MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Trump cancels Denmark plans."

Interview

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HAYES: All right, Julia Ainsley, thank you for that reporting. I`d like to turn now to Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, who sits on the border security and immigration subcommittee. My sense is that you`re strongly opposed to this proposal, why?

SEN. MAZIE HIRONO, (D) HAWAII: You got that right. Look, we already know from so many child specialists that detaining children in these kinds of facilities does irreparable damage to them. There are alternatives to family detention that this administration could care less about. So, as Julia said, the only way that they get around the Flores consent agreement is by getting around it by proposing or having this rule, which will be immediately challenged, by the way. So they want to detain families indefinitely, children indefinitely, held in situations that do them absolutely no good when there are alternatives.

HAYES: We should say that the facility where a lot of this detention is happening is in Dilley, Texas. It is where Ken Cuccinelli posed today. Dilley, Texas is somewhat notorious. It was where family detention was done under the Obama administration. It`s subcontracted to a private contractor that runs it. This is one headline from 2015, "Soul Destroy: one migrant mother`s story of life at Dilley detention Center," recently another mother who had been there testified about her daughter -- her baby daughter dying of illness after being there. You`ve been to Dilley. What do you think about the conditions there?

HIRONO: Not good. In fact, these families should not be detained, and that`s the bottom line. And so we`re not contemplating thousands and thousands of migrant families being detained, doing irreparable harm to little children. When I was in Dilley, you know, we can`t forget seeing was there, a little boy just silently crying. Heaven knows what was going through his mind, but not good. And so there are alternatives, as I keep mentioning. And I did have a shadow hearing what happens in these facilities and what happens to the children. Clearly, they are harmed irreparably. Our country should not be imposing this kind of cruelty on children. But I think that the Trump administration, people sit around every single day thinking up new ways to be cruel to these migrants. That`s what they do. And tomorrow, they will probably come up with something else.

HAYES: You were one of the senators that voted -- I think there were 88 of them, for the $5.5 billion, more or less, in supplemental funding for DHS, this was amidst a sort of showdown over whether DHS needed more money for capacity. Given what they`re doing now, do you still stand by that vote? There were those at the time who said, look, you`re giving money others saying you are giving money to this agency with insufficient strings attached.

HIRONO: I did not vote for that, as a matter of fact, because it didn`t have sufficient parameters. But, yes, of course I realize that these facilities need more support. And this is why I`m very much in support of a number of bills that lead to fair treatment of migrant families, because they have every right to seek asylum, so a fair process, humane treatment, and really addressing the root causes of what`s going on in the countries they are fleeing from. So, I support those kinds of measures that truly do something to change the equation in terms of what`s happening with these migrants and their families. Of course, that`s not where the Trump administration is coming from.

HAYES: Finally, you have co-sponsored legislation with Senator Merkley who was a guest on the program this week, that would sort of reorient the whole way in which DHS is dealing with these families, sort of monitored release, case work, things like that. Is there any universe in which Mitch McConnell moves on that?

HIRONO: No. And that`s why you know what the bottom line is the people who are making decisions on these kinds of bills, including by the way, we should not have for profit entities running these facilities. They have absolutely no incentive to do the right thing. And so the only way that we`re going to change the people who will be voting on these measures is to change the people, the decision-makers. And that`s why everyone has to be aware what our country is doing in our name supposedly, certainly not in my name or yours, that the people who vote have got to change. And that certainly starts, in my view, with Mitch McConnell, who is one of the most ruthless people that I know, and he`s proud to call himself the Grim Reaper, who will never bring any of these bills to the floor of the senate for a vote.

HAYES: All right, Senator Mazie Hirono, thank you for your time.

HIRONO: Thank you.

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