We want to keep Families Together. At the same time, we have to be strong on the border otherwise youll have millions of people coming up. Not thousands, millions flowing up and just overtaking the country. Were not letting that happen. We have to be very strong on the border. At the same time we have to be compassionate. Steve harrigan is in combs, texas for us. Mike emanuel is live on capitol hill where lawmakers plan to vote on a pair of immigration bills tomorrow. What is that about, mike . Senate democrats have called on President Trump to use his pen to take executive action to deal with the problem. The Senate Democratic leader does not feel optimistic about tackling Immigration Reform. Theres only one solution, that is for the president to solve this problem. The odds of any legislation passing and be signed by the president is just about zero. When the percentage the president could solve this is 100 . Jeff sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen are on capitol hill. The focus is to get 218 yes votes on one of the plans lawmakers will be looking for tomorrow. About two dozen undecided republican members. Right now, house gop leaders dont want a backup plan. They want a bill carefully crafted by gop leaders reflecting the president S Immigration priorities. This is very good compromise legislation not only solves the child separation issues, solves the border, solves daca, solves a lot of broken immigration parts. This is a bill that is consensus, a bill that the president supports. Its a bill that could become law. We have an opportunity to vote on it tomorrow night. The question will be, do people want to play politics or do you want to put people before politics. If they can get 218 yes votes on one of the two bills, its fate is uncertain in the senate. Bottom line, they need 60 yes votes in the senate and that would need significant democrat support. Julie . Thank you. For the latest on this situation unfolding at the border with mexico, lets go to steve harrigan. He joins us near acrossing in texas. Steve . 2,000 children have been separated from their parents since the zero tolerance policy began to be enforced in early may. One of the biggest questions, what has happened to the youngest children. Theres a strict policy of nonaccess for media. The Associated Press reported the existence of three tender age shelters. These are shelters for children unaccompanied minors under 13 years of age. The goal by health and Human Services was to try to keep the children close by with their parents as their parents work their way through the legal system. We spoke to a physician inside the shelter. She said it was homey, a kind staff. At the same time, she said the children, the toddlers, 15 of them, were practically silent. No running, no moving, no crying, no jumping. Shes said it was agony to be there as a pediatrician and not being able to help and a staff not being able to comfort the children. Theres plans for more shelters if things continue as they go now. One in houston in a converted warehouse. Theres all right local opposition to creating more of the tender age shelters. Julie . Thank you. For more on all of this, House Judiciary Committee chairman bob goodlatte. Thanks for talking to us. A lot to get done nonetheless. Great to be with you and your viewers. Thanks for being with us. Youre leading one of the two bills that are being considered by the house. Secretary nielsen will be urging the president to throw his full support behind your bill and the compromise bills. Yeah. Lets talk about your bill. To be clear, both bills are my bills. I was the original introducer of both pieces of legislation. One called goodlatte number 1. The other 1 number 2. Im for a bill that gets 218 votes and can move over to the senate. We have to address these problems. Lets talk about the likelihood of getting the votes. In the bill, which includes the same four pillars that the president asks for in february, which fails to pass, the question is how is this bill youre proposing or two bills youre proposing than the bill that failed any different and does it prevent the separation of families . Yes. Goodlatte number 1, a bill i introduced along with the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, mike mccall and raul labrador, its a strong enforcement bill that deals with the daca population. The new bill never got to 218 votes. So the new bill brought people together from all corners of the conference. Its a negotiated consensus bill that were trying to make sure we can get 218 votes for. That bill does contain provisions necessary to address the family separation issue. Even when the president issues the executive order he says hes going to do, theres still court cases and laws that limit the amount of time that children can be kept in a detention facility with their parents that are being charged with a misdemeanor crime of illegally entering the country. So he will be faced with the opportunity of letting the whole family go or separating them. When the family leaves, they go into the interior of the country, given a court date and many of them never reappear. Its a big problem called catch and release. I want to talk about the law that youre describing for those that home that dont understand what youre talking about. This is a law which in fact does limit the Trump Administration. Were talking about the floor has an agreement or the settleme settlement. This was a law in 1997 in which a family or children that are not the criminals here, their parents are, are to be detained. That ultimately was made that they could not be held on to or detained for more than 20 days. Whether they are accompanied or not accompanied. What Congress Wants is for the flores agreement to be overturned and for an extended period of time to allow for them to go through the judicial process without being separated. Do i have that right . Thats correct. We want these prosecutions to be expedited. Some places theyre occurring in as little as seven days. If they are, for example, turning around and asking for political asylum in the United States, that is a process with a 600,000 case backlog. So people have to be detained for a longer period of time. This bill will do two things. It will overturn the flores decision and allow for children to remain with their parents and secondly, it will provide the funding necessary to have more of these family detention facilities so they can be held near the border and not allowed further in the country until the matter is resolved. If theyre found to be lawfully admissible to the United States, they will be released to the interior. If not, theyll be sent back home. Theres protests all over the country over this. Theres a lot of false information out there that i want to set the record straight why this is happening in the first place. False information such as the white house saying that democrats are to blame for an existing law that separates these families at the border. The fact is there is no current law that actually mandates charges all Border Crossers criminally. The federal law criminalizing improper entry by aliens does not require they be separated. Theres no law that states you must separate a father and a mother with their child. Is that correct . It is not correct in this respect. If they want to retain the children with the parents, they can only do so for a limited period of time based upon Court Decisions and a 1997 law. So that needs to be changed. We change it in this legislation. All right. Lets look forward to getting that passed and the president expected to sign that executive order any moment now. Real quick before i let you go. Your thoughts, your opinions on this executive order is going to sign. Good idea or bad . Well, im pleased that he wants to make sure that children can be with their parents. But as i said, its only a partial solution because very quickly theyre going to find that they have to go back to the old catch and release. Which by the way plagued the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration fought that Court Decision in court. I went down to the border mccowan, texas. They had children separated from their parents back then. Its not a new situation. It was back in 2014. There was an influx of migrants coming in from central america. The same thing happened in the past administration. Exactly. The idea was not to separate parents from their children. Congressman bob goodlatte, thanks very much. Thank you. Votes expected to come from the house floor tomorrow. Will any bill make its way to the senate . Chris stirewalt joins us. Theres growing backlash against attorney general sessions as the white house faces criticism over the zero tolerance immigration policy. Protesters calling out Homeland Security sec Kirsten Nielson as she dined in washington d. C. Last night. The secretary not acknowledging the demonstrators. But secretary nielson encourages all, including this group, wants to see a system that works to our economy, protects our security and reflects our values and seek support to close immigration loop holes that made our system a mess. Alayna treene is from axios. Thats for talking to us today. If you had to pick two cabinet members bearing the brunt over this, its Homeland Security chief Kirsten Nielson there and having dinner and jeff sessions. Its nielsen that is the face of one of the Trump Administrations most controversial policies. The reason for this, the family separation. The most recent reason for the outcry, the tender age shelters. Theyve been set up to house babies and toddlers separated from their parents. Can you explain whats going on inside these tender age facilities . Yes, i can. From what reporting shows, theres three right now and looking at opening a fourth in houston. A shelter that was previously used for people who displaced from hurricane harvey. People that have been there, lawyers, doctors, they described it as these really desolate play grounds where children are plying and really upset and frustrated with this experience and wondering where their families are. A lot of people are emotional about this. This is something in addition to the images of children being ripped from their parents at the border, something garnering a lot of attention from media, from critics, of this separation policy. The sad part, the children have no say. The parents have broken the law. That doesnt make it right. Thats what critics are saying. Rmer first lady laura bush, im sure you saw her compelling oped piece in the Washington Post this week. She wrote about how people working at a Children Center run by the office of Refugee Resettlement are instructed not to pick up or touch children to comfort them. She writes imagine not picking up a child that is not out of diapers. That ran chills up my spine. When i ran home to my 2yearold, i pick them up. Its heartbreaking to see. What is really upset with these tender care shelters is that these children are so young, theyre at this age where researchers say theyre very susceptible to longterm trauma from what is happening. What were also seeing is that the administration is not doing things or have things in place to minimize this care because were seeing it all happen in real time. They didnt expect this influx of children. Of course not. So what theyre seeing now is theyre not being able to talk to their families or parents. The parents are not being able to recommend to caregivers advice for how to deal with the children, when to put them to bed what they can and cant eat. Its going to affect them psychologically. Julie thats why we dont have orphanages anymore. Thats why people are put in homes or day care facilities where people are trained to take care of children. Theres a fourth shelter expected to open in houston sometime season. Im wondering if you think that could change after the president signs this executive order . It could. All eyes right now are on what the president does. He did signal to pool reporters earlier today that he plans to sign this executive order that would look at going around that floor settlement, which says that children cannot be detained for more than 20 days even if they are with their families. So they do go around that and try to change that policy. What would happen is, they would be put the children would be put with their families into these detention centers. Kind of wait there. The problem is that theyre worried this might turn back to catch and release. From what our reporting is shine, the president doesnt want that to happen. He doesnt want them to be caught and released again. There needs to be a safe place for the families to Stay Together in order for them to go through the process. When you come into this country illegally, there has to be consequences, just humanitarian ones. Thanks alayna treene. Julie coming up, is the president forcing republicans into an unwinnable situation . We have a partnership with the constitution. We have authority, the president has authority. We need to work together. I believe you can youre the president who can help us solve the immigration problem with your leadership. All right. Alright, i brought in new max protein. To give you the protein you need with less of the sugar you dont. Ill take that. [cheers] 30 grams of protein and 1 gram of sugar. New ensure max protein. In two great flavors. New ensure max protein. So allstate is giving us money back on our bill. Well, that seems fair. We didnt use it. Wish we got money back on gym memberships. Get money back hilarious. With claimfree rewards. Switching to allstate is worth it. vo imagine a visibly healthin 28 days. Purina one. Natural ingredients, plus vitamins and minerals in powerful combinations. For radiant coats, sparkling eyes, and vibrant energy. Purina one. 28 days. One visibly healthy pet. Hi are you two getting along . Oh, yeah, yeah. [ hiss ] [ gasps ] [ birds chirping] no matter what you are theyre a perfect match. The new ipad and Xfinity Stream app. Hey guys, im home surprise i got a puppy. Add an ipad to select packages for just 5 a month for 24 months. Upgrade online now. Julie President Trump saying he will sign something today. Hes talking about an executive order that would end the separation of children from parents at the southern border after insisting only that congress could fixhe problem. Well, some critics are pointing out this is not the first time the president has taken action and called on lawmakers to step in. Caitlin owens writes in axios, he decided to end the Affordable Care act cost sharing subsidy payments, he ended daca, which protected people that came to the United States illegally as children. Chris stirewalt, political editor. Thanks for being here. You have to give it to the president. He tries to trust politicians to get somebody done. He gives them this time and when he doesnt, he steps in. Is it a problem for the president to enforce an executive order or does he let the politicians hammer it out . To be fair, hes a politician. He is a politician that does not like to feel the burn. He likes it as every politician does when the heat is on the other side, the other party. This was a gambet at the white house. Youll recall the president s plan about dealing with obamacare. Lets let it crash and then stick the democrats with the blame. Its their fault. This was the same a problem as that, but carried out. The republicans blocked the president on his effort to do that with obamacare. This time he did it. As it turns out or at least as it seems to be turning out, the democrats are quite content to let the republicans flail around on this one. Without the willingness of the white house heres what it comes down to. The willingness of the white house to pursue the political pain of this policy is what was forcing the discussion. If the white house is blinking, if the president is blinking and saying, okay, it was a policy, it was ours and were undoing it, if he does that, that will take the pressure off congress in a big way. Julie painful policy is like this that as every politician knows a make or break. We have midterms around the corner. The president again is punting to congress to act on a key policy that has been the subject of a longterm stalemate. This has generated the most anger from the American Public. Do you believe the reason for the announcement that we may be seeing this executive order coming down may have more political pressure involved considering we want people to vote a certain way come november . We want to see what is in this order. We dont know what sort of filigree theyre going to put on this thing and what theyre going to try to do. Are they going for a big gambet to try to make some new executive authority, are they going to retreat . What is their strategy here . Ill tell you this, no issue divides the American People as sharply, painfully as destructively aS Immigration. The president wants to exploit it for his own good and the democrats want to exploit it for their own good. They know nothing will get voters to the polls more than this topic. Julie according to an nbc news wall street journal poll out last week, 39 say they would be more likely to cast a ballot for a candidate that supports Donald Trumps policies on immigration and Border Security and 49 say they would be less likely to back a candidate that supports trump. So immigration can cause candidates to win or lose elections here. The question is which party has more to lose if this separation between families around children isnt hammered out . Look, the base voters here have already spoken. A lot of people responding to that question, you couldnt change their votes no matter what. Nothing you can do to pry them away. The question here is,