MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Immigration
Interview
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HAYES: Again, he created it and Jeff Sessions created it, and Kirstjen Nielsen created it. But the President now faces -- Trump may be backing down from separating the children from their parents, he is not crucially giving up on his policy of cracking down on every single adult crosses the border illegally called "zero tolerance." That is going to continue. And so now, instead of being confined to those so-called tender age shelters, the children will now be detained indefinitely together with their parents. They will be sent to family detention centers which the Pentagon under the executive order has been ordered to prepare military facilities, camps on military bases for families jailed.
And as to the nearly 2,500 children, the crucial question of what will happen to them, the 2,500 children who right now as you're listening to me are separated from their families and been sent to different locations in 17 states around the country, right now the administration just a few minutes ago says there are no plans, they will lift no finger to reunite them with their parents while their parents await court hearings. The reaction from Washington, I'm joined by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia and I want to start on this. HHS just saying we are going to make no move or no attempt to reunite the 2,600 children taken from their families in our custody with their parents. What do you think of that?
SEN. TIM KAINE (D), VIRGINIA: Well, I think it means that their alteration of the policy today didn't end their heartlessness. If they're not going to lift a finger to reunite these kids with their families, then the American public needs to stay outraged until they do. This is a humanitarian atrocity that this administration created, the separation of these kids devastating to the children and devastating to the parents. And what we need to do is stay on this administration until they stop the detention, until they reunite these kids with their families. And I'll tell you, Chris, we're going to have to really stay on them on this reuniting because any administration that was cavalier enough to strip these families apart thinking that the American public wouldn't care, why would we trust that they would be diligent in trying to reconnect parents with kids. We're going to have to stay all over them to make sure that they do it.
HAYES: In terms of trust, I mean there's a question about when you read the text of the executive order. There seem to be some rather large loopholes. One of them being that they're directed to essentially keep families together essentially in the bounds of the law and resources I think is. I'm paraphrasing the executive order. Do you trust -- here it is, "where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources." That's the only directive. There is no word of the use "shall" there, that they shall keep them together. Do you trust that this, in fact, will and the policy that they won't keep doing this?
KAINE: Chris, no. I don't trust it. I think there's four big unanswered questions in addition to this sort of depending on the resources loophole you point out. Will the families be indefinitely detained? Where will they be detained? What will the process be to determine their future status? And will you treat lawful asylum seekers as criminals? As you know just last week Attorney General Sessions said that no longer would the
United States treat well-founded claims of violence or domestic abuse as a reason for asylum. This is a dramatic change in U.S. law. So what we now start treating lawful asylum seekers and many of these 2,500 -- 23,00 to
2,500 kids are in that cat or are we going to treat them and their parents like they're criminals now? Huge questions, huge loopholes, and then you get to the question of and what about the kids that are already in custody, what are we going to do with them?
HAYES: There's some talk about some bill being voted out in Congress. There was a big fight between Mark Meadows and Paul Ryan today. It's unclear whether they have 218 votes for either of the two bills that have been entirely crafted by the Republican Caucus an extreme bill and a less extreme bill. Is there anything that's going to happen legislatively in the United States Senate in the next week or so?
KAINE: Well, we're going to see what the House does but I'll tell you, Chris, I'm very skeptical about it and here's why. We came up with a bipartisan bill in February. I was the Democratic drafter, Lindsey Graham the Republican drafter, we introduced it with 16 co-sponsors, eight Democrats, eight Republicans. It accomplished two objectives that the President said he wanted, permanent protection for 1.8 million DREAMers and $25 billion over ten years for border security. We put strings on the border security money so it couldn't be used for a vanity project like a wall where a wall wasn't necessary but we basically did a deal and came to the President said both of these match what you've asked for. Can you take yes for an answer? Chris, you know what happened. The President's political advisors got to him, told him that no you've got to be tough on these immigrants and so he did a 180, pour cold water on it and trashed it. And since that moment, instead of looking for bipartisanship, he has doubled down on cruel, harsh policies, ending DACA, ending the temporary protected status for refugees, threatening to end family unification, threatening to end the diversity visa program, talking about shithole countries. This from a President who still is obsessed that President Obama isn't a U.S. citizen. The reality about President Trump is it's not the illegal. He will try to punish immigrants lawful or unlawful and we're seeing in the nation of precipitous decline on foreign tourists willing to come here foreign students willing to come study here, that's who this man is. And so I'm very skeptical that anything he would support at this point would be anything good.
HAYES: All right, Senator Tim Kaine, thank you for your time tonight.
KAINE: Absolutely.
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