Host good morning. My name is mark krikorian, executive director of the center for immigration studies, and we have done a series of interviews with important players in the immigration issue, whether in congress or in the administration. This morning touching guest is senator cotton, the junior senator from arkansas. Senator cotton is a harvard law grad, served as an Army Infantry officer in iraq and afghanistan. Hes on several committees, banking, intelligence, Armed Services but we are going to talk about todays immigration. Hes been a leader on immigration issue even before the president kind of raise its raised its profile. I appreciate, senator, you coming in and giving us some time. He will have to bolt for a meeting on the hill, so we will cut this off at 815 a. M. My first question is that you are as i understand six , a generation arkansan. Arkansas has been attracting more immigrants than it used to, but it is clearly not a leading immigration state. What attracted you to get involved this issue and become something of a thought leader and a debate leader . Sen. Cotton first off thanks for having me here. Thanks for the center for hosting this conversation and also the important work the senate does on immigration. Immigration is a central issue for the United States, really for a lot of countries around the world. It touches on so many concerns that arkansans have about prosperity, security, community. I remember before i was in politics, when i was in the army, congress trying to pass in my opinion deeply misguided laws in 2006 and 2007. In fact, 2007 was probably the only time i had written to my members of Congress Asking them to oppose that terrible immigration bill. So it was an issue of personal interest to me because an issue of such great import to our country, especially in a country like america that is ultimately , as fdr said, founded on immigrants and the descendents of immigrants. Not a country whose origins are lost in the mists of time. So being in congress, that has been a primary focus of mine is low. One of my main accomplishment in my two years in the house of representatives was to stop that dreaded immigration bill in 2013 in its tracks after it passed in the senate about this time of year, right before the fourth of july week back home , and then through the month of july, trying to bring to light just how flawed that bill was, what a terrible impact would have on American Workers and families and communities, and to keep it stopped. Because the forces behind the bill never seem to quite give up. Since ive come to the senate ive tried to focus as well on reforming other aspects of our immigration system. My legislation would revamp our Legal Immigration system towards high skilledre on workers, and away from extended families and random lotteries and other matters like that. It is an issue about which i am personally passionate. And i think it matters to a lot of americans. Next question i want to ask is about your legislation, the rays act. As you described, you were interested in immigration before it was cool. The president made it a highprofile issue but you were working on it before it was a big issue. You were one of the cosponsors act, and it would move immigration away from family connections, get rid of some of the chain migration categories but it would have a reduction in immigration. Probably not as much as some people said, some people were talking about half, 50 percent reduction. It probably wouldnt have done that, but it would have been a significant reduction. Obviouslyesident endorsed it, he had an event for you and senator perdue for you at the white house when you first introduced it. Though, repeatedly, he has been saying that we need more immigration, we need the highest level ever. You dont seem to have gone along with our program. What are your thoughts about that . Sen. Cotton let me go back to act afirst wrote the rays couple of years ago, and what we hope to accomplish with it. Theres no lack of people in congress focused on things like security and enforcement or our temporary guestworker programs. All things that are very immediate, sometimes people are just looking for quick fixes. Nothing against quick fixes , especially when we have serious problems, like with the asylum fraud going on at the border right now, but there werent that many people focused on our Legal Immigration system. To me, that is one of the cornerstones of our immigration system, because it is not only how we generate workers for our economy but citizens for our country. That is what we should focus on, bringing in new citizens who will contribute to the american story. As i studied our Legal Immigration system i realized it was a mishmash of quotas and random setasides and policies that are outdated and no one can even explain. 1 out of 15 workers today comes here because of the skills and the job theyre going to have. Its almost entirely because at some point they had some distant relative who made it to the , somehow ors another. And even those who do come here because of their employment dont really reflect the needs of our economy. I mean, we have all kinds of setasides and quotas in our employmentbased immigration system that makes no sense. We even have quotas set aside for foreign lawyers to come to this country. A lot of people talk erroneously about jobs americans wont do, or that we dont have enough. The one thing we have enough of is lawyers in this country. Host [indiscernible] sen. Cotton no kidding. Thats why i focused on the raise act and on trying to , i looked at the criteria with thoughtful experts in places like australia and canada. We wanted an easily administered system so we tried to identify criteria that are simple, straightforward, that cant be gained, but they contribute significantly to success for new immigrants in this country. So, age, younger americans are better than older americans. If youre bringing in new americans because you want people to be productive and pay taxes their entire lifetime. Their educational level and their educational field so things like engineering and mathematics. The kind of jobs that theyre going to have in their local economy. 100,000 wage. Portsmouth, arkansas goes a lot further than it does in new york city, so accounting for those. Ifferences one of the most important criteria for success in our country, speaking english. Any kind of exceptional skill or talent, whether theyre a assist picture, or worldclass opera singer or 100 mile an hour fastball pitcher and they can be evaluated every 12 months. Thats why we wrote the raise act. There is widespread agreement thats the kind of immigration system we need. As it relates to numbers, the numbers we had in the raise act would gradually decline over time because of the reduction in extended family migrations you cant bring in aunts and on close, and all the rest. By refocusing the number of green cards on unemployment systems. There is debate about the appropriate number of immigrants and the impact the legislation would have. Thats an appropriate place for legislative compromise. I tend to think we are at historically elevated numbers, as high as we have been since right before the 1924 immigration act. Almost 1 in seven americans are foreignborn. Because most of those foreigners when they come here are low skilled workers, thats one reason why americans with high school degrees, who are working with their hands and on their feet all day long have seen their wages suffer for so long. So i tend to think that a gradual decline over time while refocusing on high skilled workers would be beneficial for unskilled and low skilled American Workers. But again, that is an area where i think once you get that system right, the baseline standards for how we are admitting new foreign nationals to ultimately become citizens, the total level of immigration is an area of legislative compromise. Host it is interesting, because what you have described in your raise act is not really that 20similar from what we saw plus years ago, with the Barbara Jordan commission. Barbara jordan was a democrat in a bipartisan commission. Bill clinton endorsed the legislation initially. Thats kind of the way i wanted to get to the question about todays democrats in immigration. They were a lot more sensible, from my perspective, a lot more centrist in the past, as president clinton and Barbara Jordan and others demonstrate. We are doing this on july 30 and tonight and tomorrow the next round of democratic president ial debates. Frankly, the Democratic Party seems to have gone bonkers on immigration. This started before President Trumps election, but it has accelerated since then. At the previous round everyone raised their hand and supported decriminalization across the border, they raise their hand and endorsed taxpayerfunded medicare for illegal aliens, and now congresswoman , omar has tweeted demanding taxpayerfunded abortions for a legal aliens. Which is almost like something opposition researchers would have dreamed up on saturday night, and it is a real thing. What is going on with your colleagues across the aisle . Sen. Cotton i think you put it well. The democrats have lost their mind when it comes to immigration. Barbara jordan, i probably wouldnt have agreed on much if we had served in congress together, but on this, she was right. A lot of Union Leaders are used immigration as well. I think the democrats have become a party focused less on Kitchen Table issues, on what matters to working arkansans and theyre worried about not having enough paychecks to make it to the end of the month or worried about providing for your kids braces or education. That they just focused a lot more on questions of race, gender, sex, identity and for them, its become more of a question of identity done a question of economics at security. If you are a rich lobbyist and you live in bethesda or youre a rich expresident who lives in chappaqua, outside new york, mass migrations are a bargain for you. Immigrants are not coming here to take your job as a lobbyist or taking your job giving 200,000 speeches, so you dont have to worry about the impact it has on your local economy, and you are not in an emergency room waiting to get health care, not being able to see a doctor. In the meantime, it drives down the price of all the personal services that you depend on and places where you have a lot of immigrants working like childcare, housecleaning, landscaping, manicures and pedicures, and exciting new fusion restaurants as well. The story in bethesda in lot los in chappaqua, in los angeles, and in Silicon Valley of mass migration is a good. What if you are in moral arkansas or along the border in texas or manufacturing communities in the upper midwest, it is the opposite story. The Democratic Party represents those elites on the coast. They dont represent a lot of hard work in communities across the country. Host it will be entertaining and ill be tuning in to see whats next class theyre not going to be doing that. Sen. Cotton cnn has said theyre not going to have to hand raising or yes no questions because cnn understands the party they represent was embarrassed by the handraising questions. Host basically it was a Republican Campaign advertisement. Sen. Cotton cnn doesnt want to do anything that will hurt their party. Host today senator durbin is expected to bring up the bill for socalled temporary protected status for venezuelans. The house passed it recently. I understand he will bring it up for unanimous consent and it will probably be object to. So it is not as though there will be a debate today, but the issue of venezuelans is one that coming up. And you are republicans who are sympathetic to it, because obviously, they are fleeing a socialist dictatorship, but we published results showing that it is basically an informal moratorium on deportations of venezuelans anyway, on the the hardest cases, a handful people are deported, an appropriate use thate dis discretion d. H. S. Has. Pse think this idea of t which we are dealing with, for salvadorans and others who are not separated at all, does this whole structure need to change . Sen. Sen. Cotton let me express my sympathy to those venezuelans living here, many of whom have ties to family members or education or working here legally for many years but their status may be about to expire and let me express my sympathy to venezuelans living under the corrupt dictatorial regime of maduro. This is a kind of situation that temporary protected status as a program was created to address, it was created to address people who are living here legally cant get it renewed, maybe are a student and their education is done but for some reason they cant return to their home country safely. Either theres a famine going on and a brutal socialist crackdown or there has been a Natural Disaster or what have you. Most americans recognize a sensible sound policy and principle. The problem is thats not the theit has way it has problem is that is not the way it has played out in practice. As you stress, the t in tps transport temporary. There are few things more permanent than temporary protected status. We have nationals living in our country today got tps protection 10 or 20 years ago while there was a civil war going on and the war has been settled for over 10 years. Ultimately tps is not a way to live in this country permanently and to become a citizen. It was designed as a humanitarian gesture. So under normal conditions, whats happening in venezuela now would be a good candidate for protected status but thats not the conditions we live in. The bureaucracies of both parties have been unwilling to rescind tps status when it should be rescinded, now that President Trump has done so you have leftwing judges basically practicing a form of resistance law that is not letting the statusnt withdraw tps which is his prerogative so i think its unwise for us to extend more tps protection to other countries when we cant even withdraw it from countries who have it now. If senator durbin like to would like to include in bill measures that would overturn this Court Decision and say that a decision to rescind tps status by the president , by the department is not reviewable in the court, id be open to reviewing but we shouldnt be granting more discretionary status under tps when the president cant even unwind the past grants of tps status even though the conditions for which it was granted have been gone for years. Mark just to follow up on that one, obviously the president who wanted to rescind the status and thats never happened before now. Have you given any thought to reforms to the tps statute itself . Sen. Cotton one way to do it is rather than make it a permanent grant, its an affirmative step the president has to resend it, make it like a reviewable status. The affirmative step has to be to extend it. So its things like that, make sure that again, we dont want to send hundreds or thousands of foreign nationals who are here legally back to their country thats been wracked by an s. Rthquake or by hurricane they cant process them. Or to socialist hellholes like venezuela but at the same time conditions change and when you cant return to your country because a civil war is waging, when the civil war is over youve got to go back to your country. When the infrastructure is recovered from an earthquake or landslides, youve got to go back to your country eventually. If you want to stay in this country, you need to apply to another legal avenue. Mark another piece of legislation the senate is likely to deal with is something called the fairness for high skilled immigrants act. The house passed this and what it would do is remove what are called the per country caps which are in the law in order to ensure a certain level of diversity so that one country doesnt take over the whole immigration system. This legislation would remove those caps and critics have said even though it what increase the it wont increase the overall level, it doesnt do anything to that, it would bring about a takeover of our whole employmentbased immigration system by people from india because theyre the ones on a waiting list. Youre one of the cosponsors of the bill and i wondered what are your answers to those critiques and what is the rationale for legislation . Sen. Cotton the fundamental reason i think this is a step in the right direction, a modest step, but a step in the right direction is it moves away from the immigration system we have now to the kind of system i want, a system that doesnt care where you come from, it cares what you bring here thats a you bring here. Thats a step in the right direction, thats why the raise act would eliminate those country caps and quotas as well. We want to treat people as individuals no matter where they come from. As you say, as a practical matter for a few years it would result in significantly higher number of green cards going to indian nationals but it wouldnt increase the number of green cards. Total of green cards total. And it might even decrease the number of Foreign Workers coming here on an annual basis, new Foreign Workers added to our economy because a large number of those indian nationals are already here working on h1 the h1b visas. Those visas tend to get extended but im not the biggest fan of those h1b visas either because as i said at the onset its important we bring new workers into our economy, whats more important is we produce new citizens believe in america and want to share in the american dream. I tell Tech Companies this a lot because they often are the beneficiaries of these h1b visas and they come to washington and lobby all the time for it and i say i dont want to give you more h1 b visas, i want to give you more citizens. I want people who will come here and participate in our country and become americans and in fact, also have better bargaining position as it relates to employers. I understand some employers would rather have an h1b worker rather than an american citizen because the worker is almost an indentured servant in terms of their bargaining power, their ability to ask for more higher wages and benefits or just to leave and go to another company. If you have an american citizen and hot job market, they can take their skills to another company so that would be another positive step in the right direction. Mark the way the lobbyists from the Tech Companies, they say h1 b visas are more loyal. Sen. Cotton it is not just h1bs. Its the case in a lot of these guestworker programs. Thats one reason why even though my legislation doesnt focus on the guestworker program, i would much prefer to have citizens into this country and working as opposed to people who want to come here and work in our jobs and send their money back home and go back to their country. Not to say thats never appropriate but theres a lot of abuse in that system and in general american jobs should be going to American Workers first. Thats one of the benefits and one of the good news stories we have from this economy. Between an economy that is strong and an immigration system now that is focused more on the needs of American Workers. You have for the first time a lot of people coming off the sidelines, some of the people at that the democrats say they want to represent and want to get a fair shake whether their they are minority workers or teenage workers or disabled workers or excons. People who are getting jobs that we need done in our society and we need to get off the sidelines and succeed in america. Its better to hire those americans in those jobs whether its a tech job or landscaping job, what have you, than to import Foreign Workers. Mark amen. One last question, we have cards if you want to write down a question, ill be taking questions from the audience in a few minutes. Another thing thats in the news, this is last week, the administration signed what they billed as a Safe Third Country Agreement with guatemala. Guatemala is saying its not at sea third country agreement but the point is to deal with the border crisis where people are basically using bogus asylum claims as a means of ilLegal Immigration. The details arent clear yet. We found a spanish version of the text, we havent found a the English Version yet but apparently part of what the arrangement is is were going to give more guestworker visas to guatemalans. Kind of as i want to say a bribe but its a bribe for guatemala to sign the agreement. So generally, what do you think about this idea of a kind of quid pro quo to get guatemala to cooperate and more broadly what should we be doing about this order crisis . Border crisis . Sen. Cotton we have a crisis right now because some wellintentioned laws have conspired along with activist s here in the United States and in latin america to drive all this bogus and fraudulent claims of asylum. Look, guatemala and honduras and el salvador have many troubles. However, their citizens do not face the kind of persecution based on who they are or what they believe that our asylum and refugee laws were designed for. We designed those laws for jews in the soviet union and around iran, from around, or for christians from syria. Those are the kinds of people who had we have passed refugee laws because they are being persecuted for being a woman or the way they choose to belong to a certain ethnic or racial group. Mark or political group. Sen. Cotton yes. We didnt passed refugee loss to alleviate the worlds suffering. Living in a poor country is not grounds for asylum or refugee status. If it were, we would have to admit about 6 billion people from around the world. Its an arbitrary fact that those countries are in the same landmass that we are and we can and they can travel all across that landmass thats created this crisis in the first place. We need to take immediate steps to try to resolve the crisis on the border. The president has tried to do that repeatedly, working with mexico in terms of deploying National Guard to their border, northern and southern border. Deeming mexico a safe third country, getting guatemala to recognize itself as a safe third country. You have these leftwing obama judges who have a hair trigger anytime the aclu or other activist groups come in. They file a nationwide injunction with no basis whatsoever, one of which we saw overturned last week by the Supreme Court. That needs to stop. I hope the Supreme Court steps in sooner rather than later and takes a firm stand against these activist judges. Unless the president executes the policies that he and the department of Homeland Security and the attorney general just to Just Announced another one in terms of standards for asylum, longterm for guatemala and el salvador and honduras, and foreign nationals here, there in better places so there are things we can do to help them crackdown on crime in terms of information sharing or Technical Expertise and training are fbi that our fbi or dea can provide to them. But we have to recognize those things. Thats not going to happen. Going to happen next week. Those countries in Central America, theyre not going to become norway tomorrow or next year or the next decade so those are good longterm proposals that we should pursue but we need to take immediate action to stop the fraud that we see at our border. Mark as john Maynard Keenan said in the long run, we cant we are all dead, so we cant wait for the long run. Sen. Cotton it is true, we are not the only country that is facing this. Look at what happened in europe over the past five or six years with the refugee crisis that the Syrian Civil War has generated and the libyan of the war, making libya a place for every country to transit two. To. Europe cannot pay refuge to every person who lives in africa and asia that doesnt have the standard of living that europe does. Its not possible. And its not particularly my opinion, to do what Angela Merkel did a few years ago which is to say if you survived the journey you can. Encouraging people to make the dangerous journey to syria and the balkans or in our case up through Central America and mexico. If she wanted to, she would send plane after plane from love anza and syria and bring all these people back. But she doesnt. So shes trying to ameliorate the problem she has on her borders and its what a lot of democrats want to do. They want to ameliorate the people in individual cases without thinking through the policy implications of what you are saying. Especially if what you said what the democrats said in the debate, were not going to deport we are not going to Deport Anyone unless they commit a felony and when you get here, were going to pay for your healthcare as well, thats the definition of an open border policy. Mark next month we will have a Panel Discussion at the press club, we will have a report on the National Security challenges from large foreign program. And youve introduced the targeted legislation on one part of that, the students or researchers who are working for, sponsored by the chinese army or intelligence should not be getting student visas. More broadly or maybe specifically, what do you see as the vulnerability that our current very large unlimited Student Program has for us . Sen. Cotton lets not be naive here. The Chinas Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation army purposefully infiltrates americas universities and Research Laboratories with agents to try to steal National Security secrets. Thats not to say that every Chinese Student that comes to america is an agent of the Chinese Communist party or the Peoples Liberation army. We should not be naive about that threat. We should always err on the side of National Security as opposed to in essence on behalf of foreign students. One way to handle that is to do more thorough background checks on the students that come here, another way is to focus on the kind of programs they want to study. Chinese students at National Laboratory or affiliated institutes, no. Chinese students at Major Research universities putting in studying in advanced scientific and engineering programs that do Major Contract work for the department of defense or the intelligence community, no. If Chinese Students want to come here and study in the western tradition so they can learn more about constitutional democracy and individual liberty, i can support that. Mark but is there a broader issue . Just chinese not students, but iranian students, but is there a broader issue that we are atrophying our own ability to grow our own expertise because theres only so many seats in the lecture hall . Sen. Cotton sure. Thats right and to many too many universities have to have become too reliant on Chinese Students and chinese money. Again, thats chinas deliberate policy. Even if youre not an agent of the chinese government, youre still sending Chinese Students to places like mit or caltech or what have you to study our study Artificial Intelligence or quantum computing and coming back to china and working in chinese industry its better for china than it is for the United States and its something which we need to be attentive as well. Mark we have questions from the audience. One, we talked about the raise act but what are the prospects of some kind of legislation, this congress doesnt seem very likely, but is there a realistic scenario for Something Like the raise act to be passed . Sen. Cotton i knew when i introduced the raise act that it would be a slow and gradual path to build support for it but we have added two new cosponsors among the freshman senators. Weve got growing support from congressmen in the house of representatives as well. As you say i have measured expectations of passing major immigration legislation with nancy pelosi in charge of the house. It is amazing that nancy pelosi is in the moderate wing of her party. And with the democrats running for president all wanting to decriminalize ilLegal Immigration and give healthcare to Illegal Immigrants. I suspect with another lost to loss to donald trump in 2020 that some democrats may begin to see things a different way and perhaps go back to the way like Barbara Jordan viewed the matter. Or some of the things bill clinton used it to say about ilLegal Immigration in the 1990s, things that would get him excommunicated from todays Democratic Party. So as has often been the case in our history on legislation, the issue percolates for many years before conditions become right in congress. Its just a matter of continuing to do the yeomans work on daytoday to educate my colleagues and to try to bring them around. Mark this is not one of the questions submitted but it occurred to me one of the targeted changes that i mean, the raise act is a broad rewrite of the whole Legal Immigration system. But one of the things that everybody seems to be four, for, president obama is for it and everybody was for it was mandatory everify. In other words when you hire somebody, youre able to check online. You are already able but youre required to check online whether the person is lying or telling the truth about who they are. What are the prospects of Something Like that passing . Because like i said, thats targeted. Everybody said they are for it and yet it keeps not happening. Sen. Cotton i think this is an example of where you have something of a silent conspiracy between the left and republicans who kind of reflexively favor the interest of big business. Obviously everify would make it much harder to employ Illegal Immigrants. And stories about false positives and glitches in the system, those are 15 years old by this point. Everify is extremely easy to use, the failure rate is infinitesimally small. Mark i dont mean to put you on the spot, but do you use it at your office for hiring . Cis uses it. Sen. Cotton i would have to ask. Mark the point is, its the kind of thing i think is now used for, required for all government contractors. We looked at the numbers and it seems that the majority of new hires are actually already being screened through it so in a sense, its reached a tipping point. It seems to me its a pretty decent telling point. Sen. Cotton its already widely used. And i speak to Senior Business executives and industries that do in certain parts of the country rely heavily on immigrant labor like hospitality and they frequently tell me look, we think we need more workers. We understand you dont see it that way but we use everify and we want to make sure every person who works here is legally authorized to be in this country and work. Mark part of the reason we do that is because when we say we need more workers, we want to say all of our workers are legal as well. But i think theres still plenty of employers who would rather not do that and try to look the other way and benefit from more control and more loyalty, as you said. The h1b context and lower wages. And also people on the left. Their devotion to identity politics dont want to do anything that smacks of internal enforcement. Although last month the democratic debates we saw not only do they want to enforce the law against anyone whos in country illegally whether theyve been here 30 years or 30 hours, they dont want to enforce the enforcement either. Mark exactly. This is an arkansas specific question. Walmart is based in arkansas. Presumably it is an important interest to have interactions with. Have they weighed in on the immigration issue . Sen. Cotton walmart uses everify, there a good corporate they are a good corporate lawyer. Or 12 ans are up 11 hour, not just in arkansas that was mandated but around the country as well. I think they would like to see a immigration system that works for our communities in terms of their employment practices, they are a good corporate employer. Mark good. This is a question from the audience, in your tenure in office how have attitudes towards enforcement changed among your colleagues . What i want to focus on is how have republican attitudes changed on the immigration issue . Have you seen a shift . Because the old line is, the left wants immigration because of the cheap votes and the right wants it for the cheap labor. But it seems there has been more the consensus has developed and expanded among republicans more that theres been even those republicans may be used to being relaxed and lax on immigration have become less so as they have seen the saliency of the issue. Sen. Cotton i think the president has affected that to a degree. I would say that for a long time a lot of republicans, especially those not intensely focused on the immigration issue focused on ilLegal Immigration causes the because it is the issue that is may be the easiest to talk to voters about. But it also allows them to focus on ilLegal Immigration systems that really rewards large employers in terms of guest workers and green cards that are going to benefit businesses without benefiting American Workers. We have situations like we have the border now that is truly an crisis. I think most republicans genuinely want to solve that but it is just that the democrats dont. I would look at enforcement attitudes of my democratic colleagues. The model of those bills that i oppose, not only when i was in the house but a private citizen goes back to 1986 and it was amnesty and mass migration upfront and the return or for promises of enforcement and the reason why those bills, one reason those bills failed in 1986 bill failed because you got the amnesty immediately which is irreversible and of course you got the large increases in immigration. Of republicans constituencies loved. But you never got the enforcement. People keep talking about comprehensive Immigration Reform which is the code word for that which is the code word for that kind of bill. Mass amnesty upfront, promise of enforcement later. You cant even have that compromise today because the democrats are no longer credible in their promises of future enforcement and theyre saying were going to decriminalize crossing the border and not Deport Anyone unless they commit a violent felony. I dont see how you could even negotiate in good faith and have that kind of compromise with the democrats anymore given how radical their attitude towards Immigration Enforcement have become. Mark in a sense not only is nancy pelosi the centrist wayne, weighing of the Democratic Party, president obama is much more in a sense a most a moderate democrat cause he because he obviously understood that dynamic to some degree and early on even though there was a lot of sleightofhand, some of it was dishonest, they tried to make the point that they were committed. Sen. Cotton they intentionally said repeatedly as a selling point for obamacare that Illegal Immigrants would not be eligible for obamacare. And now youve got for joe biden poor joe biden getting attacked by democrats who say they deported too many Illegal Immigrants during the obama biting years. It goes to show how radical the Democratic Party has become. Mark congresswoman wilson who cried out you lie was proven correct. Question on the southern border. What are some of the measures we you think we can take in the event of another big caravan approaching the border because the question continues that the measures the president have taken have had some effect but they have not solve the problem. Sen. Cotton we will have to see where the numbers are. They have declined somewhat. I hope that is because of the policy which means it is durable and lasting. Not just because it is hot in june, july, and august. But some of these policies are still early. They still have to be fully implemented. They still have to be implemented as the court has if the court has enjoined them. Thats one reason i was encouraged by the courts decision to overturn one of these leftwing injunctions out of california. I hope and i expect the department of justice will seek accelerated appeals to the Supreme Court to prevent all these leftwing judges from trying to intervene in places where they have no business. There is zero role for a federal judge to enjoin a decision between the government of mexico and United States government about whether mexico will keep foreign nationals on its own soil. Theres zero grounds for a federal judge to intervene in that kind of core Foreign Policy decision. Mark thats part of a broader issue is that District Court judges essentially have a veto over not only the executive branch but over every other District Court judge because there were those two dueling decisions where one District Court judge upheld the administration policy, the other enjoined it and the one who enjoined it won. So is there a place there for congress to intervene since all those courts essentially sen. Cotton i would like to see Congress Passed legislation that would roll back District Court judges in local communities around the country from enjoining laws nationwide and that again not even adjudicating the question on the merits. Thats giving it injunction upfront before theres even been an adjudication on the merits of a particular policy or law. Justice scalia used to say nine unelected judges ought not to be setting policy, they ought to be interpreting and applying the law. Its not nine unelected justices about whom we have a major debate every time theres a nominee, now were letting unelected lawyers in San Francisco who nobodys ever heard of set immigration policy for this country. So i was heartened by the Supreme Courts decision last week. I hope they are acting on his on accelerated appeals and will continue to send a clear signal to all these leftwing judges that they ought not trying to be set immigration policy. Mark thank you, senator. I know you have to run and the senate got important business to do and i appreciate having us giving us your time. Were going to be posting this to the internet as well for our website and hopefully we will have you back when the raise act passes. Thank you very much. Sen. Cotton appreciate it. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer President Trump today sat down with cspan for an interview at the white house. He talked about his legislative agenda, the democratic president joe field, his recent comments about marilyn representative Elijah Cummings and his plans for a possible second term. Here is a brief look. Let me follow up on the some quick points. You issued 43,000 tweets. Did you ever regret sending one out . Pres. Trump not much. I sent the one about the quotes. Ing in that turned out to be true. I heard about a minute after i sent, i was called by my people, i said yes i did, whats the big deal . The reason it was a big deal is it turned out to be true. I guess you could say a lot of the times, the retweets. You retweet something that sounds good but it turns out to be a player that is not the best player in the world. That causes a problem. Overall i would say no. Not at all. It is a modernday form of communication. And it is not really tweet. , what it really is as soon as i do it, anybody puts it on. Every time i put out a tweet, even if it is good morning everybody, we have breaking news. The president has just said good morning. It is an incredible way of communicating. You get it out fast. Otherwise, i dont know, how what i combat news that is dishonest . How what i combat a reporter or a network that is totally dishonest. 100 negative. Nbc is negative. I made a lot of money for nbc with the apprentice. It was a tremendous success at a time when they did not have any successes. But they forgot about that very quickly. They wanted to extend me, do anything, i think we have done a great job. The country is on the right path. I think we have tremendous potential. Announcer tonight on cspan, we will hear from u. S. Customs and Border Protection acting commissioner mark morgan, testifying on operations at the southern border. That is followed by our sitdown interview with President Trump at the white house from earlier today, where he talked about his administration and the 2020 president ial campaign. Later, a look at was a blower protections with Stephen Cohen from the National Whistleblower center. At a senate Homeland Security hearing, u. S. Customs and Border Protection acting commissioner mark morgan was asked about conditions at migrant detention facilities, and allegations of misconduct by Border Patrol officials. There was also testimony from the Homeland Security departments acting inspect