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The Situation Room

Grass or Turf in the NFL?; Body Cameras For Homeland Security Officers?; Sex Trafficking Survivors Speak Out. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired February 03, 2026 - 11:30   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Happening now: All Homeland Security officers in Minneapolis will be getting body cameras. That's according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

And this comes as agents and members of the public continue to clash and after federal agents fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Noem also said the bodycam program will be expanded nationwide as funding becomes available.

Investigators in Pretti death are looking at more than 30 body cameras worn by officers the day of the shooting. Joining us now to discuss is Chad Wolf. He was homeland security acting secretary during the first Trump administration.

Hi. Thanks so much for coming on.

First off, what is your view of Secretary Noem's decision here and this announcement about body cameras?

CHAD WOLF, FORMER ACTING U.S. SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Yes, look, I think it's the right decision.

I think, as we look at law enforcement's use of body cameras across the country, it's probably 75 to 80 percent of state, local and federal law enforcement do use body cameras today. So it's long been ICE's policy to use that. They need to be funded for it, and then they need to deploy that.

So I think anything that increases transparency -- and, again, any time you have an officer-involved shooting, you want to see video of it, right? And usually the best video comes from that body camera. So I think it will do a lot to not only help in the investigation, but also maybe put to bed, put to rest sort of views that people have about what happened and what didn't if you can go to the body camera footage pretty quickly.

BROWN: And my understanding is, it hasn't been required. Do you think that should be a requirement? WOLF: Well, ICE does have a management directive that says, again, in

appropriate cases to deploy body cameras for their officers. A lot of that has been on the Homeland Security Investigators, which is the different side of ICE versus their removal officers.

But I do think it's probably time. And, again, if that involves increased transparency and it gives some -- the general public some assurance in what ICE is doing as well, I don't think it can hurt at this point. Again, funding needs to be made available. It actually was in the first bill that the House passed.

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BROWN: Yes.

WOLF: I think there's about $20 million in there for body cameras for ICE. We will see if that increases as the negotiations continue.

BROWN: I'm curious how you respond to Democrats in Congress who say this move by Secretary Noem is too little, too late. As you know, they have other demands. They want agents to not wear masks and so forth.

We have a list of those. They say that the Department of Homeland Security needs far more reform. How do you respond to that, I'm wondering, as a former acting head of DHS?

WOLF: Yes, look, again, what ICE does across the country -- and they do removal operations every day in almost every state across the country. And they do that in a very safe environment. They do that without a lot of fanfare, without the chaos.

It's only when they go into sanctuary cities that prevent them from cooperating with local police that they have these issues. So, you now have Democrats calling for uniform limitations on ICE authority, but they're only challenged in these sanctuary cities.

So my take is, if we actually had ICE cooperate with local authorities and require that, you would actually see the chaos, you would see the violence go down, because this is what they normally do. This is what they have done for decades.

BROWN: Yes.

WOLF: And so some of the limitations that the Democrats are talking about, about no face masks and only judicial warrants, I think those are not the right move. I think that actually limits ICE's mission, and we need to allow them to do their job, but to do it in a safe way.

BROWN: And I actually went on a ride-along with ICE. I mentioned this because I have some perspective here. It was 10 years ago. It was in a sanctuary city in Chicago, but it was very different from what you see today. It was very targeted. There were only a few agents on each mission based on intelligence.

They weren't wearing masks, and there weren't crowds. There weren't protests. It was a very different landscape then. And even outside of the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis, we had seen these violent clashes, multiple violent clashes between members of the public and agents during this immigration crackdown.

Are you willing to consider that there may have been times where these agents went too far in their operations?

WOLF: Well, again, what I would tell you is a lot of that's happening in places like Chicago, like Los Angeles and others that, again, have those sanctuary policies that prevent local law enforcement from opening their jails and letting ICE do their job in a very secure setting like a jail.

I will also point to, when you have rhetoric from local officials that say we are at war with ICE, I think that does encourage agitators and violent opportunists and other people to go out there and block and impede ICE. We don't see this -- or you see it very rarely with any other law enforcement agency or operation to have individual Americans go out there and put their car in the middle of a law enforcement operation.

It's very dangerous. It's against the law. It shouldn't be done for ICE, just like it's not done for any other law enforcement agency. But somehow, I think, because of the rhetoric, we have given them the OK to do that, that they can do that and then run away. They can throw bricks at ICE and then they can run away, and no one's going to hold you accountable for the illegal activity that you're doing.

BROWN: Right.

And just to note, the state corrections agents, they do actually work with ICE. Minneapolis, the city doesn't have a jail. It's the county. And Tom Homan, who is now leading the efforts there in Minneapolis, he has said that they're working on a deal to have more cooperation with the local officials. So we will see what happens on that front.

Chad Wolf, thank you so much.

WOLF: Yes.

BROWN: And we will be right back.

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BROWN: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is acknowledging that -- quote -- "Mistakes were made" in the rush to release the latest batch of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case.

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TODD BLANCHE, U.S. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: You have really hardworking lawyers that worked for the past 60 days. Think about this, though. You're talking about pieces of paper that's stacked from the ground to two Eiffel Towers. And so the minute that a victim or their lawyer reached out to us

since Friday, we immediately dealt with it and pulled it down and we're continuing to do that. We knew that there would be mistakes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Well, some survivors' information was not properly redacted in the millions of documents posted online last week. The DOJ says it has removed all documents that survivors or their lawyers identified.

And the release happened in the final days of Human Trafficking Awareness Month. And experts are warning about this growing industry targeting kids online and in real life.

I spoke with two child exploitation survivors with two very different stories, and they sounded the alarm on how far-reaching this issue is now in the age of the Internet and A.I.

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HAILEY, HUMAN TRAFFICKING SURVIVOR: I was smart and I was athletic and I was a sex slave all at the same time.

BROWN (voice-over): Hailey is a recovering survivor of human sex trafficking. She says it started as a child with her family and then by prominent members of her community.

HAILEY: Nobody would have ever imagined. I mean, these men were in their churches. They were coaches of their kids' little league teams.

BROWN: For Hailey, it started when she was just 12 years old, when her stepdad sold her for sex.

HAILEY: I knew -- when I say I had a job, I knew that whoever walked in the door, if it was a man, then I remember my mind trying to come to terms with having to do whatever they were going to request of me.

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I didn't see myself as a victim. And I don't think you can afford to when you're in it. You have just got to survive. So you just kind of have to disassociate.

BROWN: Hailey believes her mother could have stepped in and stopped the abuse, but failed to do so.

(on camera): Was she allowing your stepdad to abuse you?

HAILEY: He did horrible things to us, which turned into trafficking. And, yes, she did allow it.

BROWN (voice-over): After years of abuse, the situation evolved. Her stepdad went to prison. And Hailey, living on her own away from her mother in high school, began to rely on a few prominent men in her community for help. But that eventually came with a cost.

(on camera): Walk us through how you were lured into the sex trafficking ring.

HAILEY: They lured me in by just giving me the things that I wanted or that I needed at that time, and then started slowly asking me for things, like a picture or a video, that I was a pretty girl, and how could I blame them for wanting -- they're supposed to be attracted to me-type deal.

And then out of guilt for all that they have done for me, I did it, starting with a picture or a video or something like that. And then they have that over my head.

BROWN (voice-over): According to the latest report by the International Labor Organization, Hailey was part of a $236 billion worldwide criminal industry. And now experts say that, as technology rapidly evolves, that industry is widening, with more children being exploited online.

KATHERINE CHON, DIRECTOR, DHS OFFICE ON TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS: They may be thinking that they're connecting with a peer online, but it's actually someone who's a predator trying to prey on their vulnerability.

BROWN: Research conducted for Thorn, a nonprofit that combats childhood sexual abuse, found that roughly a third of the 9-to-17- year-olds surveyed reported having an online sexual interaction. Jacob was one of them.

JACOB, SEXTORTION SURVIVOR: I felt safe. I felt like I was talking to somebody my own age. And I felt I could trust them.

BROWN: Jacob, now 30, was involved in a sexual online relationship at 14 with someone whom he thought was a girl his age.

JACOB: The person that I was chatting to asked me to perform some activities, sexual activities in front of the camera.

BROWN: During the six-month online relationship, Jacob sent several sexually explicit videos. When Jacob tried to break it off, the relationship quickly turned into sextortion, where the predator tried to extort money or sexual favors by threatening to reveal evidence of their sexual activity.

JACOB: The conversational tone shifted immediately. It became very sinister. It became very aggressive. And at that moment is the first time I realized that I maybe wasn't talking to the person that I thought I had been talking to.

BROWN: Jacob built up the courage over the ensuing months to walk away on his own, never hearing from the perpetrator again, until...

(on camera): You get a knock on the door one day. What happened?

JACOB: I came to the door, and I didn't identify myself at first, but I was like: "Why are you guys here?"

And they said: "We work in child sex crimes." And the moment that they said that, I knew exactly why they were there. It was like the past 15 years of trying to push this problem down, to ignore it just evaporated in an instant.

BROWN (voice-over): Department of Homeland Security had been investigating Jacob's case and informed him that many of the videos the perpetrator had from Jacob from 15 years ago were all over the Internet on child sex sites. Authorities still have not made any arrests in that case.

JACOB: They showed me a screenshot of one of the videos that my perpetrator had -- had taken of me when I was talking to them all that time ago. And I think that moment was -- that was the moment that I had, like, the most sadness for my younger self.

BROWN: Katherine Chon has been working in the field of human trafficking for over 20 years for HHS and says she has seen the steady rise in these cases due to new online sites and apps. Certain apps allow users to upload a picture of a child and make them look nude.

CHON: There are 24 million unique visitors to these nudify app downloading sites. The image of them could be used to coerce them in any -- for any number of reasons, financial or otherwise.

BROWN: Officials like Chon are also warning against the growing trend of sadistic online exploitation involving perpetrators getting a child to cause harm to themselves or others. Chon says several people have been successfully prosecuted for these crimes, but the issue is ongoing, with members sharing manuals on how to groom, extort and torture victims, typically young girls, online.

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These extremist networks are known as 764.

CHON: They may be told to drink water out of their toilet bowl, to harm their pet, to carve names on themselves, to carve other types of inscriptions on their bodies, to potentially harm others in the household.

BROWN: Child safety experts say parents need to be aware and engage with their child's online activity.

ALEX ADAMS, ASSISTANT HHS SECRETARY FOR FAMILY SUPPORT: Having open communications with your kids, looking for patterns if they seem to be concealing devices and things like that, just having open dialogue to prevent them from falling victim and ensuring that the same safeguards you use for their physical security in person you're also using online.

BROWN: As for Hailey, she fled to another state to escape her sex traffickers and is now using her trauma to help raise awareness to this problem hiding in plain sight.

HAILEY: We see them all the way from somebody that has a great job all the way to somebody who is living at a homeless shelter. And there's no -- nobody's exempt from this happening to them. And we see -- I mean, it's from one spectrum to another.

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BROWN: And we want to thank the survivors for sharing their stories.

And I want to note that Hailey is no longer in touch with her mom. Experts say their biggest concern for the future is just how A.I. is evolving and how predators could use A.I., weaponize A.I. and prey on kids.

I mean, just today, French police raided the Paris offices of Elon Musk's X and summoned him for questioning. It's part of a growing investigation into the social media company and its A.I. chatbot Grok, especially its sexually -- sexual deepfakes of adults and children. X says it has stopped all Grok users from creating images of people in revealing clothing.

So experts say, bottom line, parents should be mindful about sharing pictures of their children on the Internet, as well as what children are doing online.

I have to say, Wolf, doing this story has really been a wakeup call for me. I had covered human trafficking previously, but just learning from the HHS officials we spoke to how much this problem has evolved and how bad people, bad actors, predators are using A.I., it's just so sad to learn about.

And it's a warning for parents, especially sharing their kids' pictures.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: So important, what you just did to report all this, because there's so many of our viewers, they have little -- you have three little kids.

And I'm sure what you have learned over the course of doing all this reporting has influenced your decision, your husband's decision on what they should be doing online.

BROWN: Yes. No, absolutely. In my household, they are not online. I will say that. And they won't be for a long time until they go, because you just -- it's hard to control.

And I want to also note, Wolf, there is help for survivors of child exploitation and their family members. And you can call Team HOPE right here. It's on your screen. This is the number, 1-866-305-HOPE.

And we will be right back.

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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There are 32 NFL teams and 30 stadiums around the country. Half of those stadiums play on grass and half play on turf.

And this has become one of the most provocative issues in sports; 92 percent of these players say they prefer grass.

DR. ALLEN SILLS, NFL CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: Yes.

GUPTA: So, as chief medical officer of the NFL, what do you do with that?

SILLS: I think we have to understand, why is that? Number one is performance. They want to be able to perform. So I have got to be able to execute the movements that I need to do to do my job and do it well. But, secondly, how does my body feel after playing on that?

One of the things we're learning from the testing is, turf returns energy back to your body differently than natural grass does.

GUPTA (voice-over): The data is a bit mixed on this topic. Data from the 2021-2022 seasons did find grass to result in a lower number of lower extremity injuries.

However, the NFL says data from every season since then does not show a significant difference in injuries on grass versus turf. But due to different factors, like different climates, different stadium designs and even different operational needs, alternative surfaces have become increasingly necessary.

(on camera): It all started back in 1966, where you had the Astrodome and then astroturf, which at that point was basically just like carpet on top of concrete. It's changed a lot over the last several decades, but there's still a lot of concerns about injuries, about toxicity, about whether you can ever make this turf really behave like grass.

NICK PAPPAS, NFL FIELD DIRECTOR: It gives us that bounce-back, that energy return to the body so what they're feeling when they step underfoot.

GUPTA (voice-over): Nick Pappas is the NFL's field director, and his job is to quantify that grass feel that players want and then try to level the playing field.

So how to do that? First step is to develop a series of standards that all fields will need to meet by 2028. And part of that testing is for things like surface hardness, player impact and overall traction.

PAPPAS: We have added two studs, like a cleat on the bottom. It's about twice the weight, falls from the same height, but ultimately gives us a representation that is much like the athlete.

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We can test all of our stadiums with these devices and actually quantify the amount of traction available at any given time, rotational traction, so twisting of the cleat and translational traction, so a sliding of the cleat.

GUPTA (on camera): Essentially putting a cleat into the ground and testing rotation and for movement.

PAPPAS: Correct.

GUPTA (voice-over): And these tests are applied at 60 individual points all over the field. While no two fields will ever be exactly the same, the hope is, they might at least start to feel that way to the players.

(on camera): You think that we're going to get to that point where you look at 30 NFL stadiums and they basically all have a uniform surface?

PAPPAS: I do. In the last 10 years, we have seen helmets change dramatically, and that's really improved their safety. I think you're about to see the same thing happen in the surface industry.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And, Dr. Gupta, thank you very much for that report.

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