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Trump Administration Now Releasing Migrants; NTSB to Release Black Box Data From D.C. Crash; J.D. Vance Visits Ohio; Trump's Law Enforcement Purge. Aired 11:30a-12p ET
Aired February 03, 2025 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[11:30:00]
ZSUZSA GYENES, LIVED NEAR SITE OF OHIO CHEMICAL SPILL: We waited several months, displaced for 18 months total living in hotels.
My son had to repeat the fourth grade because of the loss of his education. We still don't have answers for our health impact. And a lot of the experts that are involved are saying that it could just get worse for us.
So I would like to have some kind of resolution for that.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN HOST: In terms of your experience here, I think the importance of this day and of watching the vice president and his arrival there is shining a light back on a place two years later that perhaps people have moved on from.
Talk about what these two years have been. Do you feel like you have gotten the assistance you have needed? Do you feel like local state and federal officials have listened when you have raised issues and told them what you need?
GYENES: I feel like we have been left with more questions than answers every step of this way.
A lot of people are honestly still in the position they were the night that it had happened. A lot of people who got the most sick left early, and they're living in different states or they're living in R.V.s and campers, on couches of families still.
Two years later, we don't even have places for people to live who were evacuated from these chemicals. And, yes, the local government seems to want to shut their doors on our needs. They want to say everything's cleaned up and it's always on the brink of being almost done. But it's been two years.
You know, I left my lease after waiting seven months because we needed to move on with our life. Like, clearly, the cleanup wasn't happening. People are still sick. We still don't have specialists to go to. We don't have anywhere to cover the cost of that. This settlement is honestly a joke in terms of what we need long term.
People need to have health coverage for life. A lot of things are going to come up in the future. And the fact that the settlement is withholding data from their experts about this stuff is concerning to me as well. And, yes, it's a lot.
MATTINGLY: It is a lot.
Do you have expectations? I feel like there's been so much disappointment when you talk to residents of East Palestine across the board, apolitical disappointment. It's not about a party. It's just writ large.
That the visit from the vice president, this administration, given what it pledged during the campaign, that they will be able to answer some of your questions,they will be able to get some of the help you're asking for?
GYENES: Yes, I would like to see the federal government be able to step in, because when Vance was a senator, he did seem to listen to us in some degree. I actually met with him down in Washington, D.C., with a group of residents.
And he did write letters of support about our medical costs and our ongoing needs that we still have that's being neglected. So I do have some hope that he's going to continue to, like, follow through on what he so adamantly talked about. He did get people to kind of talk about the situation when it first started happening.
So I'd like to see a change happen. I'd like to see some action happen. I hope they take the NTSB report very seriously, because none of those suggestions have been addressed yet by the NTSB report. So I hope this isn't another useless handshake and photo-op.
But I'm not sure. We really -- I mean, we had to beg President Biden to come in. I think a lot of people are going to be upset when -- if J.D. Vance doesn't bring something concrete to the table, because, like I said, this settlement's not enough. A couple of -- a few thousand dollars isn't enough to cover people's homes that they owned, to relocate them, to cover health care coverage.
The cost of cancer treatment is probably going to be more than what people are getting from this settlement. So it's very concerning. And I hope that they step in and intervene. They can enact 1881(a) to get us life coverage for medical costs.
They can declare an emergency declaration. There's a few things that they can do that I hope they will follow through with, at least Vance. And then Trump as well made an appearance. He brought water...
MATTINGLY: Yes.
GYENES: ... which obviously is not enough. But that needs to do action, to take action is really what I'm looking for. And I'm hoping that's going to happen, because we're very afraid of the future consequences.
And my son, he's just young. I don't want to -- so when you're also in the settlement, you sign away your rights to sue for health -- future health impacts. So, as a mother, that's very concerning for me. So I hope something else comes along and takes care of this.
MATTINGLY: Yes.
GYENES: And I hope the government can intervene and do that.
MATTINGLY: Well, please keep us posted.
You see J.D. Vance is walking down from the plane's stairway right now for that visit to East Palestine. We certainly will be following up.
Zsuzsa Gyenes, we appreciate your time. Thank you to the community and also thinking about your family. Appreciate it.
GYENES: Thank you.
MATTINGLY: We will keep an eye on that.
Also this morning, the Justice Department is instructing thousands of FBI employees to fill out a questionnaire about their work investigating the January 6 insurrection. The unusual move, to say the least, comes as President Trump's administration is considering expanding its purge of career law enforcement officials.
[11:35:09]
Joined now by CNN security correspondent and former FBI agent Josh Campbell.
Josh, how are FBI employees reacting to this?
JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is a five-alarm fire right now at the FBI.
I have talked to numerous people there, agents, professional staff, and they are worried that mass firings could be coming their way. We know that Donald Trump's Justice Department has already cleared out the executive level of the FBI, about seven people so far.
But, as you mentioned that questionnaire that went out to employees yesterday who had some type of involvement in the January 6 investigation, what they fear is that this is essentially providing a list that DOJ could then use to fire employees who were working on that investigation.
Again, the questionnaire asking those agents, what was your role, providing additional information. And so they think that there's only one direction that this is leading, is trying to come up with a list to possibly fire people.
Now, the FBI Agents Association, which represents thousands of FBI agents, I will read you an e-mail they sent. They're basically telling members, do not resign. Don't voluntarily leave.
They say that: "While we would never advocate for physical noncompliance, you need to be clear that your removal is not voluntary." Now, interestingly, as besieged as the bureau feels right now, internally, there are a lot of leaders there that are stepping up to try to defend their people. We got reporting just yesterday of the FBI agent in New York, the top agent in that office, who sent out an e- mail to the troops, essentially saying that it is time to dig in.
He said that agents should not be unfairly targeted because -- that they were doing their jobs in accordance with law and FBI policy. Of course, they're just on tenterhooks now, because they're waiting to see what Trump's Justice Department will actually do. He's made it clear that he doesn't -- he basically despises that -- those investigations that involved him, as well as January 6.
Of course, they fear that retribution could be just over the horizon.
MATTINGLY: Yes, Josh Campbell, thanks so much.
CAMPBELL: You bet.
MATTINGLY: And we will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:41:35]
MATTINGLY: In Washington, the NTSB says it will release black box information later today from the Army helicopter that collided with an American Airlines flight.
One specific focus will be the military helicopter's altitude at the moment of impact. Investigators are also studying the voice and data recorders from the American Airlines flight. Also today, the Army Corps of Engineers, you can see it right there, recovering the plane wreckage from the Potomac River. Crews have recovered and identified the remains of at least 55 victims.
Joining me now is Steven Wallace, a former FAA director of accident investigation.
Steve, are you surprised that black box information will be released as soon as today?
STEVEN WALLACE, FORMER DIRECTOR, FAA OFFICE OF ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION: You know, this is something that's different. I worked with the NTSB for decades.
And this is -- they have gotten more forthcoming about releasing that. And while they will be very careful not to announce the official probable cause of the accident until they have examined all the evidence -- and, in this accident, they have all the evidence. It's all there.
But they have gotten better, I think. And there's a tremendous public pressure and desire to know what happened. So they have gotten quite a lot better. They have already released already the fact that the recorders on the jet showed that it was at 325 feet at the point of impact.
And while not announcing the probable cause, the helicopter was reportedly supposed to have been at 200 feet. So...
MATTINGLY: When you say everything that they need is kind of there, what do you mean? For people who are novices here or who are trying to figure out what's -- what are you seeing right now that gives you confidence that they have got everything that they will need to be able to have a fulsome investigation?
WALLACE: So, just about exactly 10 years ago, we lost a Malaysia Flight 370. This airplane disappeared over the horizon.
That's -- from an investigator's standpoint, there's nothing. Some debris washed up on Mauritius months later. Here, we have state-of- the-art flight data and voice recorder on the airliner. I'm not quite clear. I think there's a combined voice and flight data recorder coming off of the military aircraft.
We have radar data. We have eyewitnesses. And we have all the wreckage. I mean, there's -- like, there's nothing missing. And the NTSB, they're never in a hurry, but they're always methodical. And so they will just go through every piece of the evidence methodically.
And, oftentimes, I would say, more often than not, in a major accident, they don't announce the probable cause for over a year. I suspect that this one will be somewhat faster than usual, because there's a lot of pressure and because all the evidence is sort of in their hands.
MATTINGLY: Yes, to that point, we -- if we could bring that video back up of the engine being pulled out of the Potomac piece by piece, the engine, in particular, like, what are they looking for as they recover more of the debris?
WALLACE: So they will look at everything.
This -- in this accident, I don't see anything that suggests a mechanical failure of any kind, unlike the business jet accident in Philadelphia. It looks like something went catastrophically wrong.
[11:45:00]
But I don't see -- so, but they won't eliminate anything. They will examine the engine and see if there's any indication of any mechanical failure of any kind.
But this airliner's approach, from what I could see, looked to be absolutely normal up until the point of impact.
MATTINGLY: The investigators never want politics or public pressure to play into anything, but this is a political time we are living in, and certainly there's been a lot of attention the accident, what happened in the investigation.
How does that play if you're an investigator in this, if you're an executive overseeing these investigations?
WALLACE: There's a huge amount of integrity in the aviation community.
And the NTSB will lead this investigation, but it uses a party system, which means that the FAA is required -- where I worked, it was required by law to be a party to all investigations. But the airlines, the aircraft manufacturer, probably the air traffic controllers union, the pilots unions, anybody who has a stake in it and some expertise to bring to the table will be invited.
And I must say, I have seen -- I have a huge amount of respect for the NTSB and their ability to just be fiercely independent and resistant to political pressures.
MATTINGLY: Is -- will there be an idea of, all right, these are changes that need to be made after this, this is a place where we could have done better, this is a place where we have deficiencies that need to be addressed?
How should people expect this -- the investigation and the kind of endgame of it to lead to hopefully positive change out of this?
WALLACE: Well, absolutely.
I would point out that the -- prior to this accident, the last time that the United States airliner was in a midair collision was in September of 1978. This is a system that operates, depending how you count, 30,000 airliner, or to the corporate, maybe 45,000 instrument flights every day.
And so the system works incredibly well. Yet this horrific accident happened. So everybody in the community will be absolutely determined to do whatever is necessary to make sure that it can't happen again. And, of course, there's discussion of the particular challenges of Reagan Airport and the mix of military traffic, and here also just the use of visual separation.
I'm a pilot. It's not unusual that the controller says, have you visually acquired the aircraft? Can you maintain visual separation, fall behind?
MATTINGLY: Right.
WALLACE: These are things that there's room for human error. And I would just like to say that, among accident investigators, there's kind of an expression, which is that, when you find the human error, that isn't the end of the investigation. That is the beginning of the investigation, meaning, because we look more and more at human factors, like human errors.
Why did it happen? Fatigue, lack of training, I mean, absolutely -- and the NTSB is -- gets better and better. And that's more often the focus of accidents, the human factors involved.
MATTINGLY: Steven Wallace, appreciate your time. Thanks so much. WALLACE: Thank you. Thank you, Phil.
MATTINGLY: And we will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:53:01]
MATTINGLY: Just in to CNN, some migrants who were arrested in the past few weeks during President Trump's immigration crackdown have been released.
CNN's Priscilla Alvarez joins us now.
Priscilla, you have been reporting this out. What more are you learning right now?
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is where ambition meets reality.
Of course, the president has directed the Department of Homeland Security to do an immigration enforcement to its fullest, essentially, having ICE agents, along with multiple other federal agencies, arrest those in the United States. And we have seen those numbers hovering now around 7,500 over the last weeks or so.
And what the reality of this equation is that there's just not enough detention space. This is something we have heard the White House border czar, Tom Homan, talk about repeatedly, which is that he needs more funding from Congress, that he wants to up the number of detention beds.
And last week, President Donald Trump said that he wants to expand facilities at Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants for temporary periods. So what is happening on the ground right now is that, as they are arresting people, in many cases, sometimes, they just don't have detention space and they can release them on other what they call alternatives to detention.
This has been an existing program. It's a way to monitor people in the system, even if they don't have the space for them in the moment. So what they are doing is holding some people, repatriating some people, and others are still getting released after they have been arrested.
So this is part of what the White House is keenly aware of because of their sort of proclamations to Congress that they need the money, but also by -- just by signaling with Guantanamo Bay that they are looking for more space.
MATTINGLY: Congress sets the beds. Congress funds. Is there still a way around that they're looking at right now, or is this just a reality until they get new money?
ALVAREZ: Well, they do use county jails as well. So they do have other facilities that they can lean on.
But, to your point, Congress has allotted about 41,000 beds. It's certainly not enough for what they're trying to achieve.
MATTINGLY: How do they feel, in the minute we have left here, about how the first couple of weeks have gone, when you talk to your sources in the administration?
ALVAREZ: Well, they feel pretty good.
They have certainly had something that we haven't seen before, which is bringing all federal agencies into immigration enforcement by giving them that authority to do that. And that alone is what they call the force multiplying out on the field.
[11:55:10]
And they feel good about that. They haven't done that before when it's immigration-centric. We may have seen that with, for example, drug task forces. So that is something they feel good about. But what is happening behind the scenes too is that they are having to plan for the realities that have been the U.S. immigration system for a very long time, which is that the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration enforcement agencies are just understaffed and under- resourced.
So a lot of this has been trying to make up for that by using other levers in the federal government. The Defense Department is another one that they're pulling. We have seen that along the U.S. southern border. And they're trying to make their show a force.
So, certainly, all of this is happening all at once, but the question, again, comes back to ambition and reality. And there are still questions that need to be answered on that.
MATTINGLY: Yes, and a legislative avenue that they have to pursue and are in the midst of, but still very early stages.
Priscilla, as always, great reporting. Appreciate it.
Thank you for joining us. I'm Phil Mattingly.
Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" starts after a short break.