CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Vicente Gonzalez

Interview

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When we come back, I'll speak to Texas Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, who will lead a bipartisan delegation to the border. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Well, it is official. In March, a record number of

unaccompanied children crossed the U.S.-Mexican border. According to Customs and Border Protection, more than 172,000 migrants attempted to enter along our southwest border last month, a massive 71 percent increase over February. Of those, 18,890 were unaccompanied minors. That is a record high and a double of February's total.

As these figures were released, the White House's Border Coordinator confirmed that she is leaving at the end of the month. Roberta Jacobson says that the surge hasn't changed her original plan to only stay on for Biden's first 100 days.

Democratic Congressman, Vicente Gonzalez whose district is on the South Texas border joins me now to discuss this.

Congressman, thank you for coming on. These numbers are truly staggering. How is the surge impacting local border communities like yours?

REP. VICENTE GONZALEZ (D- TX): Clearly, it's a concerning issue. As you've seen the videos, there's a lot of children coming unaccompanied. It's a tragic situation that we're putting our hearts and minds and energy and focus to try to resolve.

And that's why this week, for the first time, I'm bringing a bipartisan group of Members of Congress to have a deep analysis of what's happening and what we can do to solve the problem.

You see a lot of people come down here to point fingers and score political points, but nobody has real solutions. And what I want to do is offer solutions. And what I've been advocating for, as you might have heard is that we should have first class facilities like we have here on our border further south on Mexico's southern border closer to Guatemala, where people can come in to a first class facility and process their asylum claim there and stop this 2,000 miles of very treacherous territory that is very dangerous for these migrants in the first place.

And we have to deal with the fact that over 80 percent never qualify for asylum, and we need to find ways to help them and help them maybe in their home country or through a guest worker program. We need out of the box thinking ideas to resolve this problem and ultimately, we need to make the proper investments in those three Central American countries to get to the root of the issue of why people are migrating.

[18:30:07]

BROWN: So why don't you think some of your proposals such as creating a processing center in those countries, I know that has been talked about a lot, the Biden ministration has talked about that. But this system, as you've said, has been broken for a long time. Why do you think the U.S. is still in this situation? Why hasn't that been done yet?

GONZALEZ: Because we haven't made those difficult decisions in government that create meaningful solutions like these processing assets that we can have down there permanently until we get the migration issue under control from those Central American countries.

But we should be thinking long-term that right now (inaudible) El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But down the road, it could be three other countries in some other place and we need to have an orderly fashion, away from our border, where we can deal with this mass migration where they can be processed safely and humanely, where we get the cartels out of this business, because they are having a lot of the transportation of this migration to our southern border.

And I think having our own processing center, creating safe zones where people can safely come to us, closer to their country and process their asylum claim and do it in a humane fashion.

BROWN: I want to talk about this video and it's really heartbreaking, this 10-year-old migrant child found alone near the border on April 1st. I want to play it for you and then get your thoughts on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you help me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you help me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's that I was walking with a group and they left me behind and I don't know where they're at.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't know where they're at? They left you behind alone?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course they left me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They left you behind by yourself? You're not traveling with your mom, dad or anybody?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Huh?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you traveling with your mom or dad?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody. I was with a group to turn myself in with you, and they left me behind and I came to look for help.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They left you behind and told you to seek help?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I came looking because I didn't know where to go, and they can also kidnap me and I'm afraid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Ten-year-old little boy. You can just hear the fear. The full circumstances of that case are unknown, including how and why he came to the U.S., whether this was self-separation. But what is your reaction to that footage?

GONZALEZ: Clearly it breaks my heart to see that and there's probably thousands of stories like that. And these are children that we should be assisting in their home country and finding ways to help them there, not forcing or incentivizing in any way or creating a method for them to take this very dangerous 2,000-mile road to our southern border.

I think that we could have done so much more for this young child in his home country, even at the southern border of Mexico without them having to have made this very dangerous trek. Under the Biden administration, they just reimplemented the reunification of children with family members here in the U.S. They are now going to be able to process those claims in their home country and just be able to fly these kids to join their mother or father in the United States.

We have to come up with better solutions to this issue and I'm proud that they just reimplemented this idea on reunification of children. I'm hoping that we start seeing a serious drop of children coming across.

But at the end of the day, we need to have a plan of how to slow this mass migration to our southern border and how to do it in a humane way not in squalor like this NTP (ph) program under the Trump administration. I'm talking first class facilities.

Everything we do on our side of the border, we should be doing it on Mexico's southern border, on Guatemala southern border and helping these people earlier on have them go through the same process that they do here earlier on and deal with it. They're in a humane and safe environment because what they go through is not humane and safe by the time they get to our southern border.

BROWN: I want to ask you before we let you go about this voting law working its way through the Texas Legislature. The law would limit early voting hours. It would ban drive-thru voting and drop boxes. And as you know, the drive-thru voting was used widely and securely in Harris County last year. What is your view of this law?

GONZALEZ: Well, clearly, it's on the wrong side of history and it's created for no reason than to suppress the vote, to suppress the vote of growing numbers of minorities who are participating in Texas elections. I think the one party grip is sliding and they're trying to create these illegal bills to try to have better control of the elections.

[18:35:08]

But let me tell you, drive-thru voting, this is going to backfire on these Republicans who are doing it now, the governor and others. Drive-thru voting is heavily participated by senior citizens who cannot or not as mobile, and it helps them greatly to be able to vote from their vehicle. A lot of our wounded veterans drive through and that's the way they vote.

And in trying to limit access at the polls, I think at the end of the day, they're going to hurt themselves. Obviously, we've already seen the threats from corporate America, from civic groups and just from citizens across the state if they dare pass a bill like that and it's signed by our Governor.

Texas is going to lose billions of dollars in conventions, and sports events and other types of investment that will cost thousands of jobs thousands of Texan jobs. So I certainly hope that they don't go down that path and it's just political rhetoric at this point.

BROWN: Well, American Airlines for one has already released a statement condemning this. But you're right, it has not become law in Texas yet. We'll be keeping a close eye on what's going on down there. Texas Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, thank you for coming on and sharing your perspective.

GONZALEZ: Thank you.

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