Thing. And the photo ops. Im looking forward to seeing children. How the resistance to president trumps family separation came through. We are here for them tonight. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. We are as you can see back from the border. Hear me well, this story is far from over. Tonight, a new phase in the Immigration Crisis of the president s own making, the humanitarian crisis he precipitated as Trump Administration prepares to hold Families Together in indefinite detention. Government agencies tell conflicting stories about the current policy and almost 2500 children remain scattered around the country with no clear plans to reunite them. The president today insisted hes not backing away from the socalled zero to rabs for unauthorized immigrants despite having caved to pressure over his family separation policy. If we took zero tolerance away, you would be overrun as a you would have millions of people pouring through our border. If you took zero tolerance away, everybody would come right now, there would be getting their little belongings unfortunately and they would be heading up. You would be you would have a run on this country the likes of which nobodys ever seen. And wait, just to be clear i want people to understand this, the zero tolerance policy was started six weeks ago. Okay . So you got to ask yourself, was the country being overrun 11 weeks ago . Or eight weeks ago . Is the president telling the truth whats going on . Those comments offering more evidence of regardless of the denials from other officials, the crack down was explicitly intended to deter more people from coming to the u. S. As part of that crack down, today the Justice Department asked a federal court for permission to detain children in u. S. Custody with their parents for as long as the government wants essentially. Under a 1997 consent decree, kids cannot be detained more than 20 days. The president s new order calls for Migrant Children to be hild with parents for as long as it takes for the parents to adjudicate their asylum claims keeping them indefinitely in family detention centers. That approach was tried by the Obama Administration and ultimately and properly rejected by a judge. But even as the Trump Administration moves to detain migrant families indefinitely, weve seen a couple signs not everyone is on board with zero tolerance. A senior official at u. S. Customs and Border Protection told the Washington Post today the agency will no longer referply grant parents who come here illegally with their kids for criminal prosecution. The official said agents were instructed last night to stop sending parents with children to federal courthouses. The Justice Department denied theres been any change in policy and said prosecutions would continue. Get this according to a source i spoke to earlier today, in the border city of mccallan, texas, charges were dropped this morning against 17 people who had been arrested for illegal entry because those people are heads of households, in other words because they came with children. Each of those 17 parents already had their children taken away. The question now is, where those children are. Government will not identify where its keeping roughly 2,500 children ripped away from their families. We know some of those children are in texas while others sent as far as virginia, michigan and right here in new york. Officials told nbc news theres no plan in place to reunite the children with their families but according to Homeland Security secretary kristen nielsen, that is not the case. Secretary, is there any plan for reuniting the children already separated from their parents . We have a plan to do that. As you know hhs reuniting as quickly as we can. We do it in the backhand which appears to mean after parents have been proscued. Today Melania Trump made a surprise visit to a shelter and a spokesperson asked us not to read anything into the fact when she did she was wearing a jacket that said i really dont care, do you, in giant letters in the back. Obviously she was not trying to say any messages about the level which she cares. Im here to learn about your facility, and i also like to ask you how i can help. To these children to, reunite with their families. As quickly as possible. Im joined by msnbc correspondent Jacob Soboroff who has been reporting intensively on this. No one seems to know at the agencies whats going on. Is that a fair characterization. Sounds like yesterday and the day before that and when this policy was in place. The same thing it sounded like when she was standing on the white house podium briefing where the girls are. I think i do, maybe i dont. Its up to dhs, hhs, no. It was the same thing whether or not the kids detained were going to be grandfathered out of it. I was asked hhs whats going to happen. First they said its up to hhs, actually, no, we made a mistake about that, it is as confusing and as big of a cluster as its always been. Last night, yesterday you and i were tracking this. First they said were not going to lift a finger. Were not going to try to reunite the kids. There was a little bit of walk back of that. Now shes saying we do it on the back end. They have not announced any expedited process for reunification. Its the same as always. Several calls i made, they said the goal of hhs is to reunite unaccompanied minors with their families but thats always been the goal. That doesnt mean anything other than theyll go through the process on go end up in a foster home. They put out a statement that was deceptive. They said, of course, its our goal to reunite them with a sponsor or relative. That is not the same as get them back to the person that took them here and was taken away from. That doesnt mean were going to undo the terrible mistake we have made with this executive order and put them back with their parents they were separatesed from. They could very well end up in a situation and never see their parents again. Theres word that theres authorization coming down for 20,000 beds to be made available on military bases. Thats right. What is the deal with that plan. So military bases as we were talking about last night, sort of are this carveout that allow the federal government to do things in this unlicensed way, theyre not being detained in i. C. E. Detention which means they would have to let them out after 20 days unless they could get around the existing law in some ways. Those 20,000 beds are 20,000 human beings we dont know ultimately what their future holds. And what jurisdiction will control over them which is the crucial question. Thats exactly right. Theres also the fact that theres lots of confusion at the doj level. I talked to a courthouse source this morning, they said they let these 17 people go. Doj immediately says thats not true. I was amazed to hear there were some people trying to brush it off and the government saying that was a oneoff people, those 17. That just happened this morning in mccallan. Jacob, youve been doing fantastic work on this. I want to make sure thpeople wah your special on sunday, the dividing line. Your reporting as good as anyone on this issue. You dont want to miss it, this sunday 7 00, 6 00 central. Lets turn to someone who represents the border region. Beto orourke represents a stretch of the border around el paso, texas running to unseat ted cruz. What is your understanding where things stand now as someone who serves in the United States congress. The crisis before us as you pointed out is that we have upwards of 2,500 children who have been taken from their parents after parent and child survived a 2,000mile journey the length of mexico. Made it to this country just when they thought they had found shelter and asylum and safety, the trauma visited upon those kids theyre still enduring till we can get them together with their parents. Its unclear if the administration dysdoing at all to make sure that they are reunited. Temporarily at least theyll stop taking kids from parents but this idea to build out 20,000 beds for additional days and months and maybe years of detention shows that this administration, the president admitted it today is using these punitive traumatic measures to try to deter essentially lawful asylum seeking on the part of people leaving the most dangerous countries in the world and one thing ive got to tell you, by cbps own admission, family unit apprehension is down 4 to date this year over last year. Unaccompanied alien children is up only 3 over this same time last year. So insofar as we have a crisis. Wait a second, wait a second. The administration is making the crisis. The numbers are down year over year . If you look at fy18, may 30th to fy17, may 30th, this is from cbps own website. Looked at it before i came on your show. The numbers are down for family units, up slightly for unaccompanied alien children. They are provoking this crisis, deepening it by sharing information from are the office of Refugee Resettlement with i. C. E. So that as were trying to place kids with relatives in the u. S. Recent i. C. E. Is first scanning them, picking up some for deportation and were unable to release the kids to relatives in the u. S. There be continuing to warehouse these kids and artificially creating a crisis of capacity. So when you see cbp officers and you may have seen this in mccallan and reynoso rejecting lawful asylum seekerses from entering this country providing incentive for them to come in between ports of entry and arresting them, and taking their kids, they created this crisis. This didnt exist till donald trump and administration decided it make it a crisis. The president said something astounding this morning. He said we shouldnt be hiring juks by the thousands as ridiculous laws should demand. We should be building the wall, and heres the crucial part, not let people come into our country based on a lee phrase they are told to say that is their password. Hes referring to asylum enshrined in u. S. Law and International Law widely recognized as a human right. What do you think of him call dg a password. This is terrible. Its inhumane. We know what were doing to asylum seekers. I think ive shared meeting a young mother who fled honduras with her 7yearold daughter who tried to cross in between ports of entry but she didnt run away, didnt try to evade protection. She thought this was the way you present yourself for asylum. To be rastded then contravenes our own laws certainly does International Law, is inhumane and up to us to decide if this is unamerican. That might be decided in the courts, it might be decided if Congress Gets a backbone in the legislature. But one way or another, were going to be judged for what we do, for what we failed to do at this moment. Just to put it into context, if you go back to the beginning of the george w. Bush administration, had you 1. 6 million apprehensions along the u. S. mexico boarder. Last year it was Something Like 400,000 apprehensions. We have the capacity to address lawful asylum claims. Were the wealthiest and most powerful country on the planet. Those who lawfully belong here where they can prove credible fear, that esno telling what they will do for the United States. Jobs theyll create, the art they will produce, the families they will raise here. Thats the story of this country 230 years and counting and we lose that at our peril. This is going to be decide right now. Its up to all of us. President made this decision. Now its for us, the American People to decide it. Congressman beto orourke, thank you for your time. For more to what happens to Migrant Children, im joined by the former acting director of customs and border enforcement. You have expressed skepticism and fear if not panic about the capacity of i. C. E. To coordinate with hhs0 to reunite parents and children. Why are you worried about that. I dont think anyone thought about this when they launch this had plan. I dont see any signs there was planning at all. You run into rules and regulations when you apprehend kids at the border, have you guardianship, foster care. Were beginning to see that now when the administration rescinded the policy but there doesnt appear to be a plan how to get the kids reunited with their parents. I want to play you something sessions said today and whether you find it credible. Him talking about whether they ever intended to separate children and families. Take a lis. And the American Family dont like the idea were separating families. We never really intended to do that. What we intended to do was to make sure that adult whos bring children into the country are charged with the crime theyve committed. Instead of giving that special group of adults immunity from the prosecution which is what in effect we were doing. Do you think they never intended to separate children. They definitely intended to separate children. Prosecution along the border has been selective. We only prosecute a lipped number of people that cross the border unfall ofly. You think with himmed resources you dont want to prosecute parents trying to flee violence Florida StateCentral America over people bringing drugs in the United States. One thing i dont think the media covered yet is who was not prosecuted while we prosecuted these parents in the u. S. Attorney offices, u. S. Courts very limited resources. They are overwhelmed. Drug smugglers and people trying to get back into the country. The ratio of people with criminal records noncriminal records it, flipped on its head meaning 90 are first time misdemeanor entries honduran moms El Salvadoran dads. I guarantee you there are people smuggling drugs whose cases were not taken during the same time period they were prosecuting parents. Theyre appealing to flores because they want to hold people indefinitely. Flores says you cant do that. Lets put that aside and say you cant do it. Theres this idea what are you going to do . Youre going to release them into the interior of the country. Youre shaking your head. Theres a simple fix called alternatives to detention. The problem is its got to be paired i understand peoples frustration. You let families into the United States, the reason they feel theyre gaming the system is because the courts deprioritize the cases. You can come into the United States as a family, maybe it takes three, four years before your hearing. I can understand the frustration. Hire more judges, put people on atd, frankly, its zero tolerance. Youll have tough results but its more humane than ripping kids out of their parents arms. Most of these people you would agree, the vast majority theres no Public Safety reason to detain them, right . No, chris. People have this idea i was down there talking. Its literally moms with kids. Its desperate people. There is no reason to hold them in jail. Chris, honestly one thing thats a problem with the system at large its not truly rick based. Youre not detained like are you in the criminal justice system. But in the criminal justice system, youre detained if you present a flight or Public Safety ring. In the immigration true, theres a complicated set of laws govern who will be detained. People detaineded are subject to mandatory detention. A lot of discretion has been utilized because we dont have resources. The president s idea of building 20,000 beds is not going to happen. It costs i. C. E. 350 to 450 per bed for family detention. Looking at 5. 3 billion annually. They dont have that in their budget. Theyre at the end of it right now. Theyve been detaining at higher levels than budgeted for. The other thing about alternative detention, theres a program that was stopped intensive Case Management about a third or fourth of the cost. 4. 50 a day compared to who 450 for a family. 4. 50 you give someone a case manager and they showed up for case hearings 99 of the time. Maybe in the 20, 25 range. Not 450 a day. No, over 300 million to maintain about 2500 family detention beds. Youre going to build 20,000 . Congress is going to an appropriate 3 billion to spend on that when you can do the atd and have just as much security impact. This isnt about being soft or tough, its about being smart. Thank you for being here. An all in inclusive, haunting video of children being led through an airport. A teen, no idea where shes being taken. That audio in two minutes. Thingr like a beach trip, so lets promote our Summer Travel deal on choicehotels. Com like this. Surfs up. Earn a 50 gift card when you stay just twice this summer. Or, badda book. Badda boom. Book now at choicehotels. Com the world is full of different hair. Thats why pantene has the perfect conditioners for everyone. From airlight foam, to nourishing 3 minute miracle, to the moistureinfusing gold series. We give more women great hair days every day. Pantene. That video the one you just watched was taken at 2 00 a. M. Sunday morning in the middle of the night at the airport in mccallan, texas, a city ive been the past two days and the home of the nations largest immigration processing center. What you see in the video youll only see here on all in, the small group of migrant teenagers many in matching outif is being marched single file out of the airport after getting off a flight at 2 00 in the morning. Then put into a van by their handlers destination unknown. We have this video thanks to my next guest who quietly spoke to a kid on the flight who told him she had been detained and had no idea where she was beak taken. Joining the man who took the video, tim wilkins with the group peoples action. Tell me about the context in which you saw these kids . I was on an American Airlines flight from dallas to mccallan. It was delayed so left after midnight. And there was this group of very clean cut, very polite young people who i noticed in the airport only when i got on the flightdy realize when i saw there the wristbands and matching clothes.