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Kyiv Under Bombardment; U.S. Launches Strikes On Iran; ICE Arrests At U.S. Airports. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired July 30, 2026 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:30]

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Polo Sandoval live in New York, and this is CNN NEWSROOM.

A deadly night in Ukraine, hours after a warning from President Zelenskyy. We have a live report on the latest round of strikes. And news strikes in the Middle East as Trump declares it's the US' turn to retaliate, how Iran is responding.

Plus, CNN travels through Israel to learn more about a new type of threat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a fundamentalist understanding of the possession of the land. The land was given to the Jews and that needs to mean all of it.

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SANDOVAL: Why some Christians who call the Holy Land home are leaving.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from New York, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Polo Sandoval.

SANDOVAL: Rescue operations are underway at this hour at multiple locations throughout Ukraine following a barrage of Russian strikes overnight. Officials say at least eight people were killed across the country, and that includes six near President Zelenskyy's hometown. More than 20 others were wounded. Officials say the death toll could go up as they scramble to reach people who could possibly be trapped under this rubble.

And all of this on the same night that the ominous sound of air raid sirens could be heard in neighboring Poland, which says that an unidentified object crashed and caused an explosion deep inside its territory during those strikes. And this new video is said to show a large crater at the crash site. Russia's targets, including Kyiv, where the attack demolished this market and killed one person there.

Clare Sebastian keeping an eye on all those developments. She joins me live from London. Clare, what if we could start with this unidentified projectile that was reported in Poland? Is there any new indication on the source of it? Possibly Russia?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, I think authorities in Poland and in Ukraine likely as well are still trying to work out exactly what happened here. But what we know at this moment is that the Polish military said overnight it was monitoring at least a dozen, it said, missiles over Western Ukraine that they said could pose a threat to Polish airspace.

Then at one point after 3:00 in the morning, they noted that one unidentified object had crossed into Polish airspace. It then promptly disappeared from the radar. And Polish police then said that they found wreckage, a crater and scattered debris, maybe in those pictures that we're showing now.

In a village, we think we can show you a map of roughly where that crater is located, about 90km or so from the border. So this is fair deep into Poland mounting, of course, the concern around this. The Ukrainian foreign minister is saying that a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile crushed into Polish territory. We don't know if it's the same missile that made that crater. It's still at this point, an unidentified object that we're dealing with here.

And there's no way to know, of course, if this was deliberate or targeted. These are cruise missiles, if it was one, high precision weapons, but still, that work is still ongoing to determine what happened there. But it does come after a spate of warnings from Poland, from the Baltic countries, those closest to Russia, of the higher potential at this point in the war for Russian provocations, hybrid or other types of attack.

The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned just a few weeks ago that Poland was preparing for every scenario. He didn't want to scare anyone, he said, but those intensive preparations were underway. No reaction from NATO as of yet. Poland is, of course, a NATO member, but we are keeping an eye out for that.

And of course, this highlights very clearly the risks, the spillover risks of this war, especially as these aerial attacks, these overnight aerial attacks escalate.

SANDOVAL: In terms of the latest strikes that we've seen launched specifically in Kyiv, Clare, I'm wondering if you can bring us up to speed on what we're learning there.

SEBASTIAN: So, look, this was a pretty major overnight attack. Even with that projectile crossing into Poland, we can't lose sight of the damage that it was inflicted on Ukraine. Multiple different areas of Ukraine were affected. And it comes, of course, 36 hours or so after President Zelenskyy was in the White House with Donald Trump making an urgent plea for more help.

When it comes specifically to air defenses, I think it's notable because previously when we've seen meetings between Trump and Zelenskyy, President Putin has tried to get in and speak to Trump as well. We didn't see that this time. Instead, we simply see more escalation, this aggressive posture from the Russian side.

[04:05:11]

What we know at this point about this attack is at least eight people were killed, dozens more injured across the country. Several notable incidents in Kryvyi Rih, which is Zelenskyy's hometown, a missile hit a residential home killing five members of one family, according to officials there, including three children. And I want to bring you footage as well from Lviv all the way over in Western Ukraine, dramatic video, if we can show it, of a boy being pulled out of a damaged building.

City authorities say that he was born in 2020 and he survived, but with fractures to his leg. So very widespread. And of course, we're in the final days now of what is the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since April of 2022. Polo?

SANDOVAL: And as you point out, fresh on the heels of that meeting in Washington. Clare Sebastian, thank you so much for that reporting.

Let's go to new developments now in the Middle East. Jordan's state media says that the military intercepted five missiles from Iran today, and this after the US military resumed strikes on Iran. And President Donald Trump had pledged to hit the country very hard, he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: We're going to be hitting them very hard because it's our turn to hit them. They know it's coming, they're asking us not to do it. But, you know, they tried shooting at last night.

So we had five rockets shot going 8,500 miles an hour. And all five rockets were knocked down to the ground, but they nevertheless took a shot. So it's our turn.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: Iranian state media reporting that explosions were also heard in several locations across Southern Iran. CENTCOM says that the "heavy wave of strikes" has wrapped up and that dozens of targets were hit, including military command centers and missile, and drone facilities.

I want to show you some video that was geo-located by CNN which shows smoke rising after a strike in Western Iran. State media also releasing some video from an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz. It says that rescue operations there are ongoing after US missiles struck a residential home.

Officials saying that two children have been pulled from the rubble and that the search is on for three additional family members. Let's go to CNN's Eleni Giokos now who is joining me live from Dubai. Eleni, let's just start on this latest round of strikes now from the US. The President has told us to expect this. Are we essentially now entering yet another chapter of a back and forth between the US and Iran?

ELENI GIOKOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It seems that this is exactly what's happening, you know, just climbing this escalation ladder. And you mentioned those five drones that were intercepted that were targeted towards Jordan this morning. A short while ago, Kuwait military says that Iran conducted a deadly strike on a building belonging to a Chinese company that's in the northern part of the country, killing one employee, causing extensive material damage.

So Iran retaliating after CENTCOM conducts the heavy wave of strikes in terms of how they described it. Now importantly, CENTCOM says that they targeted military command centers, missile and drone sites, surveillance areas on the coastal front of Iran, as well as defense sites and maritime capabilities.

Now, what we're hearing from Iranian state media is that explosions were heard in Bandar Abbas. This is an area that's been targeted before. The images you're seeing now is from Qeshm Island. Iranian state media releasing this footage showing, you know, rescue operations after what they say is a residential home that was targeted, resulting in multiple injuries and two children were rescued from this.

CNN analysis shows that this footage has not been shown on social media before, so that is very notable. Other sites that have been targeted according to Iranian state media, Kish Island as well as Khuzestan Province which borders Iraq. All of this transpiring as we've seen Iran activating its proxies since the weekend, notably the Yemeni Houthis targeting Saudi Arabia as well as the Iranian-backed Iraqi militias in the eastern parts of Iraq.

So President Trump using very harsh language and this is the result where CENTCOM has now started striking Iran once again after many days of pausing those strikes.

SANDOVAL: And then, of course, there's Saudi Arabia that finds itself essentially dragged into this conflict. As you know, Eleni, the defense minister from that nation meeting with the Trump administration here recently, wondering you can bring us up to speed on that. I mean, could we see US-Saudi joint strikes?

GIOKOS: And we have already seen that. We saw that, you know, on Tuesday night. And frankly, you saw Saudi Arabia as well as CENTCOM embarking on joint strikes against eastern parts of Iraq, specifically focusing on that Iraqi militia group that was targeting Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure.

And this is sort of a very notable move. And Saudi Arabia says it doesn't seek escalation but has the right to self defense. The defense minister going to Washington less than a day after those joint strikes discussing what the Saudi Arabian position is.

[04:10:12] They do not want to be embroiled further. But they did relay a message, according to sources, that they believe the leverage is going to be used by Iranian proxies in the region to try and drag in other countries as well. Very notable to actually see what's happening with the Yemeni Houthis as well that have been targeting Saudi Arabia over the weekend.

SANDOVAL: Eleni Giokos, thank you so much for all that reporting.

A wildfire season in Europe, it could become even more destructive this week due to rising temperatures and uncooperative weather throughout the region. Temperatures in parts of Spain, they're expected to reach up to 38 degrees Celsius or 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The country's weather service is expecting very high or extreme levels of fire danger through at least Sunday. And there's no rain in the forecast right now.

In France, officials say that fires in the Gironde Region have stabilized, but the danger of flare ups still putting the area at risk. CNN's Nada Bashir is in France with more on what's been lost so far.

Nada Bashir: This is a scene which has become all too familiar now in France's southwestern Gironde Region. The scorched earth and burnt trees across miles and miles of woodland and farmland in this region as a result of wildfires that have been blazing for days now.

And according to an official update on Wednesday, officials have said that the majority of the fires that they have been battling over the last few days have stabilized. They haven't seen any sort of spreading of those fires, though there have been some blazes which have rekindled, although they say that they were quickly dealt with.

But we are seeing peak temperatures on Wednesday today expected to reach around 41 degrees Celsius. So soaring past 100 degrees Fahrenheit, that is what's expected as the heat wave continues. And there is a fear that these extreme temperatures that we are seeing could lead to more fires.

And of course, for the residents of this region, there is a huge amount of fear around the potential for more fires. More than 200,000 people already evacuated, many of them desperately waiting for news of when they will be able to return home. But for some, they will not have homes to return to.

SANDOVAL: And emergency officials in the EU are also concerned that Greece and Italy could soon face a similar type of wildfire threat as Spain and France. In fact, there are already some pretty tragic signs. Three firefighters died on Wednesday battling fires on two Greek islands. Two of those deaths happened on Crete, where firefighters there became trapped. And specialists in fighting forest fires that were sent in from Athens to the Greek island of Paros to help contain another wildfire.

To Southern Japan now where emergency crews are still sifting through earthquake rubble. They're searching for any signs of life. Japan's prime minister announced today that 30 people have died from Tuesday's 6.8 magnitude quake. And earlier, another official had said that some of those deaths were still under investigation.

It is still unclear exactly how many people are missing and injured in Kumamoto Prefecture. The prime minister said that it's a race against time to find those trapped in the debris of a partially collapsed mall. I want to show you some images from inside the mall that are coming from police body camera footage.

And elsewhere, damage assessments are still underway. This video showing parts of a temple that have been flattened. And want to also show you some houses that did not do very well in these earthquake, the roofs caving in and some of them, some of the walls toppled as well. Tens of thousands of homes have lost power and temperatures in Japan are currently soaring.

Immigration attorneys are raising a new alarm as more immigrants face the possibility of arrests at airports throughout the United States. We'll tell you why.

[04:14:05]

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[04:00:00]

SANDOVAL: So we're seeing more and more videos just like the one you're looking at here showing federal immigration officers making arrests at US airports. Both attorneys and migrant advocates say that it's happening more frequently. The Trump administration putting pressure on ICE to ramp up the number of arrests and deportations, so they may be looking to airports for that.

So now the agency focusing on people who are flying with expired visas. Homeland Security officials telling CNN that they cannot reveal the locations of their officers for security reasons, and they also decline to confirm any uptick in ICE arrests at airports. But a spokesperson did say that DHS has deported nearly 1 million undocumented immigrants as of July 12th.

Joining me now is immigration attorney Andrew Nietor. He's a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the association's Board of Directors. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.

ANDREW NIETOR, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: Thank you for inviting me.

SANDOVAL: So I'm eager to get your thoughts on this, on what we're seeing right now at some airports. I mean, as long as I remember flying in and out of my hometown border airport, there's always been a Border Patrol presence at the TSA checkpoint. But from what you've gathered, this seems different here.

Are you hearing that ICE is actually collaborating directly with the TSA? And if so, in what way?

ANDREW NIETOR, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: This is definitely different than what we've seen in the past, and what we're seeing seems to be a much higher degree of sort of collaboration between ICE and TSA. So right now it appears that ICE is either providing information to TSA and asking them to search their database, or some type of sharing of information to a degree that we did not see previously, particularly looking at the number of airports that this seems to be occurring, and that these include domestic flights.

SANDOVAL: And just for our viewers around the world who may not be fully aware, what if we could bring us up to speed on what it may have been like before? Would someone without legal status or permanent US residency, or pending immigration proceedings generally be able to book a domestic flight and take it without fear of being flagged if they don't have any sort of apprehension warrants?

[04:20:04]

NIETOR: If it was a domestic flight, really the focus of TSA, by mandate and by practice, has always been really just to identify the person and for the purpose of airport security and flight security. So as long as that person had some type of either real ID or the type of identification that allowed them to pass through security, that was generally enough.

Now, if that non-citizen did happen to have, let's say, an outstanding deportation order or had some type of serious criminal history that made them more of a priority for ICE enforcement, that would certainly place them at risk. But that was really the focus of the ICE enforcement at the airports, looking for people who were high priority in terms of serious criminal history or some type of serious immigration violation history. And that seems to be what has changed to what we're seeing now.

SANDOVAL: Andrew, just want to share what the DHS spokesperson told CNN. They wrote that this administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of the country to self deport. Again, that's one of the statements from the Department of Homeland Security.

Just in your view, how would you respond to one who may argue that sure, they may be easy targets because of the circumstances, but because of the precarious nature of their immigration status, that they are fair targets. What would you -- how would you respond to that?

NIETOR: Well, I think it's important to look at the profile of who's being detained now. And these are now individuals who generally lawfully entered the United States. And then at some point they might have applied for, let's say an extension of their visa, or they might have applied for an asylum and they filed an asylum application. They might have married a US citizen.

And that process, that lawful process, kind of goes through the US Citizenship and Immigration Service, USCIS, which has gotten incredibly backlogged, particularly over the last couple of years. And so what has happened is a lot of these individuals who are in the United States having lawfully-entered and having lawful pending applications, sometimes their visa expires in the interim.

But the immigration law specifically allows them to continue with that immigration process. As long as they lawfully entered the United States and they have some type of lawful process that's going on, those individuals can continue to try to get their green card through a spouse or continue with the asylum application. In fact, many of these individuals have the lawful ability to work in the United States even though they're allowed to continue with that process, ICE is coming in and saying, well, technically we have the authority to detain you.

You can continue to apply, but now we want you to do it from a detention facility. And instead of going through USCIS, now we want you to do it through the immigration court system, which, as everybody knows, is already extremely backlogged. So it doesn't really make a lot of sense when you really look at who they're targeting and what the implications are.

SANDOVAL: And as you were speaking, we were sharing some videos of some of those detentions that we've seen at some of the airports here in the United States. As an immigration attorney, Andrew, would you advise someone with precarious legal status to fly at the moment?

NIETOR: I would not. In fact, speaking to many of my colleagues across the country, the advice that we're giving to our clients is very different than it was even a couple of months ago. And so if somebody has some type of immigration status that is lawful, they have a lawful application pending, they still might be at risk of being detained if ICE decides to go and check if their visa might have expired, even if they filed for extensions lawfully.

And the other concern is that, even somebody who is a non-citizen who is in status and has no reason to be detained, we know very well that ICE regularly makes mistakes. And so, the advice that we're giving to our clients is very different than it was previously because the risk has been raised, really for everybody, whether they're a legitimate target of ICE or not.

And frankly, even if you're a US citizen, you happen to be standing in line next to somebody and you're chatting, does that put you at risk? Because perhaps you are associating with somebody on the airplane runway and all of a sudden ICE wants to know, well, are you associated? Maybe they make a mistake.

And so, I think it's really raising tension in a place that's already a place of heightened tension.

SANDOVAL: Yes. We all remember the controversy from just a few months ago when the Trump administration started sending some of those Immigration Customs Enforcement officers during that partial government shut to terminals. And that was met with a lot of questions and concerns. And, of course, the Trump administration under tremendous pressure to meet that self-imposed quota of 2,000 immigration detentions today.

Andrew Nietor, thank you so much for offering your legal expertise to this.

NIETOR: Thank you very much.

[04:25:04]

SANDOVAL: And nearly a month after the death of Nolan Wells, public interest in the case is growing and his family now demanding answers. As investigators work to piece together the Mississippi teen's final hours. A new piece of audio from a boat trip is raising some questions about what happened the day he disappeared. CNN's Ryan Young picks up the story.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is audio from a call that the friends made after they left Horn Island. They were calling for a sea tow. They were taking on water. And you have to remember this happened on July 4th after the friends say they left Nolan Wells behind because he said he was going to stay on that island to hang out some more.

As his friends tried to make their way back to land, apparently they started taking on water. And that's why you hear this phone call where they're describing what's going on and how they need help. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RESPONDER: It looks like you're on Horn Island, correct? Are you on Horn Island?

CALLER: Yes, we are at Horn Island. Yes.

RESPONDENT: All right. Is the boat sinking or you have it aground?

CALLER: We are sinking, yes.

RESPONDENT: Is it aground is the question.

CALLER: We're not aground. We are in 17 foot of water -- we're in 31 foot of water.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Now, we are aware that online there are people who believe they've been able to dissect this call and find additional information. We're not able to verify that sort of information right now or separate the call in the manner that people online believe they can. So right now, there's just a lot of questions about this.

And let's not forget last week, the DA who's involved in this investigation instructed the agencies who are investigating not to speak about this case publicly. It's been about 25 days since Nolan Wells went missing, and there are so many now unanswered questions because there's a gap in the information from authorities, and then that's being filled with a lot of online speculation.

Also, the toxicology, we believe, is not back, and we've never gotten the autopsy from the authority. So right now there's just a lot more questions than answers when it comes to this case, and a lot hasn't changed in the last 25 days or so.

Now, we know Ben Crump plans to hold another news conference with the family on Thursday. We'll hope maybe to get some more information because they do have a 1-800-number that's been set up so people could call tips in. They've raised money to see if they could get more information that's involved in this case. But at this point, we have no solid timeline from when investigators may decide to unveil some of this information.

And on top of that, a lot of this information could be sealed for a grand jury. So we continue to watch and wait to see what happens next in this Nolan Wells case.

SANDOVAL: Ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM, a heated hearing on Capitol Hill. Dr. Anthony Fauci takes the Fifth repeatedly. Now one Republican senator is threatening to hold him in contempt of Congress.

Plus, the Federal Reserve's latest decision about interest rates and what the new fed chair is saying about it.

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