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

Interview

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HAYES:  We`re learning more today about the scope of the Trump administration`s child
separation policy, the policy, you might remember, that Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen said multiple times did not exist, but we know did exist.
 
Today, the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general released a report finding that even more migrant children were taken from their parents than previously reported.  And the administration still doesn`t know exactly how many kids they took, quote, "thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017 before the accounting required by the court that HHS has faced challenges in identifying separated children.
 
The Department of Homeland Security disputed the thousands reported by the HHS inspector general, claiming the inspector general did not have evidence to back up the claim.
 
This comes as new documents surfaced, sent from a government whistle-blower to Senator Jeff Merkley.  Those papers list a draft of immigration, quote, policy options, some of which were ultimately implemented, and others even more severe and shocking that were contemplated, but not implemented, like expediting the deportation of children without their parents.
 
DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman responded to news of the documents with a statement which reads in part, "the Trump administration has made clear that all legal options are on the table to enforce the rule of law.  In part we were predicting and trying to prevent the exact humanitarian and security crisis we are confronted by now."
 
Joining me now is Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon who has made exhaustive efforts to bring the administration`s child separation policy to light from the start.
 
Senator, what have you learned from these documents about the nature of the policy they followed and what they contemplated?
 
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY, (D) OREGON:  Well, what these documents show, Chris, is there was extensive planning to implement a strategy of criminalizing, families crossing the border at the same time the administration said it`s all about criminals, they were plotting to stop families from arriving.  And they said not only are they going to criminalize that, we`re going to separate the kids from the parents.
 
Now, many of us will remember that the Homeland Security Secretary said there`s no such thing as a family separation policy or a child separation policy, but this document says exactly the opposite.
 
HAYES:  I want to be clear about this, because it drove me absolutely nuts covering this story.  Time and time again, the White House and Kirsten Nielsen got up and said you are out of your mind, no policy exists.  And what you`re saying is this document is literally a policy document in which one of the policies they contemplated and ultimately implement is child separation.
 
MERKLEY:  Yes, a very first policy on that list, the document, is the one of criminalizing crossing the border.  And the second is to separate children from their parents.
 
And so it`s all laid out here, it`s a discussion, this document represents and discussion taking place between the attorney generals office and the homeland security office at the highest levels.
 
So, this is very much the road map has been laid out for what was later done.  The administration was absolutely lying to the American people when they said there was no such plan.
 
HAYES:  So did Kirsten Nielsen lie?
 
MERKLEY:  Yes.
 
HAYES:  Then how can you trust them?  I mean, honestly, how can you trust anything -- I mean, we just read a DHS statement, and I see the DHS spokespeople quoted all the time, but I have to say, ever since covering that story, it`s very difficult to take anything they say at face value.
 
MERKLEY:  Well, that`s right because when it was absolutely clear that item after item was true
and they said it`s not true.  For example, Jeff Sessions in his initial presentation over the strategy over child separation said it`s about deterring families from coming, it`s a deterrent strategy.  That is in this document, it lays it out very clearly.  But when Kirsten Nielsen was asked about it, she said -- I`m not sure what she said.  I`m embarrassed or that`s ridiculous or she -- it basically disclaimed it completely.
 
HAYES:  There is another way they are caught here.  And I think this is important, and we`ll talk about things they consider.  You were in the Tornillo Tent camp that had been (inaudible) and quickly expanded under sort of dubious regulatory oversight to put a ton, thousands of migrant children, minors, in it.
 
And one of the things you told me on this program was that the head of that said this place can be cleared out of here basically in a few days if they would get rid of the backlog of sponsors that want to take these kids.  And that ended up happening, but the backlog at the time was caused by a background check process for the sponsors that the DHS said was for security and safety, right?
 
Here -- reading from the report for Julie Ainsley, HHS adopted a policy to require anyone in a household who agreed to sponsor an unaccompanied migrant child to undergo an extensive background check.  Publicly, DHS and HHS said that this was to ensure the safety of children, but the draft shows administrators knew the potential for creating a backlog of children in migrant detention which later became reality and led to the creation of Tornillo tent city last year.
 
MERKLEY:  That`s right.  So much of this humanitarian crisis, it was created by the very policies of the administration being implemented.  They said there is a crisis, but the crisis was what they created with these strategies.
 
And what we learned down there at Tornillo was that of the 2,700 children, 1,300 of them already had sponsors who had cleared the background check, including the fingerprints, and so we held a press conference.  We called for those children to be released.  We called for Tornillo to be shut down, and shockingly to me, the administration a few days later, because it was just approaching Christmas so maybe they felt especially vulnerable about the awful things they are doing, they did release those children who had already cleared the background checks.  They did stop the full fingerprinting of every member of the family and they did proceed to start to shut down Tornillo and it`s now shut down.
 
HAYES:  Well -- go ahead.
 
MERKLEY:  There is another piece of this, which is they are taking the information they get on the background sponsors and giving it to ICE.  And as far as I can tell so far, I haven`t been able to get a definitive answer, it appears that they`re still doing that.
 
So, there is still basically deterring people from coming forward to be sponsors, have concerns about extended family members who could be affected by the connection to ICE.
 
HAYES:  Final thing, they considered -- they did not implement, but one of the policy options was basically separating the kids from the parents and then just deporting the kids, just literally without a parent back on a plane to, like, I don`t know, you just shuffle them off, a 4-year-old off a plane and back in Guatemala.
 
MERKLEY:  Yes, it appears that they were trying to find a way to essentially bypass the ability of children to apply for asylum, a right that`s well entrenched in international law that we are part of, and in our national law, but it was -- maybe we can quickly maneuver and kick these kids out.  And it`s not at all clear there was any plan to connect them back with the parents.
 
And so piece after piece of this comes from a very dark place in the heart of this administration.  The core is abusing children to send a message of deterrence to families overseas.  Just wrong.
 
HAYES:  Senator Jeff Merkley, thank you very much.

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