Return to Transcripts main page

The Situation Room

Savannah Guthrie and Siblings Post Video Pleading for Mom's Safe Return; Trump Says, Admin Maybe Can Use a Softer Touch After Minnesota Shooting; Democrats Push for Limits on ICE, GOP Leaders Rule Out Some Demands. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired February 05, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, tearful pleas, Savannah Guthrie and her siblings are begging for their mom Nancy's return, plus what they're saying about possible ransom notes.

Also new CNN reporting about why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was at an FBI search at election offices in Georgia. We will speak to a member of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners just ahead

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And, quote, he should be very worried. That's President Trump's message to Iran's supreme leader. Will that threat stall or spur negotiations between the two countries?

And later TrumpRx set to launch? Will the president's prescription drug platform really lower costs for your medications?

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

Happening now, the search for Nancy Guthrie enters an agonizing fifth day. Her adult children, including NBC's Savannah Guthrie, released a truly heart-wrenching video.

BROWN: They're thanking the public for its outpouring of support that's swept across the nation, and they're pleading with anyone behind her abduction to prove that she's still alive.

Here's the family's entire recorded message, and we'll keep the tip line number on the screen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NANCY GUTHRIE'S DAUGHTER: On behalf of our family, we want to thank all of you for the prayers for our beloved mom, Nancy. We feel them and we continue to believe that she feels them too. Our mom is a kind, faithful, loyal, fiercely loving woman of goodness and light.

She's funny, spunky and clever. She has grandchildren that adore her and crowd around her and cover her with kisses. She loves fun and adventure. She's a devoted friend. She is full of kindness and knowledge. Talk to her and you'll see.

ANNIE GUTHRIE, NANCY GUTHRIE'S DAUGHTER: The light is missing from our lives. Nancy is our mother. We are her children. She is our beacon. She holds fast to joy in all of life's circumstances. She chooses joy day after day.

Despite having already passed through great trials of pain and grief, we are always going to be merely human, just normal human people who need our mom.

Mom, Mama, if you're listening, we need you to come home. We miss you.

S. GUTHRIE: Our mom is our heart and our home. She's 84 years old. Her health, her heart is fragile. She lives in constant pain. She's without any medicine. She needs it to survive. She needs it not to suffer.

We too have heard the reports about a ransom letter in the media. As a family, we are doing everything that we can. We are ready to talk.

However, we live in a world where voices and images are easily manipulated. We need to know without a doubt that she's alive and that you have her. We want to hear from you, and we are ready to listen. Please reach out to us.

Mommy, if you are hearing this, you are a strong woman. You are God's precious daughter, Nancy.

[10:05:03]

We believe and know that even in this valley, he's with you. Everyone is looking for you, Mommy, everywhere. We will not rest. Your children will not rest until we are together again. We speak to you every moment, and we pray without ceasing. And we rejoice in advance for the day that we hold you in our arms again.

We love you, Mom.

A. GUTHRIE: Love you, Mom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We love you, Mom. Stay strong.

A. GUTHRIE: We love you, Mom. We love you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So heart-wrenching.

Let's go live now to CNN's Ed Lavandera right there in Tucson. You've been following the investigation from the very beginning, Ed. What is the latest this morning?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are awaiting a press briefing from investigators here this morning at the Pima County Sheriff's Office in Tucson. It's not clear if there will be any new revelations or if anything has come in the hours since Savannah Guthrie and her siblings released that video last night.

But the release of that video coincided with a dramatic moment replaying, playing out at their mother's house, Nancy Guthrie's home, where investigators descended on the home late afternoon. And for almost two hours, there was a team of probably, I'd say, about a dozen or so investigators from the sheriff's office, as well as federal investigators searching. They had put crime scene across the entrances into the property and they spent about two hours searching and collecting evidence there.

From what we noticed yesterday afternoon, the investigators focused a great deal of time in the backyard of the home. There were also agents that were going inside the home as well. We did see that at one point the, some of the agents had brought out some bags of evidence as well. We don't know what was in the bags or what was collected there at the scene.

But it was significant because this was really the first law enforcement presence at this kind of intense level since Sunday afternoon when Nancy Guthrie was first reported missing. So, clearly, investigators wanting to come back to the house. Why exactly and what exactly they were looking for or what they were hoping to achieve there, we don't know yet. Perhaps we get some more clarity on all of that, but a significant situation there last night.

This as investigators continue to say they do not have any suspects or a person of interest, and that they simply do not know where Nancy Guthrie is even now as we're entering the fifth day of this search. Pamela?

BLITZER: All right. Ed Lavandera, thank you very, very much. And to our viewers, if you have any information at all, please reach out to the Pima County Sheriff's Department at (520)-351-4900.

And still ahead, a new admission from President Trump who says his immigration crackdowns could use a softer touch, his words, a softer touch. What he says he wants to see on the ground moving forward.

And Democrats' demands, the party wants to see major changes with ICE operations in exchange for keeping Homeland Security funded beyond next Friday. We're going to ask Republican Senator Tim Sheehy if he believes a deal is possible.

Stay with us, lots going on. You're in The Situation Room.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:10:00]

BROWN: New this morning, after weeks of outrage over the death of two U.S. citizens by federal agents. President Trump is now reflecting on his administration's aggressive immigration enforcement in Minneapolis.

Let's go live right now to CNN's Alayna Treene over at the White House. Alayna, what is the president saying?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, Wolf, President Trump, as I think all of our viewers know is not one to typically admit when he thinks perhaps both he, but even more so his administration and the people beneath him have perhaps taken some missteps. But he did seem to strike a rare conciliatory tone in an interview with NBC yesterday, particularly about the immigration crackdown and how they have carried that out on the ground in Minnesota. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch, but you still have to be tough. These are criminals. We're dealing with really hard criminals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, look, Wolf, I think part of the reason that the president is using this language, and I should note he also did defend some of the ICE agents in those comments as well, is that he's read the room. You know, he is being briefed constantly, of course, behind the scenes by his top advisers.

And whereas they had initially taken a very aggressive defensive posture in the rhetoric and the language they used to defend the agents on the ground even after the fatal shootings of these two U.S citizens, he's recognizing that the public is no longer necessarily with them. We've seen a series of polls come out in recent days showing that many people think that there was too much excessive force used in those shootings. And so this is kind of an acknowledgement.

Now, I do think, you know, of course, this comes as we saw his border czar, Tom Homan, come out, he's still on the ground in Minnesota, and say that they're going to be drawing back, they're going to be removing 700 federal agents from Minnesota.

[10:15:02]

They're leaving still 2,000 in place. But that is a bit of an acknowledgement that perhaps it's time to de-escalate.

I think the question, of course, is whether or not that's actually going to happen in practice. We have heard from the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, saying, you know, 700 people being removed is a step forward. We'll see though what that actually looks like on the ground. So, of course, we'll be watching closely for that.

BLITZER: And, Alayna, as you know, the president is also speaking out on what else has been taking place in Minneapolis, including the killing of two Americans by federal agents. Tell us what he's saying.

TREENE: Yes. This was interesting, because he did want to make sure that these agents were still, you know, being defended. He said, we still have to back them. But he acknowledged that he did not think their deaths were justified. Listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You mentioned Renee Good and Alex Pretti not being angels. Do you think any of that justified what happened to them though?

TRUMP: No, I don't. It should have not happened. It was a very sad -- to me, it was a very sad incident, two incidents. And, you know, they mentioned the one now, they don't mention the other. Well, I think they were both sad. And, you know, who feels worse better than anybody? The people of ICE.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: I mean, really just quite different language than what we had been hearing in the immediate aftermath of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, when you had his Homeland Security adviser, Kristi Noem, for example, coming out and saying that Pretti was a domestic terrorist. He heard similar language from Stephen Miller with the president's -- one of his deputy chiefs.

All to say, look, the president recognizes where the public is moving on this, and it's also an issue they really want to preserve because this was the issue, immigration, one of the issues that they believe helped usher Trump back into the White House for his second term. They still believe it is a winning issue, but the president has been very clear, I'm told, in my conversations with people in that building behind me that he wants his team to be messaging on this better. He thinks they need to be improving on this issue, particularly, of course, as they look ahead to the November midterm elections, where they still believe that this immigration crackdown is very popular. They want to have, you know, Republicans be successful on this issue as well. And so that all, of course, is playing a role in this moving and shifting posture.

BLITZER: All right. Alayna Treene at the White House for us, Alayna, thank you very much. Pamela?

BROWN: All right, Wolf. Happening now, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are racing to meet yet another government funding deadline, and it's already clear it will not be easy. Democratic Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries laid out to GOP negotiators a list of ten reforms they want at ICE in exchange for funding the Department of Homeland Security. Among those demands are banning masks for ICE agents, mandating judicial warrants to enter private property and updating use of force standards. You see all the demands there on your screen.

Joining us now to discuss is Republican Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana. He serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Thank you for coming on, Senator.

What is your position on these reforms proposed by Democrats? Do you support any of them?

SEN. TIM SHEEHY (R-MT): Well, unfortunately most of them are non- starters. And I think as we heard the president say, there's no question that adjustments are needed now. I think the most important adjustment that we need to have with the deportation efforts is we have to have local buy-in and we have to have local cooperation.

Each city and each locale is different. There's different dynamics in each part of the country. So, when we move in to conduct deportation operations, what we've learned is we can't have a one-size-fits-all approach, and Minneapolis was just the absolute proof of that. And, obviously, leadership is changing and those tactics are changing.

And I think what we're seeing with this list of demands is unfortunately, really, an intent to tank this process because they want to grant basically constitutional rights to anyone who's suspected of being here illegally. If you read the list and what they entail, it's essentially they want the constitutional rights of presumption of innocence and judicial process, which applies to citizens to now apply to non-citizens as well.

And, unfortunately, are decades of immigration law that proceed this with immigration courts and immigration warrants are specifically different for exactly that reason. We have immigration, deportation proceedings that have been going on for a century now because those individuals are not citizens, and therefore the constitutional rights don't apply. So, what they're essentially trying to do is merge those issues, which is a non-starter.

BROWN: Let me just follow up on that because the Supreme Court precedent does show that people who are here illegally still -- they do have some constitutional rights, not as much as a U.S. citizen, but they do have some, including due process rights. And in terms of the warrants issue, if you look at the Supreme Court cases, it's not clear if it can apply to immigration cases that the Supreme Court president shows that it's mainly about workforce, going into a workforce and doing inspections. And as you know, that warrants issue as well as the masking ban, those are two of the biggest issues.

[10:20:00]

What do you say to Americans who feel it's completely reasonable for officers to show their faces during enforcement operations? I think they should have probable cause, a crime has been committed, a legal standard determined by an independent judge before entering private property.

SHEEHY: I think the challenge with that very simply is if you're going to require the presumption of innocence in every single immigration case, that will require a multi-year -- as you well know, multi-year prosecution, judicial warrant process to make entry to arrest, to question, to -- the entire process becomes equivalent to a criminal prosecution. And if we have 10 or 15 million people that have to go through that process, that's never going to happen.

And I think, ultimately, Pamela, what you see is there's a desire to keep these people here. They were brought in intentionally during the Biden administration. This was an intentional importation of millions of people to sanctuary cities, and now they want to make it impossible for us to deport them despite the fact that that's what the American people have not only voted for. The polls to this day, even in the wake of the Minneapolis mistakes, to this day, the American people still support securing the border and deporting illegal immigrants.

So, this effort basically stalls that makes it impossible to do widespread deportations, which the American people have said they want, and that's why it's going to be a non-starter.

BROWN: And it is true that under the Biden administration, there were record crossings that went down before Biden left office. But in terms of being intentional, I know that that is a theory among some on the right, but there's not evidence to show that they intentionally wanted the border to be open to people just, you know, coming here illegally.

I just want to follow up on your point.

SHEEHY: Well, I don't think that's -- Pamela, I mean, I understand that's your position.

BROWN: What is the evidence of that?

SHEEHY: The facts don't really belie that because they provided apps to bring them in. They provided massive amounts of taxpayer funding to not just incentivize them to come, but then keep them in sanctuary cities. I mean, the policies from the federal government down to local government incentivized mass migration. And I don't know how you say that any other way than that was intentional. It was intentional acts from the federal government to state governments, to city governments, to encourage this mass migration. If it wasn't intentional, how come the Trump administration was able to close that border with a snap of a finger in a matter of days, which is exactly what they did? It was a choice not to secure that border.

BROWN: That is your perspective. It's, you know, a fair argument and of other Republicans, I know, share that viewpoint. But just to be clear, the apps were set up to create a system for refugees to come over. It wasn't just a free for all, everyone come on over. But as I said, there were record crossings.

I do want to just follow up though, because it is true that the majority of American people, you know, they wanted the border secure, they want criminals who are here illegally out, I mean, there is no question on that. And that is not what is at issue here? There is a Syracuse University research republished an analysis of ICE data showing a staggering 72 percent of the growth and detention this fiscal year comes from people with no convictions.

And so with that in mind, Senator, I want to play what one Republican Congressman recently told me about this. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): I do have a problem in deporting, you know, grandmothers and people that have been here for a number of years. I think there's got to be a better way. And so I think the American people voted for securing the border, then arresting gang members and criminals and people active deportation orders. I don't think they voted for the extent to which the ICE operations have panned out so far.

We need a lot of these folks to do jobs here in the United States. And if you actually deport them all, then labor costs are going to go up and actually is going to go against what we want to do, which is actually drive down costs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: I'm curious what you say to that, Senator.

SHEEHY: I mean, listen, he's largely correct. I think the president said as much, which is we have to prioritize -- Tom Homan's been, I think, a great messenger on this. We have to triage, as you do with any situation we're dealing with thousands or millions of people. We have to triage and figure out and focus on most importantly the dangerous, violent, criminal legal aliens who are involved in drug trafficking, violent crime, gang violence and obviously coordinated narco-trafficking activity.

And I think the mistake that's happened here, which, again, Homan is rapidly fixing, and as is the president, is we have to return to focusing on the ones who are truly a threat to the safety in our communities. And that has to be the focus of our effort. And I think we have a long way to go on that. And I would agree with the congressman and the president that we need to refocus on the violent criminal legals first and let's get that done.

BROWN: All right. I want to turn to another issue, what the president has been talking about in terms of elections. This is what he told NBC news is Tom Llamas about elections.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: There are some areas in our country that are extremely corrupt. They have very corrupt elections. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Philadelphia. Take a look at Atlanta. If we need to put in federal controls as opposed to state controls, remember this, they're really an agent.

[10:25:00]

They're really accumulating the votes for who wins an election. If they can't do it honestly, and it can't be done properly and timely, then something else has to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That was questioning with Tom Llamas of NBC. Yes or no, Senator, do you support elections becoming federalized contrary to what the Constitution says?

SHEEHY: No, that's a constitutional amendment and elections are placed at the state level for a reason. I do strongly believe in voter I.D. I think that's absolutely the right answer. Unfortunately, as you know, to implement that federally would require basically amending the Constitution, which, as you know, the bar for that is very high from state legislatures to suit majorities in Congress.

In our partisan age, it's highly unlikely that happens, as much as I wish it would. So, I think we have to do everything we can to ensure election security at the federal level, and obviously work with states to make sure it's happening at the state level as well.

BROWN: All right. Senator Tim Sheehy, thank you so much for your time and sharing your perspective on the show. We really appreciate it.

SHEEHY: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

BLITZER: And coming up a week after seizing voter records from a Georgia election office, the Trump administration is still giving very differing answers on why the director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was there. CNN's new reporting on her involvement, that's coming up

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:00]