MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Jeff Merkley

Interview

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HAYES: There is appalling new video tonight of migrants waiting for entry  to the United States. As a reminder, the U.S. government is now in  possible contravention of our laws, preventing many people from legally  crossing the border to a port of entry to ask for asylum. And as people  wait in Juarez, Mexico, this is how they`re tracking people. This is the  method being used to keep track of migrants who want to ask this nation for  refuge. Vaccine officials are writing numbers on people`s arms, something  with obviously some awful historical connotations.

Meanwhile, in Tornillo, Texas 2,800 migrant children are now being housed  in a giant tent camp, which was never meant to house children permanently.

Here with me now, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon who just  returned from a trip to Tornillo himself.
Senator, you were in Tornillo -- and I want to be clear, these are  unaccompanied migrants who have come over as unaccompanied children. They  have not been taken from their parents, by an large. What are the  conditions like there?

SEN. JEFF MERKLEY, (D) OREGON: Well, the conditions in the camp are OK in  the sense that there is food. There is heat. There is shelter.

But here is the big picture, you have those 2,800 children you mentioned,  they`re part of a prison -- child prison camp system now housing more than  15,000 children across America.

And that particular camp that we went to, we found out a couple of things  that really shocked us. Number one, the director said that 1,300 of those  children, roughly half of them, could be in a house in five days if the  Trump administration would complete the paperwork. They already have  sponsors. They`ve already gone through the background checks.

Furthermore, when I asked about the Flores consent agreement in which  children are not supposed to be in prison for more than 20 days, they told  us that over 2,000 of those children have been there more than 20 days,  that the administration is asserting that because this is an emergency and  so-called temporary facility, they`re not bound by limiting the  imprisonment for 20 days, and some children have been there for months,  inflicting deep, profound life-long trauma on these children.

HAYES: The 1,300, both of those are startling facts. I want to go back to  the 1,300 children. What you`re saying is there are people inside the U.S.  who will sponsor them who are family members or caregivers connected to the  children, that`s been verified, the children could go with them, and the  government has yet to process the paperwork and is keeping them instead in  a tent city?

MERKLEY: According to the director, he said he could have 1,300 children  in homes within five days if the Trump administration would complete the  paperwork.

HAYES: Wow.

What about the -- there`s also this question right now about the death of a  7-year-old girl,  Jakelin Caal. I know that you have been part of the senate`s letter on  that and have written about it.

There is a question about whether members of congress can talk to the  agents or investigate the conditions under which she was given care and  then eventually died. What do you know about that?

MERKLEY: Well, I hope the House is going to be able to have a full  investigation. Clearly, it`s very difficult under the Republican  leadership of the House and Senate, because they`re not interested in  investigating these matters.

And by the way, in kind of a very related way, our congressional  delegation, five of us there, three senators, two House members, we asked  to speak to children at Tornillo to find out what`s really going on with  their care and the circumstances of them being detained there for very long  periods of time, and we could not get permission from the administration to  talk to any of those children.

And we`re not talking about disclosing their names or their medical record  or anything else that would create any danger for them, we wanted to find  out their stories to understand what they`re suffering, what they`re going  through. The administration would not let us exercise that oversight and  have a conversation.

HAYES: So you are a member of congress, and congress has the power of the  purse, and someone`s funding the Tornillo camp. I`m confused about like if  congress said no more of this, don`t you have the leverage to cut it off?

HAYES: We do have that leverage. And under Republican control of the  House and Senate, there has been no willingness to even hold a hearing, let  alone consider exercising the power of the  purse. That camp is costing the American taxpayers somewhere in the  vicinity shy of a million dollars a day, not quite a million dollars a day.  It`s vast sums, it`s extraordinarily expensive compared to case management  for individuals who are with sponsors.

HAYES: Final question here about the children that are just over the  border in Juarez, and we`re all seeing these images, which I think people  just find appropriately viscerally morally shocking to watch numbers being  written on people. The origin of that is the administration has chosen to  close ports of entry. Is the U.S. government in violation of its own laws  in doing so?

MERKLEY: I think it to me it clearly seems to be in violation. And even  the administration has said don`t cross in between the ports of entry, come  to the ports of entry. When they come to ports of entry, at port of entry  in place after place, they have been blocked.

I witnessed this on Father`s Day, on June 17th at McAllen crossing. I saw  four border guards stopping anyone who didn`t have a passport or visa who  wanted to assert asylum. There was plenty of space on that day, plenty of  place in the conversation dialogue rooms and in the processing center, and  we certainly heard documentation from human rights groups that this is  being done in a systematic way, throwing people back to the Mexican side  where they have absolutely no support structure, where they`re incredibly  vulnerable to gangs. It`s just a real plight and abuse of both our law and  our  international commitments under refugee agreements.

HAYES: Senator Jeff Merkley, thank you for sharing that.

MERKLEY: Thank you, Chris.

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