MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Pramila Jayapal
Interview
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REID: Joining me now is Congressman Primila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington State. Congresswoman, thank you so much for being here tonight. I appreciate it.
JAYAPAL: Thanks, Joy.
REID: Just watching that exchange between yourself and acting Attorney General Whitaker, there`s this incredible contrast between how impassioned you are and we`re talking about children who may never see their parents again, and kind of the weird sort of indifference dismissiveness just the way that he was looking away. I don`t know, did you? And then his answer about oh I know this is important to you. Did you feel condescended to? What was your reaction to just his attitude?
JAYAPAL: Oh absolutely. And it started from the minute he walked into the hearing. He was arrogant, he was dismissive, he was disrespectful. And then when it came to this, I actually think he didn`t quite know what to do. First of all, he knew nothing about this. I mean, earlier I had said, did you know about family separation? He said it didn`t happen. I said there was a memo. There was a memo. And he said -- he said no, that that didn`t happen.
And I said there were four Pinocchios to that statement that the Washington Post is afforded to this. And by the time we got to the end, I think you know, this is such a compelling issue, Joy. You and I have talked about it before. Republicans and Democrats agree that this was a heinous crime that has been committed against thousands of children.
And I think he really didn`t know what to do and so he tried to be dismissive and say oh well, I respect your passion which is a way of saying you know, you`re getting kind of emotional about this. And then I had to make it very clear that this is not about my passion, this is about the future of the children.
And yes, you know what, I will say I am so proud that I am passionate about this because anybody should be thinking about not only these children who don`t get to see their parents ever again, but the children that were separated for months and some of them I watched them come together with their parents. I heard their parents say the kids didn`t want to go back to their parents in some cases because they thought they had been abandoned.
If we all don`t have real passion, real commitment to figuring out what happened and making reparations, the U.S. government should make reparations for what we have done to these families.
REID: And in speaking of the idea of how long this has actually been going on, now the great producers here found some sound from March of 2017 which people may remember when it aired. This is John Kelly who at the time was Secretary of Homeland Security is before he was Donald Trump chief of staff. And this was before the policy officially began. Take a listen.
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REID: In the course of all that obfuscation that happened today, were you able to get an answer as to how long this policy has actually been going on and actually how many kids are actually still missing because we now know that it`s probably -- there were probably many more than the 2,737 as of December 2018 who were actually separated, maybe thousands more.
JAYAPAL: Well, you know, the Department of Justice is only responsible for the prosecutions. We were supposed to have a hearing on Tuesday which has now been cancelled because of John Dingles funeral with HHS and DHS. And those were the questions that I have ready to ask them. But I will tell you that there are over a hundred kids that are still in custody from the ones that we originally thought were the first ones that we`re being separated.
And now HHS has come back and said we don`t know that we can ever separate them. You know, that`s a court order that they`re supposed to -- excuse me -- that we can rejoin them with their parents, reunite them with their parents. The court order is that they have to do that. And now they`re saying it`s not possible. On top of that as you said, there are the thousands that happened before.
And I`ll tell you something else, Joy. When John Kelly says we`re doing this to deter, that is actually illegal. The courts have ruled that you cannot detain and do what they are doing for deterrence purposes. So everything about this family separation policy, the zero humanity policy was so wrong and I really don`t know first of all, how we fix what we have done but then also how we make reparations.
I mean these kids are traumatized and the parents are traumatized. And we know from psychologists that that is real trauma, lasting trauma.
REID: Yes. Well, Congressman, if you can`t be passionate about that, and what`s happening to these children, I`m not sure what you can be passionate about. Congressman Primila Jayapal, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
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