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New Day
Trump to Tour U.S.-Mexican Border in Texas; Congress Debates Sanctuary City Policy; President Obama's Family in Kenya Talks with CNN. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired July 22, 2015 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:30:00] JEFFREY LORD, FORMER REAGAN WHITE HOUSE POLITICAL DIRECTOR: The borders. Mexico has borders. If you cross them from the south, you're in big trouble. We had an American Marine that crossed the border into Mexico by mistake and they threw him in jail for months on end.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Sergeant Tamerici (ph). We covered it extensively and we helped get him out.
LORD: So - exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, to say that we should have a border, I mean, what does that have to do with the color of one's skin. We have a border with Canada, you know.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Ana, Jeffrey -
ANA NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: You know, I just - I just think it's -
CAMEROTA: Give me 10 - 10 seconds, go ahead.
NAVARRO: I think it's very ironic - I will say that I think it's very ironic that Jeffrey's here defending Donald Trump and talking against identity politics when in his announcement speech Trump used identity politics to disparage an entire nationality, called them rapists and thugs.
CAMEROTA: All right, we will -
LORD: He did not.
CAMEROTA: We'll, let's take this up tomorrow. We will have a lot, I'm sure, of material tomorrow after this visit. Ana, Jeffrey, thank you.
LORD: Thank you.
CUOMO: Mick.
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, the father of the San Francisco woman that was gunned down on a San Francisco pier allegedly by an undocumented immigrant, that man is calling for immigration reform. Will something finally be done? We're going to speak with the chairman of the judiciary committee who will hear the victim's father speak tomorrow.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:35:10] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM STEINLE, FATHER OF KATE STEINLE: Unfortunately due to disjointed laws and basic incompetence on many levels, the U.S. has suffered a self-inflicted wound in the murder of our daughter by the hand of a person that should have never been on the streets of this country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: That was Jim Steinle testifying before a Senate committee about his daughter Kate who, of course, was killed on a San Francisco pier earlier this month. Her alleged killer, an undocumented immigrant with multiple felonies who had been deported five times and was released by local authorities despite a federal request to keep him. Steinle will speak again at a House hearing tomorrow. We expect the same message. The question is, what will it mean?
Let's bring in Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte. He's chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which will hear Steinle's testimony.
Thank you for joining us. What do you want to see happen?
REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, I want to see the 276 or so sanctuary cities that have actually taken a public policy to not cooperate with the immigration service to enforce our laws back away from those policies, encourage their police departments and sheriff's departments to cooperate with the federal government and make sure that we get these criminal aliens.
There are now 350,000 of them that are either under orders of deportation or in a deportation hearing process where they have been released back into the community. And they commit thousands of crimes every year. The sanctuary cities released 8,000 last year and already they've committed nearly 1,900 new crimes. The federal government, you know, they need the cooperation of sanctuary cities, but we also mostly need the enforcement of the law by the Obama administration. They released 30,000 criminal aliens last year back onto our streets.
CUOMO: OK.
GOODLATTE: So it's a very serious problem.
CUOMO: So let's talk a little bit about why, OK, you have this problem. I think Jim Steinle said it very well there, there's a lot of problems on a lot of levels. In doing my research, you understand the issue of how sanctuary cities came to be and why very clearly. And it wasn't simply to give a free pass to illegal aliens. The system is broken and you guys down in D.C. have failed to fix it at the federal level. Your committee passed a bill, passed a proposition, that would fix the problems with I.C.E. and their communications to localities and it has gone nowhere for months. So address that part of the problem.
GOODLATTE: Well, we definitely want that bill and several other. Five enforcement bills that have passed out of the judicial committee and the homeland security committee. We want all of those bills brought to the floor of the House. We're going to bring one bill that addresses part of this problem to the floor.
CUOMO: But why hasn't it happened?
GOODLATTE: Well, because there is not consensus here on what to do, but we're pushing hard and I believe that those bills will come to the floor. But it's also important to stress that if the current laws were enforced, a lot of this problem would be resolved. And they're not being enforced. The number of deportations from the interior of our country has gone way down under the Obama administration and that's got to change. There's got to be leadership from the top saying, we're going to take seriously the fact that there are these 350,000 people on the street.
CUOMO: The administration -
GOODLATTE: They've gone up by 70,000 in the last two (ph) years.
CUOMO: The administration says that there have been more deportations under the Obama administration than ever.
GOODLATTE: That's not true. First of all, they're counting people that they apprehend at the border and send back immediately. The Bush administration didn't even count those numbers. So about two-thirds of their total number are simply people that come across, they don't go through a deportation process, they're simply sent back. They now count them as a deportation. And if you look at the numbers for the interior of the country, they're down more than 70 percent during the Obama administration and the number of criminal aliens on the streets are up 28 (ph) percent.
CUOMO: OK, so let's take your numbers. Let's take your numbers. Let's take your numbers.
GOODLATTE: Sure.
CUOMO: And I'm not interrupting you because I disagree with you. I'm interrupting because I agree with your premise, but I want to get to the process.
GOODLATTE: Sure.
CUOMO: Sanctuary cities are only a problem to the extent that they are symptomatic of a failure of the system. You know the history of them. I know a lot of people are spreading misinformation and even the phrase "sanctuary city," as you know, has a good faith basis and logic of being misleading, but it hasn't been fixed. Your committee keeps on coming up with proposals that should be saleable, should be debated and they don't get debated. Why blame the localities and not look at your brothers and sisters in Congress and say, we have failed?
GOODLATTE: Well, first of all, one of the fixes is to cut off federal funds to cities that are not cooperating with I.C.E. And that's exactly what happened here. And this individual who was -
CUOMO: But it's why they don't cooperate. It's why they don't cooperate. You know that a circuit court has found that the way that I.C.E. asks for people to be held over in localities often doesn't meet Fourth Amendment standards. You know that often I.C.E. waits too long and municipalities got sued, and that was the big reason that they started passing these local laws.
[08:40:15] GOODLATTE: Sure. But if I.C.E. didn't wait too long because the Obama administration said we're going to deal with this, we have 34,000 beds to hold people for deportation purposes and we're not using all of those beds. If the administration were enforcing the law, we would have less of this problem.
And this individual, Mr. Sanchez, said that he went to San Francisco because he knew it was a sanctuary city where he'd be less likely to be picked up. It is not in the interest of local governments to take this posture. And they should cooperate with the federal government and they should make sure that when they have someone who is a criminal, illegal alien, that they call somebody and say, help us get this person out of our community, not just release them back out onto the street.
So, yes, we have bills in the Congress that we want to move forward on. I'm very anxious to do that. But also it's important to note that the Obama administration and these cities need to do everything that they can do right now under the law and much of the problem will be solved by that. Not all of it, but much of it.
CUOMO: But you know it all emanates from the federal level and that's where you guys control and that's the set of fixes we need. Your committee has done its job, it just hasn't been followed through in Congress and that's why we're pushing for the progress.
It's very good -
GOODLATTE: We - we - we thank you for that and we want to see those bills go to the floor of the House.
CUOMO: Congressman Goodlatte, we will stay on it. Please come back and let us know about the progress or lack thereof. Appreciate it, sir.
GOODLATTE: Thanks, Chris.
CUOMO: All right. Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: President Obama is heading to Kenya this week and our own Brooke Baldwin travelled to Kenya and sat down exclusively with the president's family. The surprising things they have to say about Barack Obama.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:45:49] PEREIRA: All right. Time for the five things to know for you NEW DAY.
No. 1, just released police dash cam video of that violent arrest of Sandra Bland raising new questions about whether the tape was altered before it was released to the public. Bland was then found dead in her jail cell three days following that arrest. Police maintain it was suicide. Her family disputes that.
Mr. Trump is at it again, giving out Senator Lindsey Graham's personal cell phone number during a rally last night in South Carolina. Graham's campaign has responded, calling Trump "a gift for Democrats." Just this morning, Trump's saying he gave out the senator's number just for fun.
A major get for the Pentagon, confirming it killed Muhsin al-Fadhli in a targeted drone strike. He was the leader of the Khorasan Group, a network of senior al Qaeda members.
"Washington Post" correspondent Jason Rezaian still in an Iranian prison a year later. His family says that he has endured horrifying conditions. Top U.S. officials, including the president, have repeatedly fought for his release.
This morning the town of Ferguson, Missouri, is expected to announce a new interim police chief. Andre Anderson was previously with the Glendale, Arizona, police department. The new African-American police chief's hiring comes after the controversial death of Michael Brown.
For more on the five things, be sure to visit newdaycnn.com for the latest.
Ally?
CAMEROTA: Michaela, will President Obama visit his ancestral village when he goes to Kenya this week? Our Brooke Baldwin sat down exclusively with the president's family in Kenya. She's here next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:50:53] PEREIRA: Could President Obama's trip to Kenya be more of a family reunion? The president fled to Kenya this weekend. Many are watching to see if he will pay a visit to his ancestral village, Kogelo, where the president's father is buried, step grandmother still lives and his half sister, Auma, runs a foundation.
Guess who is fresh back from there? Brooke Baldwin went to Kenya, she spoke with his family exclusively and is here with us on NEW DAY, probably with a little bit of jet lag.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR, "NEWSROOM": Yeah. I've been up - Well, I'm still on Africa time a little bit.
PEREIRA: You went all the way to Kenya. What a trip. An amazing -
BALDWIN: It was phenomenal.
PEREIRA: Tell me about the village.
BALDWIN: It was phenomenal. So just to get to this village, Lake Victoria, the shores of Lake Victoria, the Luo people, this is the (INAUDIBLE), the tribe there. Three airplanes and an hour and a half long car ride just to get to where he descends from. And you're looking at these pictures. I mean - it was a pinch-me experience because I landed this exclusive interview with - I know you said half sister, they say sister and brother.
PEREIRA: Absolutely.
BALDWIN: If you talk to Auma Obama --
PEREIRA: And this is his grandmother.
BALDWIN: Exactly. This is their (INAUDIBLE), as they say in Luo, or Mama Sarah. And to get there, you drive and it's this bumpy road and then just before you get to Kogelo, it's paved. So in the last seven years they have really improved this town because of the pride of the Luo people, the pride knowing that Barack Obama descends from this place.
PEREIRA: And that pride from his sister, too. You sat down with her. Tell us what she said.
BALDWIN: She is a pretty phenomenal woman who wanted to have us there. We were the first journalists ever to be able to show her foundation, which we'll do a little later this week. It's called Sauti Kuu, which in key (ph) Swahili means "powerful voices" and I found it fascinating that she and her brother, they grew up in different parts of the world, and they share this common passion of service, helping young disadvantaged people.
We talk about My Brother's Keeper here in the United States with President Obama, Sauti Kuu with Auma and so I think we have some sound where she sat and she talked to me just about the pride she has for her brother and we also talked recently, I asked her if she'd seen that eulogy that he gave in Charleston, South Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: He's been in the White House for seven years. Can you describe the most proud moment you've been of your brother?
AUMA OBAMA, PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S HALF-SISTER: Getting in the White House.
BALDWIN: Getting in the White House. Getting in. Initially.
A. OBAMA: Just getting in. He got in twice. I'm proud of that. I'm seriously proud of that, yes.
BALDWIN: Did you see him recently break out into "Amazing Grace?" Have you seen that video?
A. OBAMA: I did.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (Singing ) Amazing grace -
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND CHEERING)
A. OBAMA: I'm surprised he sang so well. It was amazing. It was amazing.
B. OBAMA: (Singing) I once was lost --
BALDWIN: What does she make of the fact, though, that now the name Obama -
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PEREIRA: Beautiful to see her reaction to that and then also I understand she led you to someone even more special -
BALDWIN: Oh my goodness.
PEREIRA: Their grandmother.
BALDWIN: So I went to Mama Sarah's home. This is a home, I walked along the same pathway that President Obama has walked, sat in her front living room, shared Coca-Cola with Mama Sarah. And there were pictures of the First Family, of course, on the walls and we sat with her.
And I will add, you know, on the record the president will be heading to Nairobi for this entrepreneurship summit and he's only supposed to be in Nairobi for essentially these for 48 hours. But you get the sense of this anticipation that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps from the people in this village, maybe even from his grandmother, that he will come home.
PEREIRA: Were there preparations underway?
BALDWIN: There were, you know, freshly planted flowers. I sort of said what's going on? Because it's not, again, on the schedule to head there. But I think there is a hope and if anything, a sense of pride. They know that there's always media sort of camped outside of Mama Sarah's gates.
And not only, I should point out, in Western Kenya, but I also spent some time in Nairobi where the president will be and I just wanted to show you, I hopped on many an airplane on my time in Kenya and this is actually the cover of the Kenya Airways, this is (INAUDIBLE), and obviously you recognize this person as the President of the United States. So here there's graffiti - you know, a graffiti artist painted Barack Obama's face outside of the Nairobi International Airport.
PEREIRA: Anticipating his arrival.
BALDWIN: Everywhere. You say "Obama," people get excited there.
PEREIRA: Well, we got to point to your full interview. It's going to air on your show, the full interview with the president' family in Kenya, this afternoon right here on CNN on Brooke's show, 2:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN.
[08:55:01] Thanks for sharing the voyage.
BALDWIN: Thank you.
PEREIRA: Can't wait to see the rest of it, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Thank you so much.
PEREIRA: Chris?
CUOMO: All right, Mick. Hooray for Mr. Bus Driver. A Boston bus driver does something small for others that goes a very long way and that's why it's "The Good Stuff."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CUOMO: Oh, this is a good one. A Boston bus driver beat the heat and did a solid for all his passengers and some kids at the same time. His name, John Lohan. He's been driving this route for nearly 20 years but on this day, he spots a group of kids selling lemonade. He asks his passengers, hey, is it cool if I pull over? They say, yeah, sure. He buys the entire bus -
PEREIRA: He did not. That's fantastic.
CUOMO: -- a tasty summer beverage. And as if it weren't enough, he's also a good tipper.
PEREIRA: Really?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It only cost 50 cents and he gave us $10. So -- he's awesome.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was the cheapest round, least expensive round I've ever sprung for.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
CAMEROTA: Like a true Bostonian.
CUOMO: Right. He says he did it because it's the little things that count in life and he wanted the kids and passengers to take away something they would never forget. Witness "The Good Stuff."
PEREIRA: I'm a sucker for a lemonade stand. I'm telling you.
CAMEROTA: Me, too.
PEREIRA: Entrepreneur, good spirit, community. I love it.
CAMEROTA: Beautiful. Time now for "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.
