MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Immigration
Interview
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HAYES: All right, Jacob Soboroff, thanks for the valuable reporting you`re doing. We`re also going to be in McAllen, Texas tomorrow night for a live edition ALL IN from the border. Now we`ll have a live report from the epicenter of the family separation crisis. Please make sure to join us then. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is a Democrat from Washington, the leading voice opposing this policy. And I understand you`ve been working with groups on an event planned in opposition.
REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D), WASHINGTON: We are absolutely ready to have a mass mobilization. This is the first time we`re talking about it right here on the show. It`s going to be on June 30th at 11:00 at Lafayette Park right outside the White House. We have hundreds of organizations being anchored by the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Move On but hundreds of organizations that are part of the Families Belong Together Coalition because we see the outrage and we see that this has to be taken right to the White House, right to Donald Trump to stop the family separations. People can go to familiesbelongtogether.org. Sign up. There will be contiguous marches and rallies in cities across the country. This is a moment -- and I will tell you, Chris every single day I have constituents calling my office but not just from my district, from across the country saying how can we stop this? Republicans, Democrats, and Independents are outraged. And I have to say, I think the White House has badly miscalculated. They are losing on this issue. Nobody believes, nobody believes that there is any legislative reason, any policy reason and certainly no moral reason to be separating these kids. You know that I was in the detention center, there was -- you know kids up to as young as one- year old that had been taken from their moms and I heard from those mothers and I`ll tell you, it is outrageous. Laura Bush says it, Franklin Graham says it. This is not a political issue, this is about what`s right and wrong.
HAYES: Let me ask you a question. This is something that I`ve been trying to get an answer to and maybe you remember Congress, you had more luck than me. What`s happened is they`ve taken these kids that they`re separating actively right? And Nielsen said today about the 12,000 in custody, 2,000 they`ve actually taken, right, 2,500 somewhere around there. They`re putting these facilities that were designed for unaccompanied minors but those tend to be children at the youngest 10 to 18 because they`re being sent solo. No one is sending a two-year-old or a four-year-old or six- year-old by themselves. So now all of the sudden there`s a new population that (INAUDIBLE)has to look after. These are kids zero to ten.
JAYAPAL: Right.
HAYES: Do we know where they are and who`s caring for them?
JAYAPAL: No. I think there`s no coordination amongst the many different agencies and we`ve been trying to get this information. I think I might have said on the show with you that the women that I met with were given
slips of paper that said this is your name, these are your children, and one woman said to me these are not my children. So it is very clear that the agencies are not able to coordinate this. There is no real understanding of which parent goes with which children, where the children are. And in my experience, the 174 women that I talked to, not a single one of them had actually been able to say goodbye to their children and
only two out of the 174 knew where their children were. So June 30th and you`re planning a mobilization. You and others who are opposed to this, June 30th, 11:00 a.m. Lafayette Families Belong Together is the Web site.
What is the end game here?
JAYAPAL: The end game is really to say this is about Trump. Look, he would love to make this about and you just quoted him you know, about Democrats. He would love to make this about legislation that has to be passed. He would love to make this about both sides as Melania Trump said.
It is not. It is about Donald Trump reversing this policy. So the end game is Donald Trump reversed this policy, stopped the zero tolerance, reunite these kids with their parents and let`s get asylum hearings for all
of these folks. Let`s get credible fair hearings for all of them.
HAYES: And he -- I mean, the White House could do that tonight.
JAYAPAL: Right now. They could --
HAYES: They were doing it before. They were doing it in February. As recently as February, they were doing it, just to be clear.
JAYAPAL: Yes, that`s right. And they have consistently -- you know, I think they`ve gone back and forth, is this policy of policy. No, it`s not a policy. They just tell lies all the time on this particular issue. But I do think that they understand that the only way they win is if they divert the focus. If they divert the focus to a broader question of immigration issues, legislation, those things, then they start to win. But if we keep the focus on this which is a policy of the Trump administration and we say you can reverse it right now and the outrage of the American people, including Republicans like Laura Bush, come forward. He can change it right this moment.
HAYES: June 30th, national mobilization of Families Belong Together. We will be covering that. Thank you for making time, Congresswoman.
JAYAPAL: Thank you.
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