Welcome to our viewers around the world and in the united states. A hurricane is coming and its expected to make landfall this weekend. Hurricane watches extending from the border of texas to the gulf of the Mississippi River. Tropical storm watches extending to the north. Look at this. That was some kind of a kids playground. Parts of bourbon street, look at that, under water. Hundreds of flood gates have now been closed. Okay. There is also other breaking news to bring to you. This morning, nationwide i. C. E. I raids on thousands of undocumented immigrants are scheduled to start on sunday. This is according to the New York Times. The Trump Administration is going after migrant families in at least ten cities with deportation orders already in place. And agents might even detain immigrant who is happen to be on the scene even if they were not the target. So well have more on that in a moment. But lets begin with Tropical Storm system that is threatening louisiana. Natasha chen is live in new orleans, whats the situation there . Well, the concern is how high this Mississippi River is going to get. So the Flood Protection Authority is in the process of closing dozens of flood gates including one here at the port of new orleans where we are. Thatll be closed by 5 eastern today. Theyve been closing pedestrian gates as well. Places like the river walk. These are really popular Tourist Spots and were seeing a lot of tourists in town. Some of them saying they want to stick it out inside their hotel rooms. We also saw some people getting in a car really early this morning headed straight back for the airport. They just want to avoid the whole thing. The worst, of course, yet to come on saturday. And so the governor and the mayor of new orleans have both declared states of emergency. City hall was closed yesterday and remains closed today. You wouldnt be able to tell with this gorgeous sunrise behind me, but yesterday around this time, this place is getting pummelled with rain. A lot of morning commute drivers dealing with that intense rainfall. Were going to continue to track and see if that type of event continues to happen in the next couple of days. Okay. Please keep us updated throughout the morning. Thank you very much. For the latest on the tropical system and where its headed, lets bring in chad myers. Whats the latest on the map, chad . Still looks like scrambled eggs to me out there. Little tabasco on top. This is not a developing storm right now and thats the great news. Hurricane hunters are out there looking for winter not finding circulation yet to give it a name which will eventually today be barry. Right now winds are only 30 miles per hour. The forecast is for it to go to the west of new orleans. But the cone does include new orleans and heres why. Two of the models now are right over new orleans as we work our way into saturday morning. Heres the model for today. This is what the rain should look like for the day. There are more showers on land away from the storm than here in new orleans. But all of the rainfall off shore for now. And that will change. This storm will rotate around and the rain will get into southern louisiana, mississippi, alabama, and even into georgia. And some of that rain, guys, could be 15 inches deep. The new models, slightly farther to the east including new orleans. But for you up there in new york, theres a severe potential for wind damage here. I dont want to kind of put this by the wayside. Later on tonight, youll be hearing thunder and lightning and maybe some trees could be down as well. All right. Chad, stand by. Keep us posted on that. Meantime, we have this breaking news from the New York Times. Immigration raids, raids on undocumented migrants now apparently scheduled for sunday. This in the New York Times published overnight. Joining us to discuss, sara isner and bianna golodryga. Let me read you two graphs from this New York Times story overnight. Raid to arrest thousands of undocumented families have been scheduled to begin sunday. This is according to to two current and one former Homeland Security official. And then the raids which will be conducted by i. C. E. Over multiple days will include collateral deportations according to the officials. In those deportations, the authorities might detain immigrants who happen to be on the scene even though they were not the targets of the raids. Now bianna, weve been told for weeks these raids have been coming. The new information from the times overnight is it is sunday. Targeting some thousands of families including children. What do you see here . Itll be interesting to watch how the democrats respond to this. Remember, the president held off on the initial plan for the raids is few weeks ago as you just mentioned. Also be interesting to see what happens locally on the ground. Youve seen many mayors in many of these cities say they will not be cooperating and talking to their Police Department saying not to cooperate with these i. C. E. Officials. So i think whats going to happen over the next 48 hours is going to be critical here. Heres whats different than what weve been seeing at the border. These are people with deportation orders already. In other words, theyve been adjudicated. They are here unlawfully. Opposed to people who have been showing up and seeking asylum which is legal. Okay . However, optically, im not sure what the difference is. Because we have seen for the past month that these Deportation Centers are full. Theyre full. Theyre beyond capacity. People are being kept in overcrowded cages in inhumane conditions. So im not sure first of all how the Deportation Centers are going to accommodate more people from these arrests, and just in erm thes of the public trying to digest all this, optically what the difference is. I think thats right. Weve seen this reporting before and delayed before. Well see if this moves forward. But again, what these 2020 democrats do with this will be interesting. Because donald trump is getting to skip the primary and go straight to the general. What weve seen in two polls out this week is the majority of general election voters find immigration to be a top issue. And tend to side that its a crisis thats happening here. And you have jeh johnson from the obama administration, their secretary of Homeland Security, advising democrats not to move too far to the left on this issue. But i think theres no question that this will remain a top issue going into the next debate and for those top tier candidates to have to grapple with how to talk to their primary voters about this without alienating general election voters. So interesting. Both bianna and sara, one of the first things they bring up is the politics here. Is this a base play by the president . Is the timing a week and a half before the cnn debate, does that play in here . But theres a flip side as well on the New York Times. This quote. Agents have expressed apprehensions about arresting babies and young children. Officials have said. Theres still concern about how to pull this off. And theres still concern about people who might be affected. Yes. The optics of this have the threat of being really bad for the administration. We saw the family separations just about a year ago and how bad that was for the administration. You saw both democrats and republicans come out to condemn that. Now you have the president sort of pushing forward with what could be a pretty harsh looking Deportation Force going in and deporting people who havent committed Violent Crimes while here but they have deportation orders. That may include families that are also going to be separated because maybe the children are here and theyre american citizens and the parents happen to be undocumented immigrants. If that happens and that is shown publicly in local communities, it could really present bad optics for the president showing himself to be someone who continues to separate families who even though they have deportation orders arent necessarily causing crime in the community, arent necessarily violent criminals. Weve seen previous administrations try to focus on deporting people who have committed additional crimes after getting here. It seems like President Trump is looking at deporting families who havent necessarily committed additional crimes but are, you know, adjudicated to have been deportation worthy. Itll be interesting to see how that plays out. That brings us to the Citizenship Question for the census. President trump has long wanted to do that. Though the Supreme Court shot it down or at least sent it back to the drawing board. This morning he is tweeting about it. Whats he saying . Hes got an event at the white house today. He says the conclusion of the event, we will all go to the beautiful rose garden for a News Conference on the census and citizenship. Now, we dont know at this point. Were trying to find out and do reporting at the white house as we speak. Is this going to be an executive order to try to get a Citizenship Question on the census . How would that work legally . Might he just back off and say hes not going to try to get the question on the census right now . Were not sure. But bianna, one thing we are sure about is talking about this at all again seems to be a base play. I dont think him announcing this on twitter is him backing off. Usually if he backs off, he just stops talking about it. Thats not the case here. He cant let this go. He believes he has bill barr on his side. He believes he can pull out an executive order as well. And obviously we saw the additional setback from the judge here in new york just this week saying that they cant just arbitrarily switch attorneys and lawyers. The maryland judge said the same thing. Right. Without giving a plausible explanation which could unleash a lot of embarrassment on the administration. Sara, are republicans comfortable with that . An executive order going around the court system including the Supreme Court . I think they would be. Again, the polling on this shows one with 52 , one with 67 support this question on the census. Again, you want to look forward to that democratic debate in a week and a half. Joe biden had protesters at his headquarters yesterday who were protesting deportations during the administration and wanted him to apologize for that. Its a different issue for primary voters than it is for Republican Voters going into this. And so i think its a really interesting question of what exactly the president s going to say here and where that lands for these democrats how they respond. Typical fashion, the president announced hes making an announcement on twitter. We might watch what the courts have to say about it as well. Alexander acosta trying to explain his role in this sweetheart plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein, sexual predator, more than a decade ago. Epsteins began charged again with sex trafficking and abusing minors. Acosta basically said i got the best deal i could. He blamed the state of florida for bungling it before. And the question today toluse, is acosta safe in his labor secretary job this morning . It seems at this point. We know this is a president that can sour on his cabinet officials quick will i. But it seems this morning he is not out the door. You can expect the News Coverage of this continue because there are a lot of holes that acosta made yesterday. Those holes are getting to be poked by the local officials down in south florida saying they have a different recollection of what happened back in 2007 and 2008. And some of the arguments that he made dont really hold water about how things have changed over the last ten years and how victim shaming was all envogue back then. Now it doesnt happen anymore. Its not very clear that he really made an argument to explain himself and explain why he was able to give this sweetheart deal to epstein and why the prosecutors now in the Southern District of new york. Able to bring a much harder set of charges against him. You can expect the News Coverage of that to continue. As that continues, that could impact how his standing is with the president and follows the news and media closely. Ten years went after perpetrators of child rape. Right . They went after pedophiles. He was making this seem this was so many decades ago and times were so different. I think he was trying to equate the me too movement with what epstein has been charged with. Not to take away anything from the me too movement, but youre talking about child rape and pedophilia. You cant suggest that, oh, ten years ago things were entirely different. They werent. The one question i do have is whether or not the president s affiliation with epstein will help or hurt acosta. Even if you believe his rationale and things have changed, why did you conduct it all in secret . Why did you leave your office and travel miles away to a secret meeting with the lawyer of Jeffrey Epstein . Why did not never tell the victims . Thats illegal. His rationale doesnt wash. And just quickly, you never heard an im sorry there, correct . No. I thought that if i were advising alex acosta, i would tell him to look at the Pete Buttigieg answer on the shootings. Someone able to own up to a mistake. These women, these dozens of children were let down by the state system and the federal system. And we did not hear an apology for that. All right. Thank you very much. This morning, new tensions in the persian gulf involving iran. Five armed iranian gun boats tried unsuccessfully to seize a British Oil Tanker. Our Barbara Starr live at the pentagon with all the details here. What happened . Reporter good morning. This happening yesterday as a British Oil Tanker tried to move through the strait of hormuz. We are told it was approached by several iranian small armed boats who tried to make that British Commercial tanker go into iranian waters essentially seize it and take it into iran. What happened next, however, is a Uk Royal Navy frigate that was escorting the tanker came up alongside very quickly, trained its cannon on the iranian boats and issued a warning to back off. I might mention that cannon on that british warship is especially designed to drive off small boats. So this morning the British Government saying the iranians were trying to impede the progress of the tanker through the strait of hormuz. But the u. S. Adamant that the iranians were attempting to seize this british tanker. Tehran saying no such incident ever happened. The u. S. Letting it be known that there was a u. S. Military aircraft overhead at the time of the incident and it was recording video of what happened. Well see if that video becomes public. Alisyn . And barbara, we will ask a member of the Senate Armed Services committee what she knows about this coming up. Thank you very much for your reporting. So i. C. E. Raids targeting undocumented families set to go this weekend. Were getting our first reaction from congress. A democratic senator will join us from capitol hill. But what i do count on. Is boost® delicious boost® high protein nutritional drink has 20 grams of protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals. Boost® high protein. Be up for life. This is not just a headache. This is not just a fever. This is not just the flu. Its meningitis b. And youre not there to help. While meningitis b is uncommon. Once symptoms appear, they can progress quickly and can be fatal. Sometimes within 24 hours. Before you send your teen to college. Make sure you help protect them. Talk to your teens doctor. About meningitis b vaccination. Did you know congress is working to end surprise medical billing . Thats when patients are hit with medical bills they thought would be covered by insurance. The problem is Big Insurance Companies want a onesizefitsall approach that lets them decide what theyll pay doctors for yocare. Letting Insurance Companies decide means it could be harder for you to see the best doctors when you need them the most. Tell congress, end surprise billing, and dont let Insurance Companies put profits over patients. Paid for by physicians for fair coverage. This melting pot of impacted species. Everywhere is going to get touched by climate change. Wed love some help with laundry. Spray and scrub anything with a stain. Wash the really dirty clothes separately. New tide pods with upgraded 4in1 technology unleash a foolproof clean in one step. Aww, you did the laundry its got to be tide. Hey i live on my own now ive got xfinity, because i like to live life in the fast lane. Unlike my parents. You rambling about xfinity again . Youre so cute when you get excited. Anyways. Ive got their app right here, i can troubleshoot. I can schedule a time for them to call me back, its great you have our number programmed in . Ya i dont even know your phone anymore. Excuse me . what . I dont know your phone number. Aw well. He doesnt know our phone number you have our fax number, obviously. Todays xfinity service. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Ill pass. Breaking news. The New York Times reporting this morning, quote, nationwide raids to arrest thousands of members of undocumented families have been scheduled to begin sunday. This is according to two current and one former Homeland Security official. Joining us to talk about this and much more news this morning we have maysey horono of hawaii. Lets start with this announcement