CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Merkley

Interview

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COOPER: While President Trump keeps pushing for a wall at the border, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley is requesting that the FBI open a perjury investigation to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

The Senator claims that Nielsen lied in congressional testimony in December when she said that we've never had a policy for family separation. She's made the same denial in interviews and on Twitter, but Senator Merkley just released a memo he says from a whistleblower that shows that the Department of Justice and Homeland Security were considering family separations for illegal immigrants a year before that testimony and months before it was enacted.

Senator Merkley joins me now. So senator, you're accusing Secretary Nielsen of lying in her sworn testimony. What exactly did the memo show?

[20:50:05] SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D), OREGON: Well, the memo show that the very top level of Homeland Security and in the attorney general's office, they were laying out a strategy for child separation. But this isn't the only piece of the puzzle.

Back in March of 2017, John Kelly, her predecessor testified on television. He said, "I am planning child separation. And by the way, we're going to take very good care of those children." And when Jeff Sessions announced his policy in May of December -- in May of last year, he proceeded to say that this strategy of child separation that he mentioned it also was for deterrents.

And it's just -- I'm sick and tired of this administration lying to the American people. Once they found child separation was so unpopular because it's so evil, it hurts children as part of a political strategy then suddenly she comes and testifies, "Oh, we never had any such plan." And it's a lie and it's time to hold this administration accountable for telling the truth.

COOPER: And I think General Kelly, even when he was the Homeland Secretary, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, he said -- also said that they were doing it -- they were planning it for a deterrent. He thought it would be a strong deterrent.

A spokesperson with the DHS says the memos were pre-decisional and "pre-deliberative." I'm not sure even what that means. But Secretary Nielsen was given a menu of options to deal with the issue on the border and she specifically rejected a policy proposal to separate all family units.

What's odd about that is they ended up separating family units. So, I'm not sure how she decided that wasn't going to be a policy that suddenly became a policy.

MERKLEY: You know, it's trying to be so clever because by saying --

COOPER: Yes, it's not pre-decisional, it sounds pre-delusional, that statement.

MERKLEY: That's right. No, it's exactly right. And the importance of this, and the reason of all the lies the administration has told, the reason I really wanted to kind of put this one in the spotlight and say this is not OK is because of the deep damage to thousands and thousands of children.

And then the inspector general came out and said, you know, we've looked at the period before the formal policy was announced in May. It actually began in April, the previous month of last year. He said it's possible that there may have been thousands of other children that they couldn't even get accountability for how many children might have been separated before the formal policy was launched.

And we had heard stories about the pilot projects and immigrant advocates coming and saying we think something fishy is going on with these children and the administration was denying it.

And so, here -- I mean, with our tax dollars, our government, on our land this deeply damaging strategy was concocted and implemented and the administration needs to be held accountable and we need to policize (ph) it so it never happens again.

COOPER: Has the FBI responded to your request? I mean, do we know if the FBI would open investigation?

MERKLEY: They have responded and they said, "Government shutdown, we can't do anything right now." And so hopefully we'll get another response shortly. And the child separations, by the way, Anderson, it's just a piece of it. We have thousands of children locked up in a series of child prisons across the country, migrant children.

The number in December was up to 15,000 from 7,000 in the middle of last year. We have family internment camps where children are locked up. I just talked to a couple last night, a mother and a 15-year-old daughter who had been locked up for six months in Deli in a family internment camp.

COOPER: Senator Merkley, appreciate it. We'll continue checking in with you on this. Thank you.

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