CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego

Interview

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BLITZER: Looks like we just lost our connection with Phil Mattingly. We will check back with him.

That meeting is taking place right now. We will see what happens once the lawmakers emerge from that session and see if they say anything, if the president says anything, if they can come up with some sort of immediate fix to stop the separation of these kids from their parents.

I don't know if Phil Mattingly -- have we reconnected with Phil?

We have not reconnected with Phil. But we will get back to him shortly.

In the meantime, let's bring in Congressman Ruben Gallego. He's an Arizona Democrat. He serves on the Armed Services Committee.

The president says, Congressman -- and thanks very much for joining us -- there are two options right now. You either prosecute everyone coming in to the United States illegally, or you have open borders.

He says those are the two options. What do you say?

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D), ARIZONA: Well, either the president is lying or he has no clue what he is talking about when it comes to immigration enforcement.

There are so many things you can do in the meantime. You can have joint detention for a little while, so that way it's at least humane. You could send people out with some type of tracking system, ankle bracelets, whatever it is, to make sure that they know they -- where they're reporting. You could actually put them in halfway homes, where we could

conceivably check on them. There's just so many ways you could do this. The problem is, the president doesn't want to actually look at those other options, because he wants a political situation, number one, to get his vote out, but, number two, to basically hold these kids hostages.

And now we know -- we have it confirmed, he just said it himself -- that he is trying to set up a scenario where he wants to force a border wall onto the American citizens, something that he promised was going to be paid for by Mexico. And now we know that that's not the case.

Again, the president is basically holding these kids hostage for his political stunt.

BLITZER: Clearly, this was -- this new zero tolerance policy was seen by the administration as a deterrent.

More than a year ago, I interviewed John Kelly. He was then the secretary of homeland security. He's now the White House chief of staff. He was sitting in the same seat where you are sitting. And he said they were considering this policy, even though he knew it would look bad, separating moms and dads from their little kids, because this could be seen as a deterrent to people trying to flee illegally into the United States.

They had a long debate. And it wasn't until April of this year when they decided to finally go ahead with it. What do you say about that?

GALLEGO: Well, number one, it's illegal to use this inhuman tactic to create a deterrent, which actually will not end up being a deterrent.

People that are trying to flee these awful places are going to do whatever they can to survive. Number two, you didn't even do it well. There are right now children that we don't know if we are going to able to be ever to reunite with their parents. We are creating orphans.

This country has now created orphans. We don't -- we have zero understanding of where -- what happened to the thousands of little girls right now, because this DHS will not tell us where they are. We don't know who is taking care of these kids.

There are kids right now that we -- are going to be going to sleep crying. No one is going to console them. What happens when they are sick? I have a young son. Maybe -- it's great that they are getting fed. It's great that they have a bed.

But who is actually going to rock these babies to sleep when they are tired, when they are angry, when they are missing their parents? And this administration cannot answer that, because they are so inhumane and they were so caught up on the idea of deterrence, that they forgot to take care of the little things.

BLITZER: Listen to Tom Homan, the acting ice director, who was on this program in the last hour, when I had this exchange with him, because the men and women of ICE, they have to implement this zero tolerance policy.

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BLITZER: What's your reaction to the ?

GALLEGO: If you have to make excuses why your actions are humane, it probably means that your actions are inhumane.

These parents are going through horrible situations in their home country. And they are coming to ports of entries and actually legally asking for asylum.

What is inhumane is that this ICE, DHS are purposely creating barriers for them to -- even asking for them to legally have asylum, and then turning around and separating families to a point where you have kids so scared that they are crying on -- we have heard this recording, kids crying asking for their family members.

And you have ICE agents that are so cold-hearted, they are actually making fun of these little kids while they are trying to ask for where their parents are. And the fact that you have ICE agents doing that is because they understand that the leadership of DHS and ICE accept that type of inhumanity.

BLITZER: We don't know if these ICE personnel were making fun or they were trying to stop the kids from crying by saying, you are listening to an orchestra or something along those lines.

We don't know what their motive was. I bend over to give these guys, these men and women of ICE some credit. They have got a tough job.

But what was interesting is when I asked the acting director if the policy was humane, you saw that pregnant pause. He couldn't say it was a humane policy that the president has ordered them to implement.

GALLEGO: Yes.

Wolf, I have dealt -- I have been in horrible situations. I have been in horrible combat and been in some awful, awful places with -- surrounded by children in war, in the Iraq War.

And even then, us young men in some real horrible situations, we did everything we could to keep our humanity, to treat that everyone that we met with in a respectful manner that would be -- keep the dignity of the United States.

What's happening right now is undignified and un-American. And the reason it's happening is because the president has set the tone and everyone is following it.

BLITZER: These parents who are bringing their children illegally across the border into the United States, they are charged with a misdemeanor.

And what seems to be inhumane, if you are charged with a misdemeanor, why are you taking the kids away from who is charged with a misdemeanor? And he also did say, they -- these ICE agents, they do have some discretion in dealing with all of this.

They do have some discretion. But apparently the president just wants them to arrest everyone and, if they come in with kids, separate the kids.

GALLEGO: Well, look, and maybe they do have discretion or not.

But we don't know what kind of pressure they are getting from their management. What do we know is that we have a president that's intent, as well as his administrators, with Kelly and with Secretary Nielsen, that they want to scare as many people as possible.

And that includes separating families. So, they are going to do everything they can. They are going to put pressure on these ICE agents. These ICE agents should try to take as much discretion as possible.

They should remember that they are still human. And at the end of the day, this is not going to end up deterring anybody from coming into this country. It's only going to -- the worse that is going to happen is, it's actually going to be a black eye in the history of this country.

BLITZER: Listen to the Republican leader in the Senate, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, because he says all 51 Republicans in the Senate are on the same page.

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BLITZER: What's your reaction to that?

GALLEGO: Well, I think we have to get into the details.

One of the things that I'm afraid of is that they are going to use this as a backdoor excuse to have indefinite detention of these families until they're processed -- they go through the process. That's unnecessary and just as inhumane.

Under the Obama administration, you did have families being detained together until we could determine, number one, if that kid belonged to that family, and, number two, whether or not they were a flight risk should they go through the asylum process.

We don't have enough information. This -- Senate Republicans do not have a history of really standing up to Donald Trump. And I doubt they're going to suddenly begin doing that.

BLITZER: Would you be willing to go along with compromise legislation? If there can be comprehensive immigration reform, Democrats have to compromise, Republicans have to compromise.

If it includes an opportunity for the dreamers, the DACA recipients, to have a pathway to citizenship, would you be willing to support what the president demands, $25 billion for that border wall with Mexico?

GALLEGO: We have had these discussions before.

Let's not forget that the Senate Democrats and actually Senate Republicans did have a bipartisan bill that did include money for the border wall. I don't remember it being $25 billion, but close to $8 billion, with a pathway to citizenship.

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And the president rejected it. So, there's a lot of things I'm willing to talk about and a lot of things I'm willing to compromise.

But you have something on the other side, Donald Trump, who doesn't know how to deal. For someone who says I can fix this, I'm the person you should elect because I could fix everything, he has yet to be able to fix anything during this whole -- during his whole administration.

The one thing he can fix is this. He can just pick up the phone and end the family deportations. He is unwilling to do it.

BLITZER: Do you think the House will pass this compromise legislation this week or next week? GALLEGO: I don't believe they are going to be pass that compromise

legislation, because the compromise is among moderates and conservative Republicans. It has nothing to do with us on other side. And they need us to have that vote.

And what they have in that is poison pill legislation that we can never support.

BLITZER: Congressman Ruben Gallego, thank so much for coming in.

GALLEGO: Thank you.

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