So what is the administrations plan to house the children or to reunite the families . My guest this morning republican senator James Langford of oklahoma and independent senator angus king of maine who caucuses with the democrats. Also, Refugee Crisis. Why are so many people from Central America coming to the United States . What are they fleeing . Richard engel of nbc news has a report from his trip to el salvador. And political culture wars. White House Press SecretarySarah Sanders is asked to leave a restaurant because she works for President Trump. Her father, Mike Huckabee tweets this picture with the caption, nancy pelosi introduces her Campaign Committee. Is all of this The New Normal . Joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news capital news correspondent kasie hunt, and Erick Erickson editor of the resurgent. Welcome to sunday. Its Meet The Press. The longestrunning show in television history, this is Meet The Press with chuck
families a year that are coming at the United States as a family unit. Lets go to some specifics here because we havent gotten a lot of answers from the Trump Administration, maybe you have gotten some of these answers. Maybe theyre fulfilling their duty to at least let you know whats going on in congress. Do you know how many of these kids that have been separated how many of them are in shelters . How many of them are at Detention Facilities and how many of them are in foster care. Do you know how many are a good idea with the categories. We know where every single child is. This is an issue thats gone out there in some of the other media and its not been responsible with this with the assumption that the administrations lost track of that. So let me clarify a couple of things. These are Career Professionals that work with hhs and that work with dhs and customs and Border Patrol and i. C. E. These are not political appointees and they are career
adult they came with so the child and adult they came with, we dont know if that is the parent. Oftentimes the parent that is somewhere in the country oftentimes illegally, as well. They came with another relative and so to be able to connect the dots to see if we connect them with their parent thats here in the country and connect them going through procedures and whatever that may be and yes, we are able to connect them as well. The child, you identify the parent and the child, then what happens . Is the parent brought to where the child is . Are they sent to a separate facility . What can you tell us about that situation . Its a mixture. We are trying to work through the process to connect through the adult and some of the adults are given an ankle Monitoring System and an Ankle Bracelet and they get a notice to appear
hearing and as you put in your leadin which was very well done. The Flores Settlement from 1997 says that you can only hold that job for 20 days and it takes about 35 days to get a hearing. What the court set up in 1997 was this conundrum. You have to either release them as they come as a family when they come into the country and hope they show up. To be very clear, only 2 of the family units that come to the United States illegally actually go through and actually had the notice to appear, finished up with the notice of removal and actually leave the country. So the family units that are coming here. 98 of them end up somewhere in the country, most of them illegally because they never actually leave after theyre given the responsibility for an order of removal. Your congressional fix here and lets get to the 20day conundrum. The Trump Administrations asking for relief from the courts. Theyre probably not going to get it because the Obama Administration asked for the very same relief. Hearing. Are you in favor of using Military Bases to house these families . It appears dhs has made a request to the defense department. Is that something you think is a good idea. President obama used basis for the minors and some were in my home state in oklahoma which by the way, members of congress from my state tried to visit those facilities that are in my state where President Obama was holding the unaccompanied minors and they were turned away at the door and told they were not allowed in. This is something new the Trump Administration is doing blocking people out. No, its the exact same policy hhs had before. We made an appointment and after we made an appointment we were able to go through the process. Should that be the process or should there be more transparency . Do you think the white house has been fully transparent with the American Public about what theyre trying to do here . I dont, actually. This has been one of the great frustrations. The white house has not been clear on how bad the Flores Settlement is. They tried to say it, say it and say it. You shouldnt allow just anyone
to view a spot with children. This has been policy, if youre coming to the location where theres children, we need to know who you are and we have to know background and we cant trust that you have an i. D. And if you do that you can get in as a member of Congress Just like President Obama had the children at a Military Base as well. My final question is whether the president is creating more problems or making it harder to solve by the rhetoric hes using. This is how hes described people coming across the border just this week, senator. Take a listen. They could be murderers and thieves. They endanger all of our children. Millions of people flowing up and just overtaking the country. Theyre human traffickers, theyre coyotes. Were getting some real beauties. We want people in our country based on merit. Not based on a draw where other countries put their absolute worse in a bin and they start drawing people. Do you believe that rhetoric demonizes immigrants and makes your job harder . It does, actually, but the challenge of it is there is a percentage where the president is absolutely correct on that. Whats the percentage . The percentage is pretty small. It is. It is pretty small. To do two for two go ahead, sorry. I would prefer the president would say the folks are coming for check reasons they want to be flee into an area where they have greater Economic Opportunities. Every family wants to be able to see that for their family, but there are also some individuals that are there. On average, every day dhs stops or interdicts ten people that are on the Terror Watch List trying to come into the country. So i have a real concern that were demonizing Law Enforcement folks that really are trying to be able to do their job because there are very real threats, but the vast majority of individuals are coming for economic reasons and theyre coming from Central America and theyre not fleeing to costa rica, belize or ecuador
who have great asylum laws. Theyre coming to the United States because they want the Economic Opportunities and not just asylum and theyre trying to come for economic gains and i dont blame them for that, but to tell you the truth, 1. 1 Million People a year become citizens legally and this can be done legally, but the challenge is for those individuals thats a much smaller number that are doing it illegally, how do you process that . Senator langford, im going to leave it there. Thank you for coming on and sharing your views. Much appreciate it. Thank you. Joining me from brunswick, maine, is independent. I want a perspective from the other side of the aisle. Good to be with you, chuck. Are we misnamed this . Is this a Refugee Crisis more than it is a migrant or Immigration Crisis . Think it is. I think thats exactly right. Its more of an asylum and refugee. Its important to make distinctions. These are almost entirely people
coming from Central America and not mexico, particularly honduras, el salvador and guatemala, and theyre fleeing violence and thats one of the reasons that this deterrent may not work, if youre looking down the barrel of a gun in your home community, whatever your chances are to get to a free country, youre going to take it in order to save your familys life. So if that really is what were talking about here and this is different from, very different from the waves of Illegal Immigrants coming across the border 15, 20 years ago, mostly from mexico, simply looking for jobs. Mexican migration has diminished enormously. If it is if you believe it should be treated more as a Refugee Crisis. For instance, how we handled the cubans in the 50s and the 60s and vietnamese in the 70s. How has the approximately see changed does the government intervention, should it be different if its a Refugee Crisis . Well, yeah, because if youre
crossing the border illegally with no claim of asylum or refugee status, then thats a crime and we have a process for deportation. People have people coming to claim asylum are not Illegal Immigrants and under the law they have a right to establish their claim of asylum that are in legitimate fear for their life and theyre fleeing persecution in their country and that applies to people from other parts of the world, but you have that right and the problem is James Langford mentioned this. We dont have enough judges and theres a bureaucratic backlog to get adjudicated. What do you do with the people in the interim and the Administration Made a terrible choice of separating children from their parents and now theyre saying well, well keep them together and well keep them together in detention. I dont think thats a necessary choice either. Theres a lot of data that there are alternatives to detention that can still ensure that people show up for their court
hearing which by the way are a lot cheaper for the taxpayers. Very quickly on this senator langford, hes leaving to fix the Flores Amendment and you heard a lot of ways to do that, defund it completely and make it something and the administration cant do it and extend it to 60 days rather than 20 days. What do you favor and i know a bill with senator feinstein, but theres no republican support, and i assume its a bipartisan deal. Are there things that you can support . Well, there are a number of proposals kicking around and i was in a meeting in Susan Collins office and it was very interesting sitting next to Dianne Feinstein and ted cruz. Ted cruz and dianne both have a bill. The opportunity to vote for a
feinstein cruz bill. Theyre talking about not separating and talking about some alternatives and this is where the discussion is, does it have to be detention . I dont like the defunding idea and thats essentially saying, you know, the courts, were not going to listen to you. I dont think that makes sense, but i think some additional time may be true, but i want to talk about how do we deal with these people . The other thing, chuck, weve got to talk about is whats going on in these countries and why is this surge coming toward us. Right. In fact, before the program this morning james and i were talking about going to Central America. Hes been there a couple of times. Right. And trying to figure out what can we do to stabilize those regimes so people dont feel they have to run for their lives to america. Im curious, considering what
happened in 2014 when the Obama Administration was tackling essentially the same surge of folks coming from Central America. The Obama Administration didnt exactly welcome those folks with open arms either. The goal was, while they didnt separate, the goal was to get them back to the home country as quickly as possible. Was that a mistake in hindsight . I think they were overwhelmed. If you go back and read about that period, and i went with a couple of other senators to mcallen, texas, during that period to see how these kids were being treated. The difference between then and now, three years ago they were unaccompanied kids. Whats happened this time is kids are coming with their families, with their parents and theyre being separated and thats what i think caused this firestorm, but there clearly has to be a better way to deal with this, and i think there are alternatives to detention, more judges and more timely processing of these things because were a nation of immigrants, number one, except for the africanamericans who were brought here, against their will and the native american, but all the rest of us are immigrants and also asylum seekers. The pilgrims were escaping religious persecution. Right. Andrew sullivan argues this
week, just give trump his wall. He used more colorful language than that and go get something for it if youre the democrats. Give him his wall because maybe there will be more heart in the rest of these policies and the rest of this Migrant Crisis. Are you there yet . Give the president has wall and figure this out . Ironically, chuck, we did that. Mike grounds and i had an amendment and it was the one that got the most votes on the floor of the senate. We got 54 votes. It was in a sense daca for the wall, and the wall was fully funded. The Democratic Caucus voted, i think, 46 out of 48 member, and 49 members for it. That was a hard sell, but the white house itself torpedoed the bill. They threatened to veto and they sent out a Scurrilous Press Release from dhs and we had the votes. We had probably 65, 67 votes. They killed it. They had the wall in their hand and they let it go because they wanted more and the question is they keep sort of raising the ante and saying you have to
limit legal immigration. Youve got to change this. Youve got to change that and thats one of the problems is we never know what the goal line is. Want to show you a movement growing on the democratic side of the aisle and a hash tag, abolish i. C. E. Referring to the Enforcement Agency when it comes to immigration. Listen to Kamala Harris said about the idea of abolishing i. C. E. I think theres no question that we have to critically reexamine i. C. E. And its role and the way it is being administered and we probably need to think about starting from scratch. What do you make of that . Is i. C. E. The bigger problem here . I dont i dont know how you abolish an agency without abolishing the function and i think the function is necessary. As far as what she said about examining what theyre doing, thats absolutely what we should do and its our responsibility to provide oversight and ultimately there would have to be an agency. Before i. C. E. There was ins and there was a way to enforce the Immigration Laws in the country, but taking a look at how theyre doing it and how theyre approaching it. The question we had we had a Border Patrol stop up here in maine a couple of weeks ago. Is that constitutional . Do we stop american citizens in the middle of a highway and ask for their papers . There are a lot of questions to be answered. I dont know if i say abolish. I dont think that makes a lot of sense, but i do think looking at it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Senator angus king, independent senator from maine, thanks for coming on and sharing your views, sir. Thanks, chuck. When we come back, more on whats behind the border crisis. You heard both senators refer to the issue in Central America. Nbc news chief Foreign CorrespondentRichard Engel is back from el salvador, one of the countries where life is so
desperate people are willing to risk everything, including child separation to get here. Thats next. Oh, you brought butch. Yeah butch growls at man hes looking at me right now, isnt he . Yup. butch barks at man butch is like an old soul that just hates my guts. laughs vo you can never have too many faithful companions. Thats why i got a subaru crosstrek. Love is out there. Find it in a subaru crosstrek. Richard engel returned last night from a trip to el salvador where he reported why people are willing to risk this dangerous journey and Family Separation to come to the United States and richard joins me now from seaside, california, where we made him stop here to get on our show. Richard, thanks very much. Let me start with this. Normally im talking to you and youre in a war zone somewhere, ma