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President Obama Hosting Naturalization Ceremony; Immigration Crisis in Murrieta, California; Street Clashes between Palestinians and Police in Jerusalem; Chechen Militant Becomes Public Face of ISIS; Hurricane Arthur Has Weakened to Category One; Great Rip Current Danger Still Effective for Swimmers

Aired July 04, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That's why, if we want to keep attracting the best and the brightest from beyond our shores, we're going to have to fix our immigration system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Right now in Washington, President Obama renews his call for immigration legislation. It is an issue that's dividing communities.

And right now in Jerusalem, clashes on the streets between Palestinians and Israeli forces. CNN is on the front lines.

And right now, in Nags Head, North Carolina, Hurricane Arthur has moved on, but flooding still presents problems for residents. We'll have a live report.

Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar, in today for Wolf Blitzer. This is the day that America celebrates its independence and its freedom. This July 4th takes on special means for some new U.S. citizens. At the White House today, President Obama hosted a naturalization ceremony for members of the military, who are already serving their country. The president says the ceremony is a reminder that America is a nation of immigrants.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: The basic idea of welcoming immigrants to our shores is central to our way of life. It is in our DNA. We believe our diversity, our differences, when joined together by a common set of ideals, makes us stronger, makes us more creative, makes us different. From all these different strands, we make something new here in America. And that's why, if we want to keep attracting the best and the brightest from beyond our shores, we're going to have to fix our immigration system, which is broken.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Athena Jones joining us now from the White House. Athena, this is a very special ceremony. Give us some of the highlights here.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brianna. We're talking about 25 new citizens sworn in here just a couple of hours ago. At the beginning of his remarks, the president said this is one of his favorite things to do. Fifteen of those new citizens are active-duty service members from the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force. There are also two veterans sworn in, a reservist, and seven military spouses. Also together, they come from 15 countries, and the president is, in his remarks, praised them for volunteering, for offering to serve in the U.S. military, potentially sacrificing their lives, even though they weren't yet citizens.

He said the fact there are so many people who want to come to America and come and be citizens here should give Americans hope. Then you heard that message, he said we should be -- the U.S. should be making it easier for the best and brightest to come to America and stay, not harder, and he said that he's going to keep doing everything he can to keep making our immigration smarter and more efficient, so those are some of the highlights.

KEILAR: It's really, this is a very big week when it comes to the debate on immigration reform. Athena, we essentially know now the whole concept of immigration reform, dead for this Congress. President Obama has made it clear this week he's going to go it alone. Did he talk about any of that in his remarks today?

JONES: Not beyond saying that he's going to keep doing all that he can. What he was talking about there is those executive actions he announced on Monday. Not the executive actions themselves, but the fact that he'd asked his team to come up with a series of recommendations for steps he can take using his executive power without the help of Congress.

Some of those things might be things like prioritizing who gets deported. So focusing on violent criminals. That's something the administration has already been doing, but perhaps they can make more moves in that area. He can also do things like dispatch more border patrol agents and other resources to the border. And we know that in the new money he's asked for from Congress, $2 billion, part of that will go to what they're calling a sustained border search. So those are some of the kinds of the things he can do.

One more interesting point of context, here, Brianna, today's ceremony really highlights the power of executive action. It was an executive order signed by the president's predecessor, President George W. Bush, back in July of 2002 that really set the stage for an event like this. That executive order made it possible to expedite the naturalization of undocumented immigrants who have been serving honorably in the armed forces. So an interesting bit of context as we look at this debate.

KEILAR: Certainly is interesting, Athena Jones at the White House, thank you.

And nowhere is the fight over illegal immigration more intense right now than in Murrieta, California. This is a small town that's really the epicenter of the national debate. And residents are prepared for another possible showdown today. More buses carrying undocumented immigrants are due to arrive in Southern California. Earlier this week, angry crowds forced three of those buses headed to Murrieta to turn around. National correspondent Kyung Lah is joining us live now from there. Kyung, what's being done to try to prevent a repeat of what we saw on Tuesday?

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what they're trying to do is cordon off everyone, so there's entryway into the border patrol office here in Murrieta. Look right here. You can see these are protesters. These are both sides of the immigration debate. Pro-migrant rights and anti-immigration. You can see there's a sizable police force trying to separate them from the press. And swing over this way, if you could. The reason why, is if you look beyond the cameras, you can see the roadway is completely clear. The entryway into the office, the border patrol office, is clear, should the expected migrants today arrive.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Attention, U.S. Border Patrol --

LAH: A lone Internet radio host and his sidekick continue to protest outside the Border Patrol station in Murrieta, California.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they're bringing this in --

LAH: He and others promise they'll be out in force for an anticipated 4th of July arrival of more undocumented immigrants to this facility. A move dividing and polarizing this once quiet bedroom community in Southern California.

After this, a blockade by protesters, forcing three buses of 140 undocumented migrants from Central America, many of them women and children, to leave.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Use the word illegal alien --

LAH: Then a heated town hall, pitting resident against resident along cultural lines. Murrieta is this week's ground zero for U.S. immigration policy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think the city is prepared for this. I don't think so.

LAH: What's driving these two sides? Murrieta resident Steve Hessen (ph), who runs a plumbing company and never took a political stand before, has gone from the bus protest to verbal sparring at the town hall and promises to keep the heat on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These people are probably so excited to be here, and all of a sudden, they look out the windows going, oh my gosh, what's happening?

LAH: You are blocking their way in?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not because of them, because of standing firm, letting the officials know, this is not the right way to handle this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Latinos are the ones who defend your country!

LAH: On the other side, Murrieta resident, Lapio Rivera (ph), better known for his partying Mexican music, has suddenly become for the migrant rights side, a new hero. After this protester spit in his face and others slung visual and verbal slurs at him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ bleep ] you [ bleep ] --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was completely uncalled for. We're here in a protest. In a protest, we act like adults. We're not here to fight.

LAH: Mirroring the national fight. Both sides digging in and refusing to back down on this Independence Day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAH: You're looking live now at this crowd. It's about 100 people. It's been fairly peaceful. Only one person has been detained. Both sides invoking what this country was built on, what the 4th of July means. It is a nation of immigrants that America rests its ideals on. The others saying this is also a country of laws. Brianna.

KEILAR: Big debate going on and you're right in the middle of it, Kyung Lah, thank you.

And still to come, Hurricane Arthur clears out of North Carolina and heads back out to sea as a weaker storm. We'll take you to the Outer Banks for the latest there. Up next, clashes break out in Jerusalem and one of our own was caught in a crossfire. We'll take you there live.

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KEILAR: We're turning overseas now, where we're seeing some of the most violent clashes in Jerusalem in years. A funeral was held today for a Palestinian teen who may have been killed in retaliation for the deaths of three Israeli teens. Their bodies were found earlier this week. Our Atika Shubert is joining us now from Jerusalem.

Atika, actually, we've seen some video of this. Our Ben Wedeman was on the street during these clashes. He was injured. If you can first tell us how he is doing and also tell us what the scene looks like and what it has looked like in the last couple of hours.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure. Well, the good news is Ben is doing fine. He's gone to the doctor. They've checked him out. He seems all right. But basically what happened is he was caught between Israeli police and those Palestinian youth that were throwing stones. And Israeli police have been using these sort of -- it's a kind of a crowd control measure. It's sort of a sponge and rubber covered bullet. And basically what happens is they fired it. It appeared to have ricocheted off something, and basically bounced off his forehead, bleeding quite a bit, and they had to clean him up. Fortunately, there were medics very close by. But as you can imagine, hurt quite a bit and quite a scary experience.

Unfortunately, those clashes are still ongoing, and Ben was not the only one injured. At least 50 other people were injured in the ongoing clashes today. Many of them, again, getting those kinds of rubber and plastic bullets hitting them. And the clashes haven't stopped. They're continuing into the evening. And unfortunately, we've seen this over the last couple of days, this pattern where clashes are happening in this one neighborhood, and then overnight often spread out into a few other areas of Jerusalem as well. So this is a very tense city, on edge. We have not seen this kind of violence for many years.

KEILAR: And Atika, we mentioned that today was the funeral for that Palestinian teen. Tell us about what that was like and how many people attended.

SHUBERT: Well, hundreds of people attended. It really has become a focal point of the anger, frustration, and of course for the family, the overwhelming grief of what they feel has been a very unjust system. And particularly, the fact that this 16-year-old teenager, Mohammad Abukhedair, appears to have been abducted right before morning prayers, and then an hour later his body was found burned and beaten. So badly burned that his family had to come and give his DNA to identify him.

As you can imagine, this has become the focal point of the anger of the community there, and their feeling is, there is no question, they see this as a revenge attack for those three Israeli teenagers that were killed. And this is of course the worst case scenario. And police say they are investigating, but even though they have CCTV video of the attack that clearly shows him being forced into the car, still no leads, still no suspects that have been announced, Brianna.

KEILAR: That must be so frustrating, I would imagine, to his family and to his friends and just people in that community. One of the things I found very fascinating is listening to some of the parents of these victims, both the Palestinian teen and the Israeli teen. You -- teens, I should say. You actually spoke to the uncle of one of the Israeli teenagers. What did he tell you?

SHUBERT: Yes, I spoke to Yeshai Frenkel, and he is the uncle of Naftali Frenkel (ph), who was one of those Israeli teenagers that was abducted and murdered. And he had a message, saying there should be no revenge attacks taken. His voice has really been one of calm and appealing for peace. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YESHAI FRENKEL, UNCLE: We call and urge everyone to continue to show this restraint. Any action should be carried out by our government, by the legal system. And we call out very clearly to anyone, refrain from revenge. This is not the spirit of our sons. This is not our spirit. Our spirit is that of kindness, of togetherness, and, you know, the small people who called for revenge, this is very different and diametrically opposed to what we believe in and what we call for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SHUBERT: Unfortunately, that call for reconciliation, for no acts of revenge, appears to have been shouted down by violence, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. And also striking as well, the father of the Palestinian teen, who was buried today, is also calling for no bloodshed. We're hearing that from both sides. It's surprising and fascinating and so much strength from those family members.

Atika Shubert, thank you so much.

Want to go to Iraq now. Iraqi forces celebrating a victory in the city where Saddam Hussein was born. This is just south of Tikrit. Officials say that ISIS fighters have actually fled the city. Before now, it was ISIS that was gaining ground, gaining support from Iraqi citizens who are unhappy with their central government. CNN international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh is live from Beirut for us. And Nick, since ISIS declared a new Islamic state in Syria and Iraq, we've been learning about ISIS's leadership. This is pretty fascinating. What can you tell us?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly many say that ISIS lacks that kind of al Qaeda figurehead like Osama bin Laden, who can project their message charismatically. But they do have a leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, but he does not appear in public. Only two known photographs. His addresses from what he refers to now as his caliphate, they are purely audio, no video as well. But that doesn't mean there aren't figures emerging within that sort of strange collection, often international, of jihadis that make up ISIS. One of them, in particular, appeared in many videos in Syria, but now in Iraq, a man known as Omar the Chechen.

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WALSH: ISIS has endless publicity videos, but its leaders prefer to hide. Spokesman Abu Mohammad al Atnani (ph) here reveals their plan to dissolve Syria and Iraq's borders, but not his face. To his left is a different story, Omar the Chechen. Distinctive, speaking Russian, the closest thing ISIS has to a public leader. His long ascent among global jihadis echoing the complex patchwork of brutality behind the group's rise.

A former soldier in the Georgian army, he was briefly jailed on firearms offenses in 2010. Jail, he reportedly said, turned him to jihad, and he arrived in Syria two years later, where he was quoted in an extremist newspaper expressing his shock at how liberal rebels allowed people smoking, shaving, instead of letting beards grow. They listened to songs, he said. I wondered where had I landed. It all seemed discouraging.

Soon his military experience earned respect. Shown here in a regime base that foreign jihadis helped lackluster rebels overrun.

RAFFAELLO PANTUCCI, SR. RESEARCH FELLOW, RUSI: Chechens in particular held in a high veneration. On top of that, he has lots of experience in his past as a former soldier. All of these things combined likely with the sort of ego on his behalf have sort of meant that he has turned into this quite substantial figure within the group.

WALSH: In a movement that courts death in battle, he grew as a figure through surviving. Chechens and other foreign radicals bickered, yet he led some from this group, the Mujahideen al Ansar, to join ISIS, reportedly attracted to their plans for a caliphate.

USAMA HASAN, SR. RESEARCHER, QUILLIAM FOUNDATION: There have been many people like him who have actually adopted the Puritan values of groups like al Qaeda and ISIS. And they're quite happy to accept that rather superficial simple message, which ISIS has. As long as they're given an opportunity to fight beyond the battlefield.

WALSH: He also flaunts his Chechen past, here mourning the death of their militant leader, Dokka Umarov. His mother (ph) is said to have limited roots (ph), which even so helped his rise to ISIS's field commander, perhaps now in Iraq too.

ISIS have spread fast. Thursday, activists saying they controlled an area of northeastern Syria, five times the size of Lebanon.

A rise as jarring as how a former Georgian soldier became the only public face of this earthquake of religious extremism the world is struggling to respond to.

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WALSH: Omar the Chechen or Abu Omar al-Shishani as some call him gives you a bit of an international idea as to sort of where many of the fighters behind ISIS come from. Some with criminal backgrounds. Some purely there to pursue what they see as religious motivation. But it also gives you a bit of an idea as to where this movement may go. They've risen through Iraq and Syria through military prowess, often leading Syrian rebels in the earlier days, and now storming across many towns in Iraq too.

But that military prowess doesn't translate into the ability to hold on to territory or to win over the population, to provide them services, utilities, the things that people need perhaps in the Sunni part of Iraq to remain desirous of having ISIS around them. That's of course something Omar the Chechen has no experience of. He's a lifetime fighter, it seems, in many ways, and that's of course where many analysts say ISIS can eventually fall down. When the fighting's done, can they actually introduce services, daily life, for the people who they purport to try to represent and govern now in some areas? Brianna.

KEILAR: As you report, we're watching them struggle to do that. We'll continue to do that as well. Nick Paton Walsh, appreciate the report.

Now, first Hobby Lobby, now Wheaton College. We'll tell you about a new Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare and the contraceptive mandate. That is coming up later.

But just ahead, we have the latest on Hurricane Arthur's glancing blow along the Carolina coast. This wasn't an especially powerful storm, but a cat 2 is a cat 2, and this thing packed a punch. We will tell you where it's headed next.

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KEILAR: Let's check in now on Hurricane Arthur. The storm has weakened to a category 1 after delivering a glancing blow to the North Carolina shore overnight. This is currently off the coast of Virginia and Maryland. It's headed northeast towards Cape Cod. For people who are spending the holiday at the beach, the really big threat here is rip currents that can easily drag a swimmer out to sea. At its peak, Arthur packed winds of about 100 miles per hour. North Carolina's governor says 44,000 homes and businesses are without power right now. So far, this is the good news, no deaths or serious injuries have been reported. Our Joe Johns is in Nags Head, North Carolina. What's it looking like there, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Brianna. Safe to say, we dodged a bullet here after just a crazy night on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Tremendous winds, difficult to stand up, and now look at it, the sun starting to peek out, around 79 degrees. People are hoping things are getting back to normal.

It was an unusual morning here, needless to say. Where I'm standing was covered with water earlier today at sunlight, but now it's all receded and gone right back out into the sound. We took a trip over there to the causeway. The road leading up to that causeway had all kinds of silt and debris over top of it. Front loaders had to stop the traffic in order to get some of that stuff off the road so the cars would have clear passage.

Back over here, near Nags Head, taking a look right next to me, to my right, this is a restaurant here. This shows you one of the reasons they're able to survive so well. Of course it's up on stilts. There was a lot of water that came in here overnight. Nonetheless, they've cleaned up the place, they've done what they have to do, and there's hope they'll be able to open for dinner this evening.

Farther down the shore, Hatteras, engineers are still assessing. They're saying that as far as infrastructure goes, the roads, the bridge, they say it's not as bad as it was predicted. So that's good news for people over there who decided not to evacuate, and good news for people who are trying to get in or out on this holiday weekend that otherwise would have been very busy so far except for that storm, Brianna.

KEILAR: It sounds like a lot of people, unfortunately, 44,000 are without electricity this holiday weekend. Do you have a sense if crews are able to get to those folks and try to restore their power in a quick manner?

JOHNS: We certainly know that they're working on it, and people around here have a lot of confidence in their power company. They think the power company in this area does a lot better job than some of those north of us and south of us as well. So we'll see. But there is certainly optimism that they're going to get the lights on as quickly as possible. KEILAR: There is optimism. Some of those other ones will remain

without being named, I think. It's good to hear that people are faring well there. Joe Johns, thank you so much, in Nags Head, North Carolina.

Now, CNN meteorologist Indra Petersons actually rode out the hurricane in Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks. Indra.

INDRA PETERSONS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: All right, Brianna, kites are even flying, after all, it is the 4th of July. There are so many beach-goers that came here for their vacation. They're happy to see that Arthur pretty much whipped out here. It's moving fast, it's been tracking now 24 miles per hour, right out of the area, but it still leaves one huge problem. Think about this. It is going to be hot today. Look at all these people lining the coast. What they're thinking is they're going to go ahead and go back into this ocean as soon as the sun breaks, and that's the biggest concern we'll have from here moving forward. That rip current danger is still incredibly high.

What happened last night is we see all these waves that came all the way up high and now all that water is rushing all the way back out. But it can't go back out the same way it came in. So what happens is it looks for those breaks in the sand bars, and it rushes even faster through those breaks. That's the strong rip current that is really going to be lining the entire eastern seaboard we're concerned with. Especially when it lines up with a whole day like this one. So yes, although the system is bearing out of here, it feels a lot better, and finally dry this morning, Brianna, the threat unfortunately is not over with just yet.

KEILAR: All right, Indra Petersons, thank you. Let's go to Chad Myers now. He is in the CNN weather center. That's the thing, Chad, people need to stay out of the water. It looks like North Carolina at this point lucky to folks there, they're going to have this July 4th weekend. But this thing still headed towards New England.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is. It's still going to make a lot of rip current activity all the way from Long Island down the Jersey shore, and even down towards the Delmarva. So not over for the points to the north.

Now that the wind is offshore there in North Carolina, it's much better. Not the undertow or the rip currents that you saw yesterday, which was really devastating.

I know that Indra actually saw the northern eye wall. I was here watching it at 4:00 in the morning. She got the northern eye wall when she was trying to get up and get going this morning, and then got eye right in the middle with no wind, and then the back side of the eye wall, and this is what it looked like. Here's Reed Wiseman (ph). This is from the ISS. Great shot. I know we show you satellite pictures all the time, but we don't always show you tweet pictures that you see here from NASA right above the top of the cloud.