MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Trump admits defeat"

Interview

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HAYES: All right, Thomas Saenz, thank you for making time. I`m joined now by Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. Your reaction to what looks like the close of this chapter today although I guess suppose the President kept the door open.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): Well, I mean, I think, Chris, that it was you know supposed to be a giant cream puff for all of those Trump supporters, but it was completely empty because in the end, he couldn`t deliver what he had been promising which was to try to exclude as many brown and black folks across the country so that he could critically affect reapportionment, affect how much money goes to different places. I mean, this I think was a big defeat for him. The problem that I have and I`ll just reiterate what Tom said you know, so articulately is that he is still going to terrorize immigrant communities and he might be able to achieve a similar impact of terrifying immigrant community so much that they don`t come out. So that`s what we got to work against now.

HAYES: That was exactly what I was going to ask you about. In fact, in the -- in the status hearing in Thomas` case in Maryland, the plaintiffs there who were suing the government basically were asking the judge can you please tell them to not keep saying this because the rhetoric might have the effect of scaring people about what the census is about. If the President is out there every day, let`s say the citizenship question is not on it which it`s not going to be, but the President is saying we`re coming to your door to find out if you`re a citizen. That can have precisely the effect the question would have. What do you do about that?

JAYAPAL: Not only that, but how about these raids that he`s going to institute over the next you know, potentially starting as early as Sunday and over the next several months. I mean, this is all about terrorizing communities, cruelty to immigrants. I mean this administration and I said this in a committee hearing today, it trades in two things. Number one, cruelty towards immigrants and number two money that goes to for-profit corporations that are minting money off of that cruelty off, of caging children. And so this is just -- he doesn`t have -- the census -- let me just be clear, the census question was -- the citizenship question on the census was a huge victory for us. I don`t want to diminish that in any way. However, this president is still continuing to move towards the same goals he`s always had which is you know, terrorized, scare, keep all of these people in the shadows.

HAYES: Let me ask you about the raids that have been announced by ICE. There are people who argue and some of them are Democrats, some of them are in my inbox that look, these are families that have deportation orders right. I mean that -- what they have said is the universe of people we`re going to be going for our folks that have had deportation orders, they have had process, they have gone through the immigration process, they have been ordered deported. What would you have the government do? Isn`t this just enforcing law and shouldn`t we enforce our immigration laws?

JAYAPAL: So this is the thing. If you remember back to when Obama instituted prosecutorial discretion because advocates across the country including me at the time was an advocate on the outside pushed for the Obama administration to understand that our immigration laws are so broken that there are a lot of people who have final orders of deportation that have committed no crime other than illegal presence in the United States or illegal reentry in many cases. And so what the Obama administration did is they said yes, we`re going to use prosecutorial discretion. We`re only going to go after those with the most serious crimes because we recognize that Congress has not done its job in passing comprehensive immigration reform. And so we have these two signs at the border as I heard somebody say the other day you know, the help-wanted and then the no trespassing signs. And so we have this completely broken system that is hypocritical in nature because we need that labor, we need these folks in the country, but we are not willing to change the system. So just because you have a final order of deportation does not mean that you have done anything other than have illegal presence in this country or illegal reentry into this country. So to say that these are people who have gone through the process is ridiculous because the process is completely broken and the amount of money that it will take to deport all of these people that is taxpayer dollars. And let me tell you, at the end of the day, if they`re successful in deporting all of these people, then just plan that you`re not going to be able to eat any vegetables, you`re not going to be able to operate our economy. This is going to have a massive impact on our economy. That`s why the Chamber of Commerce says this is crazy. We need immigration reform.

HAYES: All right, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, thank you for being with me.

JAYAPAL: Thank you, Chris.

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