MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Immigration

Interview

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HAYES: The President is a little confused about immigration judges who are very different than the appellate and district court judges he's appointing but that's for another time. Now it has been a through-line of this president's rhetoric that he doesn't really even bother to pretend to care about the Constitution, makes no pretense of it. But we are currently getting a very bleak picture of what that worldview looks like when it is put into practice on vulnerable populations at the border. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut visited the tent city for immigrant children in Tornillo, Texas last week and maybe let me start by asking you what does it look like up close when you saw?

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), CONNECTICUT: As you have been reporting so well for the last weeks, Chris, it is a heartbreaking, deepening humanitarian crisis. And again, the through line here is in every one of these policies, the President is using children as pawns and hostages. First to try to pressure Congressmen to changing the law, he's now defying it, then to persuade some of these asylum seekers to leave the country if they are reunited there is no plan for reunification and there is deepening chaos and confusion even among the border agents, the Border Patrol agents and the United States Customs and Border Protection agents who say we need more judges. We need more resources to effectively and fairly enforce the law. So abandoning and abrogating due process has consequences not only financially but also morally.

HAYES: Let me ask you this. I mean you're a United States Senator and we have consistent reporting that CBP is turning people away at ports of entry when asking for asylum, that they even in some cases move their checkpoint to the median of the bridge so that no toe can touch American soil. That is a violation on its face of American law. What is Congress doing about that?

BLUMENTHAL: The Congress very sadly and unconscionably is doing nothing. And I believe, and I'm calling for it right now and in the next few days that Congress must have hearings. We have an oversight responsibility. The Judiciary Committee where I sit should be having hearings this week to hold accountable the officials for turning away those asylum seekers at the ports of entry, in effect denying them the credible fear hearing that they're entitled to receive if they're in this country and abrogating due process. Remember, due process is not only about fundamental fairness and the rule of law, it's also about making sure that determinations are accurate. Because in many instances, if we unfairly and inaccurately deny asylum, we are in effect very likely condemning these people to death, torture, and other forms of violence.

HAYES: Let's be clear, not just them. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. What the President is calling for is an extra-legal unaccountable and non- reviewable deportation force that can take people out of the country with no judicial review. Is there any reason to believe that such a thing A, is constitutional or B, would not result in American citizens being deported?

BLUMENTHAL: It will be challenged, it will be found illegal and unconstitutional when and if it's challenged. But more broadly and fundamentally, this country is heading for a train wreck at the border because beyond those due process issues arising with respect to the asylum seekers at the ports of entry and the due process hearings were also threatening I say we, the President, is threatening to imprison tens of thousands of these individuals as he continues to prosecute them in camps that are very reminiscent of the internment facilities for the Japanese during World War II, on military bases at tremendous financial cost. In fact, I visit a facility very much like the one that the President is contemplating, the cost per person there, $2,000 per day. Think of it,
$2,000 per day.

HAYES: Wait $2,000 per day per person?

BLUMENTHAL: Per person at the Tornillo facility in El Paso. So we're talking about financial cost but also moral and humanitarian costs.

HAYES: All right, Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you for joining me.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.

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