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Trump Vows "Largest Deportation Program In American History"; Project 2025 Call For Eliminating DHS, Other Agencies. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired November 08, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: He worked for the Trump administration on immigration to talk about that. And what's -- how -- how does he envision some of the -- the -- the Trump promises on the -- the trail, like deporting millions actually taking place in practical effect? So lots of questions we're going to dive into.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Totally. And I -- I mean, I remember from the -- the first Trump administration talking to one of those chiefs of staff who -- who liked to say that Donald Trump was an agent of chaos. He liked to be the agent of chaos because he wanted to control the chaos, master the chaos. And you just have to wonder if they do have a -- a new chief of staff who's coming in to settle things down, is she going to be able to settle down Donald Trump? Because were showing a montage during the -- the last hour that showed other chiefs of staff have tried and it didn't work out so well.

BROWN: Yes.

ACOSTA: But, Pam, I'm sure you got a great show ahead. Good to see you.

BROWN: Good to see you too. Have a great weekend, Jim.

ACOSTA: You as well.

BROWN: And good morning, everyone. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. In just 73 days, President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath office in his second inauguration. And just days after cruising to victory, his White House team is starting to take shape. I was just talking about that with Jim. Trump has named his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as his chief of staff. She will be the first woman to serve in that role.

And the jockeying among Trump allies vying for jobs in the administration, this new administration has already begun. On that note, I want to bring in Ken Cuccinelli, who served in the first Trump administration as acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Thank you for joining us. Appreciate your time. First off, have you spoken to President-elect Trump or members of his transition team about a potential role in the administration?

KEN CUCCINELLI, FORMER ACTING DHS DEPUTY SECY. UNDER TRUMP: So even if I had, I wouldn't say yes to that. You know, you've got to leave all of the discretion and control in their hands. And if you don't, you're messing up the -- the whole process. And I wouldn't do that. And -- and I do think they're more buttoned up as you and Jim were talking about this time than last.

And -- and one really, really good way to know that is President Trump is not, you know, no president is ready to admit mistakes. But on the campaign trail, he said his biggest mistake was how he brought in personnel and who he brought in. He is keenly focused on doing this correctly. I do know they had some of a head start, even if they weren't using the governmental transition pieces that are in place by law.

But I know they were working on it themselves and they are not in the same place they were eight years ago. They are way, way ahead of that game and they're much more organized. And -- and what that means in terms of choices, I think we'll see pretty quickly. Susie Wiles is a -- is a outstanding choice. And you can just look at how she ran the campaign. She was behind the scenes, but very effective.

And that's really what you want out of a chief of staff. The idea, as Jim suggested, that a chief of staff should control Donald Trump is -- is that may be true of other presidents. That is not true of Donald Trump.

BROWN: Yes. And surely she knows that going into this job, especially after running his campaign.

CUCCINELLI: Yes.

BROWN: As a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security, you wrote a chapter of Project 2025 on immigration. That's this 37-page section right here. It's part of the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for an overhaul of the executive branch. And among your priorities includes dismantling DHS and rebuilding a separate immigration agency. Help us understand how that would work in practical effect to achieve Trump's stated go of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants.

CUCCINELLI: So, first of all, President Trump did not campaign on that. Everything he did campaign on, he can do. Everything is doable. So what we wrote about was essentially going back to the direction of INS, so that you just have one immigration agency to make things run more smoothly so it's a unified agency dealing with the subject matter instead of three agencies.

That's -- that's what that was really about in summary. And every form of efficiency within the Department of Homeland Security helps you achieve these very lofty logistical goals that the President has set out for himself, deporting more illegals than anybody in history. He will do that. I think his opponents believe he'll do that. That's part of why they're so upset this week, is because they know he's serious and that it is doable.

It really just takes the political will and people of adequate capabilities to do the job. And he surely has the political will. And in the next few weeks and months, I think we'll see him put together the team of adequate capability to pull it off.

BROWN: You say everything he said is doable, including the deporting of millions. But ultimately, if you look back at his past administration, the number he deported was 1.5 million. Even though at the time he had said he wanted to pour millions and millions.

CUCCINELLI: Yes.

BROWN: That is a number the Biden administration is on pace to reach. DHS officials, I've been speaking with --

[11:05:01]

CUCCINELLI: Yes.

BROWN: -- that actually worked under Trump say, look, that's because there are a lot of logistical, financial and legal complexities involved in deportations. This former Trump administration DHS official I was speaking with this morning said the idea of deporting millions is, quote, completely impractical and at best a political talking point. Saying arresting individuals in the interior is challenging. Going after criminals makes sense.

CUCCINELLI: Yes.

BROWN: But the numbers will be in the hundreds and thousands, not millions. What do you say to that?

CUCCINELLI: So let's just start with the criminals. You're approaching almost 500,000 criminal, illegal aliens, people who have committed a crime beyond just entering the country illegally. That's 500,000. There's about 1.3 or 1.4 million outstanding removal orders right now today. People who have been all the way through the very extensive due process, you're literally just with those two groups. You're almost at 2 million people right there.

So I don't agree with whomever you were talking to. And I also think, you know, I think of the "60 Minutes" piece on this subject, and they were tagging along with ICE folks who had a target that they were there to deport, who they picked up. But then at the time they picked them up, there were four other illegals there, and they said, no, no, we're not getting you. Well, that isn't going to happen in the Trump administration.

That -- that's inefficient as a simple matter of logistics. If you come across lawbreakers, illegal aliens, in this case, while pursuing another lawbreaker, you route -- you -- you pick them all up and you move them all through the deportation process. So there'll be a lot more efficiencies this time than there were last time.

And the truth of the matter is the President himself in his first term, held back very significantly in terms of the level of aggressiveness he applied in this area.

BROWN: Why? CUCCINELLI: Even on the -- even on the interior side. That's an excellent question. Because I think that he was concerned with the sort of attack that he would look mean. And he's over that. He's over that. As we all saw, he ran on doing this, and he has a mandate from the American people to do it, and he's going to do it.

BROWN: Right. And just to go back to what you said about, you know, criminals, that there's different ways to define that, right? Are you talking about people who might be here --

CUCCINELLI: Yep.

BROWN: -- with, you know, undocumented immigrants who didn't have their driver's license or some -- some issue like that, a low level offense, and they would be deported. Help us --

CUCCINELLI: Yes.

BROWN: -- help us better understand kind of how you're defining that.

CUCCINELLI: Yes. So there's always been this threshold. Oh, who's the priority? Well, of course, murderers and rapists are a priority over jaywalkers. But the fact of the matter is, those who commit other crimes bring themselves to your attention. As you noted, it's hard to do arrests on the interior, but if someone enters the criminal justice system, even at a very low level, then you have found them. That's a very hard part of this whole process.

So it isn't just because, oh, we're -- that -- that, you know, President Trump is out to get jaywalkers, it's that by entering the criminal justice system, you have put yourself on the radar in a way that makes it easy to identify you and move you into quickly into the deportation process. So don't just think of it as some moral judgment on the crime.

It is an efficiency mechanism to speed along deportation. And it will be used that way. And with a cooperative Congress that actually allows you to use the appropriations process to require state and local governments who are getting federal funds to cooperate will massively increase that efficiency level.

BROWN: All right, I want to dive a little bit more into what you said, because you -- you talked about how, look, you know, if someone is here and -- and they're undocumented and they, you know, they're already on the radar because of DOJ and they're with others who are undocumented, they're all going to be rounded up. Undocumented immigrants make up an estimated 5 percent of the workforce. What do you say to economists who point to how mass deportations cause inflation can add to the deficit, given the cost of what it takes for deportations, which is estimated to be 11,000 person, that was from 2016, from ICE, it's gone up and actually a loss of jobs among Americans because companies would potentially rely more on technology and downsize. What do you say to that? Does any of that concern you? The practical ripple effect on the economy, potentially.

CUCCINELLI: All -- all -- all other effects concern me. But your -- your insistence on saying undocumented instead of illegal skips the moral culpability of these people for breaking our law in the first place. That's step one, and we're a nation of laws. I would point you to the end of 2019 for economics. The President, yes, he had cut taxes and had a very substantial deregulatory agenda, and America will benefit from that again.

[11:10:07]

But he added a third element, and it was significant attention to enforcement of our immigration laws. And what was the result? The result was that the poorest Americans in -- in our -- American citizens, not people inside our borders, American citizens, had their wages go up a higher percent than other people in our society. Donald Trump achieved the lowest poverty rate in -- in the history of that statistic by the end of 2019. Donald Trump did that for poor people.

When you wonder why black and Hispanic men voted for Donald Trump in such incredible numbers, it's because he got them back to work. We spent more months under 8 percent black unemployment under Donald Trump just in one term than the entire rest of my life combined before that. That's how good he is at helping Americans get into the -- get into the economy.

And there is no legal job that Americans won't do. We saw that with the biggest single bust, if you will, an internal enforcement of the chicken processing plants in Mississippi. And if there was ever a job you wouldn't want to do, it's got to be a chicken processing plant. Over 600 people arrested in a -- in a single day. The company held a job fair the next week, and an enormous number of poor black and white Americans from that area showed up, and they were so grateful to have a chance to have that job and so forth.

BROWN: OK.

CUCCINELLI: You can go back and look yourself. That's the history.

BROWN: I do -- you don't have to run me. I cover the Trump administration. I do remember that. And I think it's -- it's also the fact that the companies would maybe rely on more technology and not hire and maybe contract. I mean, that was the issue there. But let's dive a little bit --

CUCCINELLI: Not in a week.

BROWN: OK, fair enough. But let's dive a little bit more into that example, right? Because as I recall in the statement, again --

CUCCINELLI: OK.

BROWN: -- and I don't care, you want to call it illegal, undocumented, those are -- we're talking about people that -- that the Trump administration would want to target, right? And I remember when that happened. And I remember also part of the story was children coming home from school and their parent had been arrested, right? An estimated 4.4 million --

CUCCINELLI: Yes.

BROWN: -- U.S. citizens under the age of 18 have at least one parent who is an undocumented immigrant. There's a former acting director of ICE of Immigration Customs Enforcement who says the toll on families under Trump's plan would be devastating. I want to listen to this and then get your reaction on the other end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, ICE: Not all immigrants in this country are equal. We have 12 million, 11 to 12 million immigrants in this country, the vast majority of whom have never committed a crime. According to all the available data, 4.6 million of these people are in mixed status families, meaning a mother, a father, an undocumented mother, a father with U.S. citizen, children, or a U.S. citizen spouse. So when you talk about a million people, you can't get there without getting into that population. And now you're talking about ripping families apart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What do you say to that? Is there a way to carry out deportations without separating families? I mean, what he's saying is, where -- will there be any compassion, any heart?

CUCCINELLI: So, first of all, it's -- it's an excellent question. And we should all start with the recognition that -- that whatever the President's determination and it is very firm to move all illegal aliens out of this country, these are real live human beings and they will be treated like real live human beings with the dignity that human beings deserve.

When it comes to mixed families. By that we mean you may, as you use the example of a citizen child and -- and illegal parents, the family is going to make that decision. The government isn't going to make that decision. And -- and they'll be given the time to do that, I expect. But they're going to have to make that decision. And their earlier decisions obviously have brought their family to the point of having to make that future decision of where they live and whether they live together or apart. That is going to be a decision I expect of those families to make.

BROWN: So you're -- you're saying they have to decide if they want to all be deported together or be divvied up and -- and some of the family will have to be deported and others will stay here. Before I let you go, I want to ask you one more question. I think this is really important because in reading through --

CUCCINELLI: Sure.

BROWN: -- your chapter in Project '25 -- 2025, you talk about repealing the concept of temporary protection status that has allowed Ukrainians displaced from Russia's invasion to reside in the U.S. as well as Haitian immigrants in places like Springfield, Ohio, got a lot of discussion over the campaign. They are seeking asylum from political violence and humanitarian crises. Why don't you believe these people deserve protection in our country, even on a temporary basis? Would you like to see them leave the country?

[11:15:00]

CUCCINELLI: So the problem with the temporary protected status is that it has been so wildly abused. You -- you've used two of the most heartstring pulling examples. But it's also used to allow people to stay, for example, after a hurricane in their country has done great damage to their hurricane. We -- we have Central American countries with TPS status dating back 20 years because of a hurricane 20 years ago. That is an abuse of the system.

And the courts stood in the way frequently of what was supposedly executive authority to end temporary protected status. So if the courts won't let you end it, then beginning any new one gives up control by the executive branch of the subject. And so the courts have made it, have undone the utility of that tool. And so you're left of things like --

BROWN: So -- so bottom, though, do you think they could no longer be here under that program?

CUCCINELLI: I don't think that program should exist because --

BROWN: So then they wouldn't be here.

CUCCINELLI: -- it's been so abused by the courts -- by the courts. And note I'm pointing at the courts here, had it been allowed to be used as it was written by Congress. Then you could make these sort of selective applications like for Haitians in the situation you describe or Ukrainians in the situation you describe. But the courts haven't allowed that.

They have cut off the back end authority of the executive branch to end supposedly temporary protected status. And so it is no longer temporary. And so Congress has to go back to the drawing board and start over to create a new, more limited form of protected status that the courts will actually respect.

BROWN: Ken Cuccinelli, thank you for your time on this really important conversation. We appreciate it.

CUCCINELLI: It's good to be with you.

BROWN: And coming up, Donald Trump calls tariffs, quote, the greatest thing ever invented. But could massive tariffs actually raise prices on things like groceries and clothes? I'll ask one of President Obama's top economic advisers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:20:48]

BROWN: Welcome back. Let's continue the conversation about what a second Trump term could look like. Joining us now is Marc Lotter, former director of communications for Trump's 2020 campaign. Marc, you are a special assistant to the President once, you know, once he returns to the White House, how much of the project, I should say, once he returns to the White House, how much of Project 2025 do you expect him to enact and how quickly? You just heard the conversation I had with Ken Cuccinelli during the campaign trail, Trump tried to distance himself from it. But do you think now that he's the President-elect, he's probably, he -- he could be relying on it more?

MARC LOTTER, FORMER TRUMP 2020 DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: No, look, he obviously, he distanced himself from Project 2025. I actually work in my day job for another conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., the America First Policy Institute. And this is what think tanks do. They -- they fill their halls with a lot of really smart people who write down a lot of things on paper.

And at the end of the day, the transition team officially and ultimately the President will call through all of their ideas and pick and choose to say, hey, this is a good idea over here. This is what I want to do. But ultimately it comes down to the President, the team he surrounds himself with, to say these are really good ideas and this is what I want to go forward with.

BROWN: So we know the President-elect's first priority, as he has stated himself, is mass deportations. You just heard again, that conversation with Kim Cuccinelli about some of the financial and logistical hurdles carrying out Trump's lofty promises on that front. What is your response to that?

LOTTER: Well, I think in all of these plans, and I don't, again, I do not speak for the President-elect or his team or his transition. But all of these things, you start with the highest priority. So you obviously want to get those who are convicted felons or who entered our country with felony convictions from other places. You want to get them. You want to get them out.

There are millions, I think, you know, up to 1.4, 1.6 million people who have already gone through the entire legal process in the United States and their appeals and have been ordered removed. So you can easily enact those court orders to start removing them. And also, you've got to focus on stopping the flow of new migrants coming in.

So I think you -- you start with the highest priority targets, those who are criminals, those who pose a -- a possible terror threat, and those who've been ordered to be removed. You stop the flow of new people coming in, and that's got to be the first priority, and then you go on from there.

BROWN: So I want to get your reaction to one thing we discussed, and that was the 4.4 million U.S. citizens who have at least one parent who is an undocumented immigrant. And I asked Ken Cu -- Ken Cuccinelli about that, and basically he said, look, it's going to be a decision for that family, if that parent is, you know, arrested and -- and up for deportation, whether the family should be split up or not. What do you say to that?

LOTTER: Well, I think, look, there are a number of different situations that are involved here. If you have an illegal immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen, they actually could go home right now and petition because they have legal standing to petition to become back into the country in -- with legal status. If it's parents, again, you've got to look at the high priority.

So, you know, if they're not one of those people who've already been ordered to be removed, already have criminal convictions or are in the criminal justice system, then they have to make that decision of how do we go forward best, and what legal avenues do we have as a relative of a United States citizen to go back to the country where we came from and petition to go through our system legally and -- and come back here?

There are roadways and pathways there for them. The question is, do you want to exercise it or do you want to take the chance --

BROWN: Right. But that's not answering the question --

LOTTER: -- then you're not going to be able to find it.

BROWN: -- of -- of separating families. That's not getting to the core. I -- I see what you're saying, but it's not getting to the core issue here, which is, you know, a child comes home from school, as we saw in the Trump administration a couple of times with the -- with the Mississippi, with the chicken factory and -- and their parent was arrested and up for deportation. And -- and kind of what that does, you know, the ripple effect from that, how do you handle that? And do you think that's the right move to say, OK, it's up to the family whether they want to be deported altogether or, you know, or not?

[11:25:13]

LOTTER: Well, the question is, what are we going to do with the laws that we have on the books? I mean, we already have these laws. And -- and let's take it out of the immigration sector. Let's say that, you know, that someone got arrested or got picked up for bank robbery. We don't stop because, well, you have children, we're not going to put you in jail. If you've been convicted of a felony in the United States or you entered the United States illegally, but you have criminal felony convictions back in your home country, we should not be saying, well, you're a criminal, but because you have children, we're not going to put you in prison. We wouldn't do that to an American citizen. Why would we treat someone who's here in our country illegally any different than we would handle a U.S. citizen who has felony charges or convictions against them?

BROWN: Let me quickly ask you were part of Trump's transition team back in 2016 when Trump came to Washington as an outsider. You have said these White House transitions can be like hostile takeovers. What do you mean by that? And how are you seeing this transition is already different from what we saw before?

LOTTER: Well, the reference is like kind of within, like the business community when you have a hostile corporate takeover and you have a new team suddenly come in. And that's literally what this is. It is a compete -- complete transition of the management and senior leadership of the federal government. But having been there in 2016, you know, it's much different now in 2020 because many of the people like the folks I work with at the America First Policy Institute were some of the senior leaders in the White House right up until the very end of the first Trump term. They were also some of the policy experts there. And so they've been writing not only on policies and potential policies, but they've also been providing a roadmap to the next administration of here are the lessons we learned.

If the President signs an executive order on something, it then goes to the agencies to enact it, to enforce it, to make it actually real. And how do you do that? Having that experience, both with the President having served in the White House, with many of his senior team that he's going to name having been there before, and even in the Cabinet agencies, they now know what to expect and they know how to move the levers of government. I think he'll be much better equipped to enact his policy agenda, the one that was just supported by a majority of Americans. And he'll be able to do it quickly because of the lessons learned during the first Trump term.

BROWN: All right, Marc Lotter, thank you so much.

And President-elect Trump rode to victory this week in part because of voters' anger over high prices on everything from groceries to car insurance. Trump during the campaign vowed to lower the cost of living.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: We will quickly build the greatest economy in the history of the world.

We will rapidly defeat inflation and we will very simply make America affordable again. We're going to make it affordable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Trump has promised to attack high prices by shaking things up. But experts say some of his campaign proposals, like mass deportations and sky high tariffs could end up reigniting inflation. Joining us now is former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, Jason Furman. Jason, thanks for coming on. So bottom line, do you think Trump's proposals as you know them now will help or hurt when it comes to inflation?

JASON FURMAN, FMR. CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS UNDER OBAMA: Yes. Trump was absolutely right that inflation has been a big problem for families. Don't let people tell you otherwise. But where he goes wrong is with his solutions, which would actually make that problem even worse, raising costs for families. And by the way, that's not just my view. That's the view overwhelming of the -- of economists, but also what people are betting on in financial markets. They are placing their bets right now for higher inflation going forward.

BROWN: Why -- why is the stock market -- why has it been doing so well with the Trump one?

FURMAN: The stock market's up, combination of two things, one is the share of income that goes to corporations is expected to be higher now. If you get deregulation, have lower taxes, have less antitrust enforcement, that doesn't necessarily make people richer, but it doesn't mean corporations have more that shows up in the stock market.

Second of all, I think the stock market does have some optimism about economic growth. They think Trump won't do all of these tariff increases that he's promised. And -- and I hope that those investors are right.

[11:29:45]

BROWN: Yes, it is interesting, I -- talking to even just last night I was talking to -- to someone in the financial world who said, look, I mean, I know he said this on the trail about tariffs, but we'll see if he actually does it in real life. There's a lot of skepticism if he does. But as you know, he has held up these tariffs as a magical fix to almost any problems. He has insisted also that his trade agenda will not be inflationary, noting that price increases were --