talking more than 40 million immigrants in the United States right now, both legally and illegally. That's roughly 13 percent of our population, making America the No. 1 destination on earth for immigrants.

So, who are these new arrivals? Well, about a quarter, or 11 million, are undocumented, a number that has increased almost year by year since 2000. Of those who become legal residents, you would guess a lot of them are from Mexico. You would be right, 14 percent, but you might be surprised to find out the next two leading countries of birth for new U.S. residents, China and India. Those are the two most populated countries on the planet.

As for work, the latest labor stats show by and large immigrant workers are in the service industry. We're talking hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and they're making a lot less than U.S.- born workers, about $160 less per week. So regardless of how you feel about the issue, there's no doubt immigrants are here to stay and they play a huge role in the American economy every day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So there you have it, immigration in 75 seconds. But let's dive deeper because the face of immigration in this country can sometimes get distorted, really even stereotyped by the familiar images we're often seeing along the border. But every single immigrant has a unique story to tell, and CNN's Rafael Romo found this one young man who was able to leave all the violence behind and build a new life thanks to a little known U.S. law.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So you came by land all the way from El Salvador?

WILFREDO VASQUEZ, IMMIGRANT FROM EL SALVADOR: Yes.

ROMO: He's still a teenager, but Wilfredo Vasquez has already seen plenty in his life. He was abused and neglected by his parents in El Salvador, and his neighborhood was infested by violent gangs.

Were they trying to force you to join a gang?

VASQUEZ: Yes, like if you didn't enter, they can kill you.

ROMO: At the age of 16, Vasquez left for the United States and traveled along by land through Guatemala and Mexico. The trip by bus took him two full weeks. He was caught by immigration authorities in Texas shortly after swimming across the river. He spent three months in a detention center.

And then they released you to the custody of your cousin?

VASQUEZ: Yes. ROMO: Vasquez is now a permanent resident in the United States thanks

to a little known part of immigration law that helps undocumented minors arriving alone in this country.

REBECCA E. SALMON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACCESS TO LAW: The federal benefit is special immigrant juvenile status.

ROMO: Rebecca Salmon is an immigration attorney and the executive director of Access to Law, an organization that helps immigrant children like Vasquez.

SALMON: Not every kid who applies gets to stay, not every kid who enters can even apply. You have to be abandoned, abused, neglected. You have to be without your parents. There's some minimum requirements, but then there is also the rigorous process of immigration. So not every kid gets to stay.

ROMO: Those minors who qualify under this provision of the law and get approval can obtain a green card, which allows them to stay in this country and have legal status in the United States. They can then apply for citizenship after five years of living here, or when they turn 18, whichever comes first.

Tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors have arrived to the United States this year alone, mainly from Central America, but Salmon says very few can actually qualify for this immigration benefit. Immigrants like Wilfredo Vasquez, who can prove they were victims of abuse, abandonment, or neglect.

VASQUEZ: My dream is to graduate from high school, and (inaudible) then I can go to college. Yes.

ROMO: And what do you want to do in college?

VASQUEZ: I want to be a doctor.

ROMO: Quite an improvement for a young man whose goal as a child was merely to stay alive.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMO: And according to a labor (ph) leader with the U.S. Border Patrol, he expects as many as 60,000 children will cross the border this year, but immigration attorneys say only 10 percent of those are eligible to apply under this law, and only a fraction of those can actually have adequate legal representation. So we're not necessarily talking about a free-for-all. It's a very detailed and complicated process.

BALDWIN: We were talking during the piece, you said it took him a couple of years to get his card, and Wilfredo's story is, I'm sure, one of many, and I wish him the best, but then what about the young people who come across and they learn there are several buzzwords they could use? I was targeted, I was facing violence, gangs, what have you, back home in, let's say El Salvador? What happens then? There could be some who simply want to beat the system. ROMO: It is true, and let me first say that it is a legal process.

They have to go in front of a judge. There has to be paperwork, and they have to convince the judge, not only an immigration judge, but also at the state and federal level, that their case is legit. That's the reason we're talking about only a fraction of those who are actually going to make it in the country are going to get to stay. And three key words here. They have to prove that they have been abused, neglected, or abandoned.

BALDWIN: Tough to prove that.

ROMO: To prove -- well, exactly. To prove any of those is very, very difficult in federal court. So what immigration attorneys are telling me, please send a message out that arriving in the U.S. doesn't mean that you're going to stay. Chances are you're going to be kicked out, but as we have seen, the system's overwhelmed.

BALDWIN: Okay, Rafael Romo, thank you so much for just putting a face on this huge story. It's complicated, it's murky. A lot of nuance and a lot of legalities. Thank you.

As we reported, President Obama is asking Congress for almost $4 billion, but one congressman who spoke to CNN this morning said he was turned away when he tried to visit this immigrant shelter in his home state of Oklahoma, wanted to go check it out, raising doubts about his willingness to vote to pay for the facilities he's not even allowed to see. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM BRIDENSTEIN, (R), OKLAHOMA: You can't ask questions. You can't talk to the staff. You can't talk to the medical doctors. You can't talk to the children. If you would like to take pictures, you can't do that, but we'll send pictures to you. This is the kind of media that they had in the former Soviet Union. This is not the kind of unfettered access that we expect in the United States, especially if the president is going to ask us for $2 billion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And now we know it's more than $2, it's 3.7 billion. Ryan Lizza, I wanted that to be the jumping off point for our discussion. He's a CNN political commentator and a Washington correspondent for the New Yorker.

So, Ryan Lizza, as we mentioned, the request is up to just about $4 billion, and here's this member of Congress in his home state, wants to go to the center, isn't allowed inside. That's pretty tough for that member of Congress, I imagine, to say, okay, Mr. President, we'll give you the money.

RYAN LIZZA, NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: I would think so. I would want to know a little more about the details of how he made the request to go see the center. As a reporter who tries to get into an awful lot of places and is often denied.

BALDWIN: Deny, deny, deny, right.

(CROSSTALK)

LIZZA: I certainly have sympathy for him. Although I don't think we have quite reached the Soviet Union, as he suggested. So he raises an important issue. Congressmen should obviously have access to any federal facility they have to fund.

You know, we're going to have a big messy fight here in Washington over this, Brooke. We've got a big national problem. And the president has now put out a proposal for solving it. They're calling it at the White House a security surge. And the next step in this is going to be to hear from John Boehner and the House of Representatives, hear from the Republicans on the Appropriations Committee, and see how they react to this request for an emergency supplemental and see if Washington can actually solve this problem or just get dragged down into bickering and not pass anything.

BALDWIN: So that's one part of it, right? The potential bickering in Washington. We've already seen plenty of that as it pertained to immigration.

LIZZA: That's a given, right?

BALDWIN: Right. We know that will happen. We also know that President Obama is headed to Texas, apparently wanted to initially be greeted by the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, on the tarmac. We know that's not happening. We do now know with maybe some of this back and forth, they will be having a meeting, you know. Reading into the political tea leaves, what, if anything, substantive do you think will come out of this face-to-face?

LIZZA: I don't know. It was a lot of silliness in terms of getting this meeting together, right? You know, Perry felt like he was being slighted because he didn't just want a tarmac handshake. Finally they're going to have a real meeting.

Look, I think Perry could potentially be an ally to the president on this, if Perry, you know, he's a governor. He has a responsibility that the Republicans in the House of Representatives don't all have. Right? He's actually in power, charged with helping secure that border in some ways. And I think what the president is going to want out of this meeting is some sense from Perry that the president's emergency supplemental is a good idea or at least some endorsement of aspects of that. I think that's what the White House would want out of this.

Now, you know, Perry's always been a little bit more open to the immigration reform ideas, the bipartisan immigration reform ideas. Remember when he ran for president in 2012, some of his remarks on immigration got him in trouble with more conservative Republicans. So it will be interesting to see what he says and if he offers any olive branch to the president's proposal here.

BALDWIN: What about just quickly, we know the president is headed to Texas. We know there are fund-raisers he's planning to attend. No said plans to go to the border with this massive issue front and center. You know, Josh Earnest, White House spokesperson saying yesterday, we don't care about optics. You're a betting man, Ryan Lizza. Will the president all of a sudden pop up at the border and we'll be covering it?

LIZZA: First of all, the White House always cares about optics. We all know that. You know, I don't know. It's a little bit awkward, for the president, this was a pre-arranged fund-raising trip that now comes in the middle of this massive TV story and frankly national crisis on the border. So it might look bad.

On the other hand, you know, for the president of the United States to go visit a border or a Border Patrol station, it's a big logistical issue, and you would obviously want to make sure he's by his mere presence there, he's not going to make things worse. But maybe they'll squeeze in some kind of opportunity where he'll get briefed by some agents or some kind of middle ground where it doesn't just seem that he's only going to Texas to raise money for Democrats, but he's engaged in what's going on there.

BALDWIN: We'll watch for it tomorrow. All of us, Ryan Lizza, thank you so much, joining me in Washington.

Just ahead, the mother of that toddler who died in that hot car visits the jail today where her husband is behind bars. As she remains under the spotlight. You're about to hear from one of the couple's friends, and what happens when guns don't kill? After a deadly weekend in Chicago, you will hear from two former gangsters about surviving gunshots.

And today, Washington becomes the second state where you can buy pot without a doctor's note. And I'll speak live with one guy who cashed out his 401(k) to open a shop. Stay right here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Chicago's top cop calls it groundhog day. 53 people were shot over this Fourth of July holiday weekend. Nine of whom were killed. That is 50 separate shooting incidents all the way from Thursday night at 6:00 to Sunday evening at midnight. In two of those cases, police shot and killed the suspects, both of whom were 16 years of age. This is the grim reality for the city of Chicago. Frustrating for families forced to bury their loved ones. The police superintendent is lashing out at what he calls lax state and federal gun laws.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARRY MCCARTHY, POLICE SUPERINTENDENT: There's a greater sanction for the gang member to lose that firearm from their gang than there is to go to jail for possession of that gun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: But what happens when guns don't kill? We know the statistics on homicides and incarceration in this country and in Chicago, but there's an outcome of gun violence that many don't contemplate, and it's plaguing cities across this country, paralysis. These bullets turn the lives of those shot upside down, and society bears the cost for decades. Here's CNN's Poppy Harlow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAY DUGGAN: It was right there, that's where I got shot.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right there?

DUGGAN: Yes. They started shooting. I fell into the street right here.

HARLOW: Ten years have passed since Ray Duggan was shot. Today, the wheels he relies on are a constant reminder of his violent past and life in a gang.

You started gang banging at 14?

DUGGAN: Yes.

HARLOW: Wow, when did you get your first gun?

DUGGAN: I was about 16.

HARLOW: Did you think you were going to die?

DUGGAN: Yeah, yeah. I was ready to die. It never entered my head about being paralyzed or anything.

HARLOW: It's an outcome of gun violence many don't think about.

JOEL IRIZARRY: It's either death or jail. You never hear about disability. Literally, half of my body is dead. From the waist down, I can't feel it, I can't move it. I can't do nothing with it. This is my prison for the choices I made.

I was scared. I was in a gang for protection.

HARLOW: Did you think you were invincible?

IRIZARRY: Yes.

This is where it happened. This is where everything changed.

HARLOW: May 1998, Joel Irizarry said he was trying to leave the gang life when he was shot and paralyzed at just 17.

IRIZARRY: A rival gangbanger. He pulled out the pistol and shot just one time. The bullet went through the back seat and hit me dead in the spine, so I was instantly paralyzed.

HARLOW: Acts of violence, primarily gunshot wounds, are the third leading cause of spinal cord injury among American adults, disproportionately affecting young uninsured men, and the cost to society is huge. The care can cost up to a million dollars per patient in just the first year, and up to $181,000 for every year after that.

These aren't the numbers that we track.

DR. ROY ADAIR: No.

HARLOW: Incarceration.

ADAIR: Right.

HARLOW: Murders.

ADAIR: Right.

HARLOW: But not those left to live in wheelchairs.

ADAIR: Right, right. It's just not attended to.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the side where the bullet went in, right?

MICHAEL BROWN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's going to be a little stiffer.

HARLOW: A single bullet left Michael Brown a quadriplegic. He's not a gang member. He's a pastor and a math teacher, an innocent bystander.

What is the prognosis for you being able to walk again?

BROWN: Well, to be honest, it's not very good. But I just hope.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to straighten your hips out, okay?

BROWN: Okay.

I don't hold any bitterness or anger. I just want the violence to stop.

ADAIR: No. 1 thing that happens is patients lose autonomy, they lose the ability to control themselves.

DUGGAN: There's so many kids getting shot. It's not you get shot, you go home. No, you get shot, some people end up with colostomy bags inside. This is long medical care.

HARLOW: But Ray Duggan is not looking for sympathy.

DUGGAN: I knew what I was doing. I had multiple chances to change my life around before that. I didn't want to.

IRIZARRY: This is a consequence. You know, and not everybody makes the news.

HARLOW: Irizarry and Duggan are back on the streets now, but as peacemakers, trying to convince young men not to make the same choices they did.

IRIZARRY: You know how they say that everything happens for a reason? This might have been the reason, just so I can prevent somebody from following my same road and being in a situation like mine or worse.

DUGGAN: As long as I stop one kid from going down the wrong path, then bang, I already saved a life.

HARLOW: Poppy Harlow, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Poppy, thank you so much for sharing their stories with us.

Let's hone in on Chicago specifically now because it's a problem that's close to reaching its tipping point. Many would argue it's already reached it. Tracy Siska, let me bring you in, you're the executive director of the Chicago Justice Project, an advocacy organization and you're also a criminology at the University of Illinois Chicago. Welcome to you, first of all.

TRACY SISKA, CHICAGO JUSTICE PROJECT: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: Listen, we can talk about inadequate policing, we can blame lax state and federal gun laws. But I find your perspective interesting, because you're looking at these shootings over the weekend in Chicago and you say the problem is much more fundamental. You say it's poverty, you say it's joblessness?

SISKA: Absolutely. We've had a growing problem of just totally ignoring and divesting from communities in the south and west sides of the city for 50 years. And we're just over the last couple of administrations, there's been nothing but escalated. You have communities that are hopeless, with no skills, with maybe generations of people who haven't had regular full-time work. These are the foreseeable consequences.

BALDWIN: On the issue of full-time work, you say -- I read a piece today, you were quoted, you're not getting a guy out of a gang until you bring him a job. Tracy, A, how do you find someone with the skills, and B, find that sustainable job that pays what he's making illegally on the streets?

SISKA: Well, whatever -- there has been some base level research that shows that entry-level gang members a lot of times make only minimum wage, but the potential to move up through there and make a lot more is there. Other than flipping burgers. But the reality is in a lot of these communities, there aren't even the quote/unquote flipping burger jobs. You look at Chicago specifically, we invested or we're about to invest a couple hundred, 200,000 or 300,000 million in building a university, a private university a sports arena and hotels around this rather than trying to find a way to find sustainable jobs for these communities.

BALDWIN: So you need the money, I hear you, but what kinds of jobs are you advocating these gang members to find? SISKA: First of all, let's get away from just using the term gang

members because it's a lot more complicated than that.

BALDWIN: How about just young men?

SISKA: You're talking about young men. We know that unemployment is about 92 percent. You have to find ways to bring back low-skilled industrial jobs to some extent back into these communities. We have made no attempt at doing that in Chicago whatsoever over the last few decades. We don't have any problem finding ways to invest money into finding very high-skilled, very high-educated jobs for the loop area, but we have done nothing to find jobs for these communities.

BALDWIN: And there's potentially a clear correlation, because the areas in which the shootings happened over the weekend, areas where schools are closed, massive losses in manufacturing jobs. So to your point precisely. Tracy Siska, thank you so much, with the Chicago Justice Project. Thank you, sir.

SISKA: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, recreational marijuana shops open their doors for the very first time today in Washington state. I'll talk to one store owner who cashed out his 401(k) just to start his own pot shop. He'll join me live on why he's doing this, the risks, perhaps the rewards, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now to the case of that Georgia toddler who died inside of his father's hot car. So the father here, Justin Ross Harris, is accused of intentionally leaving his son in the car, and his alleged computer searches played a part in the murder, the alleged murder and the child cruelty charges against him. Now, a Cobb County, Georgia, detective testified that Harris searched online about how a hot car overwhelms a person, how to live a child-free life, and how to survive prison, but a friend of this 33-year-old father told CNN's "New Day" today he remembered Harris as a regular guy, who was exceptionally smart with computers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, he knew his craft very well. You know, everything that he told me computer wise, you know, I instilled in my website. When news of the searches came out, I was like, they have got to be making this stuff up. Because Ross is a computer genius. He wouldn't leave searches like that if he was going to do searches like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, today, we also know that Harris' wife Liana visited the jail, according to an Atlanta affiliate, WXIA, was there for about 30, 36 minutes. They clocked her. Many wonder if she should be behind bars herself after more details are coming out, especially from that probable cause hearing. Let me stress though for you, Liana Harris is not charged, and while police say she is not a suspect, she is no doubt under public suspicion. CNN's Jason Carroll explains why.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Liana Harris' demeanor in the days before and after her son's death was odd, and raised potential red flags for authorities investigating the case. She has not been named a suspect in connection with Cooper Harris' death, nor has she been charged with a crime. But still, authorities say she behaved strangely. Cobb County police detective Phil Stoddard testified when Liana Harris arrived to pick up the toddler from day care on June 18th and found he wasn't there, she predicted what had happened.

DET. PHIL STODDARD, COBB COUNTY, GA: They walked back out into the lobby, and in front of several witnesses, all of a sudden she states, Ross must have left him in the car. And they were like, what? There's no other explanation. Ross must have left him in the car.

CARROLL: Detective Stoddard also questioned Harris' reaction to hearing her son had died after her husband Ross had left their 22- month-old strapped in the car's child seat in a sweltering hot day for seven hours.

STODDARD: She didn't show any emotion when they asked her or actually when they notified her of Cooper's death.

CARROLL: Is this a sign of guilt?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: We all have a script in our head of what's the appropriate way for someone to react when confronted with a tragedy. People react all sorts of ways. And that doesn't make them guilty of anything.