suicide. on sunday night night at 7:00 p.m. we bring you the special report, finding hope, battling america's suicide crisis. you'll see how suicide impacts so many families. you can learn about warning signs and you'll hear inspirational stories of survival. there is hope and that's such an important message. again, that's sunday at 7:00 p.m. just before this seasonal's final two episodes of anthony bourdain parts unknown. time to hand it over to chris cuomo prime time. chris? a good week end to you and such an important special, thank you. i'm chris cuomo, welcome to prime time. the crisis on the border is in full effect. thousands of moms and dads still struggling to find their kids. for some reason it seems the folks with the least resources, the ones detained, have the do the most work to find their sons and daughters. instead of fixing this mess, this president is intent on fixing the narrative, selling this family is that the stories

of separated families is phony. we'll talk to a governor whose state is filing a lawsuit against the trump administration. jay inslee is with us in just a moment. and we have a top aclu attorney here tonight with a gut-wrenching story. he's suing the trump administration on behalf of a mom torn apart from her seven-year-old daughter. plus, our promise here is that facts come first but that is not the case at the president's favorite tv network. another host at fox facing backlash for bs. usually we ignore the noise but wait until you hear what was said. it's friday night, grab a glass and a snack and what do you say? let's get after it. the kids are all right. strong album by the who, but a weak deception by the president who is now saying the reports of the problems are phony. this latest assault first came in the form of a tweet, you're

looking at it now targeting democrats accusing them of telling "phony stories of sadness and grief" hoping it will help them in the elections. odd when president trump was just saying the same images and reports broke his heart and moved him to fix his mess with that confounding executive order. why do i say confounding? because we hear tonight that that order has been causing fierce arguments inside the white house. the "new york times" reports that the trump administration officials have been at odds over how to carry out the president's direct directive. they don't know what he wants or how to get whatever it is he wants done. just as much chaos inside as their appears to be outside. if it's all phony, why did his own wife, first lady melania trump, go to the border to see and hear these stories of sadness and grief. maybe that was trump's jacket she had on because she sure seemed to care. and not think any of this is

phony. and, of course, she's right. numbers from hhs confirm the reality, the health and human services department. more than 11,600 undocumented minors are in custody. what does the president do if the facts aren't in his favor? shift to a new line of attack. maybe the kids and folks in the border are in a bad spot because they deserve no sympathy because they're killers, gang bangers and drug pushers and the real people to care about are their victims. >> these are the american citizens permanently separated from their loved ones. not a day or two days, these are permanently separated. these are the families the media ignores. they don't talk about them. very unfair. for years their pain was met with silence, their plight was met with indifference but no more. >> what he's saying is untrue, but it's strong medicine because he is right in this way -- these

families should have never lost loved ones thanks to a broken system. and they do deserve our respect and sympathy but trump's suggestion that the kids in cages don't matter because other migrants are criminals or that we should see all migrants as potential killers, all that is as ugly as the politics have gotten. and this may ultimately come down to what the law demands of and from trump and that's a big focus of the show tonight. there are two big cases afoot and we're going to get after both of them. first, joining us is governor jay inslee, democrat from washington. welcome to "prime time." you've heard what the president says the truth is and you say you disagree. why? >> we know that a president who lied about what he did, lied

about why he did it, lied about congress was required to fix it and is still lying tonight about this situation cannot be trusted and we need judicial relief. his cruelty is going to be defeated by compassion. >> what's the basis of the suit? >> the u.s. constitution has due process rights and equal protection rights that are vested in the u.s. constitution and his chaos is going to be defeated ultimately by the u.s. constitution. >> the pushback will be how can you apply the constitution to people who aren't citizens? >> because these programs do apply to people who legally can apply to -- for asylum. we have won cases based on these very constitutional principles already against donald trump.

the reason is this is a cruel, intention al infliction of chil abuse. you can't call it anything but this. the thing that's so disgusting about this is that this wasn't terror promoted by accident. this was intentional. it's still intentional. that's why we need judicial relief. you can't trust this man for the time of day and as you pointed out they have no idea what they're doing. no one in their administration knows what their policy is. these people couldn't run a two-car funeral. we saw this in the refugee ban -- >> listen to his argument and rebut it for the audience if you can which is, hey, don't blame me for the laws, governor, they are what they are, they were signed before i got here and if i want to enforce the law, if

families get separated because i can't keep kids the way i can keep adults so don't blame me, blame the laws and go fix them. >> well, he lied to us when he said the statute required families to be separated. the statute doesn't require separation of children from their parents. there is no such law in the united states. this is the same fellow who said that barack obama was burn in k -- born in kenya and the same fellow trying to say these people are ms-13. these are mothers who were gang raped, whose children were forced into almost slavery when they were forced to go into drug running gangs. >> you're referring to the ms-13 suggestion? the suggestion by the president

that this is about who's coming over and it's ms-13 which is very active in your own state and that these are killers and drug dealers getting the worst of the worst and you want to treat them as the best of the best. your rebuttal? >> my rebuttal is these are three-year-olds who were victimized by gangs. there's a certain irony that a president who cares about this situation -- we all hate gang warfare but don't take it out on the victims of the gangs. the vast majority of these people were victims of violence not perpetrators and they have a legal right and we should reiterate this. these are people under the laws of the united states, we have a legal right to seek asylum. but this was an attentional act of propaganda to lie about it and secondly to terrorize these families so they would not be able to use the their legal right to seek asylum. that's why we need judicial relief and i'm glad my state and ten other states, including iowa, i'm in iowa tonight, we

have people standing up to bullies. we have fred hubble running for governor here tonight standing up against this type of thing so i'm glad to be allied with these people. >> there is a policy argument to be had which is the system ain't working governor. the way the system is separated right now, you can argue that's a horse policy they didn't need to impose to enforce the law but the laws aren't working. you're getting people in here that can't be processed. you don't have the right resources. there's a lot within the system not getting fixed and the charge from the republicans to the democrats is and you're watching it burn. you could have fixed it before and you didn't, not you, you're a governor. you're hoping it helps you in the elections instead of working to fix the system you know is broken. fair criticism? >> let me tell you what i'm concerned about. i have nine children in my state that are a victim of intentional infliction of mental distress by

donald trump. they have been removed from their parents without necessity and the president hasn't looked for alternatives and now he's coming up with this document she could change with a tweet. we have to understand with this president whatever he says probably he will either change or wasn't true in the first place and him trying to blame this on congress. he said for weeks can't chae this policy. what a bunch of hogwash. the next day he held up his pen and signed a confession that he lied to the american people. now propaganda is always a terrible thing by an elected official but when it goes to the heart of injuring children, the country is revolting against this. and guess what? that propaganda did not work. he got caught, the country is on fire about this, republicans, independents and democrats both

and they have forced him to at least purportedly back down. that's because we have spoken up and we need to continue to do that and we need to be in court enforcing the u.s. constitution. >> the idea that the kids and families are being used as a political football by trump to give a message of harshness to his base, that we're strong, the democrats are weak, and by democrats who are going to use it as an example of what the right is about and why they won't compromise and work with him and are you concerned that with your lawsuit they will look at governor ins keand say he's a because he's running for president. >> i'm in iowa too make sure we will elect officials that stand up to elect donald trump. we're doing that proudly, we

beat him on the muslim ban. we beat him on environmental issues. we intend to create a clean energy economy in the united states, including here in iowa, by stopping him from destroying the agricultural economy economy of the state of iowa. i was in iowa looking at the tremendous growth of their clean energy economy and biofuels, in wind turbines. but this is a president who wants to slow down the growth of clean energy and i want to elect a candidate here and across the country that is going to help our job creation in clean energy. you bet, we don't need sycophants for donald trump. the incumbent here in iowa was named as the governor for trump's country. that's not what people are looking for. they're looking for change. they want civility. is it too much to ask for your president not to lie to you five times a day? i don't think that's asking too much so you bet i'm standing up for democratic governors across the united states. >> no question the voters are anxious for change.

it's what kind of change they're going to get. >> they deserve it now. >> governor jay inslee from washington. thank you very much for coming to us from iowa, appreciate you making the case to our audience. >> you bet, thank you. no matter where your head is on this issue, there is an irony at play here, president trump said the border crisis was about the law, right? that he was forced to separate families. and he was right, the law is relevant but only as a basis for asking him to fix what he did to those families. we have one of the main lawyers of the aclu. >> thank you for having me. >> appreciate to you waiting here next to me. your suit is different from inslee's suit and those states how. >> well, we are representing any child who is in our state.

we have a national class action representing every parent who has or will have their child taken away. so we filed this before even all this blew up. and we heard that this practice was occurring. if the administration said they're contemplating a policy. we heard there was a policy. we heard there were 700 kids separated. they said we need an injunction we need you to reunite the kids. we have a hearing today and we urge the court to rule as quickly as possible. when i try to impress upon the judge and i think he understood was -- >> at the hearing today. what happened there? >> we today the judge, look when we were there before you in the beginning of may things were bad but now things are horrible. >> and on may 7 the government said something -- we keep saying it on the show but until the media catches on to something en masse it often falls on deaf

ears which is whether or not this was a choice by the government or whether they were compelled by statute. the government argued in your hearing against you, don't listen to the aclu about the law and what the law requires. judge, this is a discretionary policy. they said this is our choice to do what we want, this is our policy, it's not about the law or any kind of reckoning of a statute, beat it. now they're saying the opposite. >> no question and what the government said is after the hearings you hear the president say well, we're bound by these old laws but the truth is let's not get into the weeds. the easiest way to understand no law requires this policy is the laws the government has been pointing to has been on the books for decades. if they really required it, other administrations -- >> they say obama did the same thing, he separated families in

2014, they had kids who came here unaccompanied, people didn't blame obama, they blamed the situation but when it's trump, everybody blames trump. fair pushback? >> no, let me be as clear as possible. we pushed back on obama for deporting lots of people. this is different, the separation of parent and children. they did not do that under prior administrations. this is unprecedented. >> so the argument that their families have been separated because the law required it, you say false? >> absolutely. you can talk to anybody on the border and they will tell you that there were sporadic separations for particular reasons. this is a systemic policy to separate thousands of children. we have never seen anything like this. >> you can go for standing as a class, a group of people or look at a specific case. you're taking dual approaches here. you have a case out of california about a mother that has a particularly sensitive set of circumstances that you believe telescope into what an entire population my experience.

>> the lead plaintiff is a congolese mom. her case is illustrative. she came to the congo, a harrowing journey with her then six-year-old daughter. >> why was she coming? >> fearing death. i can't get into the specifics because it's asylum and secret but fearing death she made it after four months of traveling with her little girl, got to the border, presented herself legally and said i'd like to apply for asylum. she didn't know asylum but protection. they put the little girl ander in a makeshift motel for four days and on the fourth day they said we'd like to see your daughter in another room. they handcuffed the mother and said you're going to be sent to a prison in san diego, even though you are applying for asylum. she hears her daughter in the other room screaming mommy, don't let them take me away. the daughter is whisked away to chicago, the mother doesn't know what's happened.

four days go by before she can speak to the daughter and four months go by speaking to the daughter sporadically for a few minutes, we file a lawsuit, the government says it's not really a policy, we just weren't sure there was the real money. >> well, anybody could have observed the little girl screaming please don't take me a away would have known but the judge said do a dna test. why have you left this little girl sitting in chicago. they do the dna test, of course it's the mother but that's what's going on. it's a harrowing experience. i met with a family whose four and ten-year-old boys have been separated for months. finally back together. the little boy keeps saying to his mother every night before they go to sleep "is someone going to take me away?" and that's what the medical community is saying, this is causing permanent trauma to these little kids. they are going to be traumatized.

an asylum seeker can be releeasd released. >> too, expensive. they all make up stories, most are fakers. >> that's what's interesting. if you think the parents are flight risk, you can detain them be their child. don't taken a 18-month-old, a one-year-old and send them halfway across the country. there were family detention centers built for this purpose. we don't think that's the solution but in the rare case where the parent is a flight risk, keep them together. it's harrowing. >> we hear border authorities or other authorities are using lojack they're use thing tracing

bracelets. we hear the number is 75%. there's certain community programs, with sponsorship, get it over 90% and we'll show up. that's being used by the administration saying none of them show up. are you okay with people putting tracking bracelets on them? >> i think in an exteam are situation -- it's better than separating the child, better than separating the child. it's so bad. these little kids are going to sleep every night clinging to pictures of their parents. at some point we need to move from an abstract debate about policy arguments to taking into account these human consequences. >> and we have to balance heart and head here. 75% show for the hearing. that means 25% don't but that's being made into more. >> and for asylum seekers it's higher. >> even more show up. >> right. it was developed called the case

management program under the obama administration. trump got rid of it. it was ensuring almost 95% to 98% of people show up. >> we checked that. the community sponsorship program was cut some say because it was expensive, others say because they didn't want to motivate that, they wanted to get rid of them all together. we'll see how the suit turns out. it will be interesting to file to see when someone files a suit that the onus and responsibility on finding these kids is put on the detained parent. the system took them but doesn't motivate giving them back. we have to leave it right there. >> thank you for having me. >> thank you for coming. let us know what the suit does. tonight, one of the best known voices in the conservative movement is something you aren't used to hearing but we are in the new normal. george will says america, vote against the gop in november. we're going to get after that idea in the great debate. look at these two. catherine rampell and stephen moore. let's get after it next. ♪ ♪

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president trump's policy of separating families at the border is causing an epic conflict and between right and wrong. let's get after it and test the arguments. joining us for a great debate, catherine rampell and stephen moore, thank you both for being available on a friday night. >> which president trump should i listen to. let me play you two pieces of sound from this same week. >> we're signing an executive order. i consider a very important order about keeping families together but that's only limited. no matter how you cut it, it leads to separation ultimately. >> which is it? i signed an executive order, i'm going to keep families together or i signed an executive order, it doesn't keep families

together. >> well, he does want to keep families together. let's go point by point. >> hold on, why did he put together a policy that pulls them apart. >> this is a president that's tougher on illegal immigration than any time in 50 years. it was a popular message with the american people. and i should tell you, i'm very pro-immigration, i've written on immigration policy for 30 years. i think immigrants are great assets to our country economically and socially but this idea that anybody who get to the boarder can come into the country. >> whose idea is that? >> these migrants are not stupid people, they're smart people. the word is out. you get to the border, cross the border legally, that's your passport to get to getting in. >> that is just not true. >> stephen, hold on. >> i listened to the governor -- one last point. i listened to the governor and

he talked about how horrible trump's policy is but what i've not heard from a single democrat is what is your policy to stop illegal immigration. you're not for building the wall, you're not for funding the wall. you're for letting illegal immigrants who come in stay here. i don't understand how we'll get illegal immigration under control. >> rampell? >> this idea that there's this infestation to use trump's words that we suddenly are getting infested with illegal immigrants is a complete myth. if you look at the numbers from last year about border apprehensions on the southwest border they were at their lowest level since 1931. further more, as the aclu lawyers that you had on mentioned, these people are not even crossing the border illegally, they are trying to present themselves at a port of

entry. they are still being separated from their children and the reason this has been a trump administration policy is because it's a deterrent. even if people had broken the law, it's a misdemeanor, it's about scaring them off when they're fleeing violence, political persecution in their home countries, coming in with babies and two-year-olds and seven-year-olds and many many cases trying to come here illegally and we're not giving them a venue to do that. >> look, all of south america the economy in these countries is a complete mess. virtually every single resident of the country of venezuela could effectively apply for asylum. >> no, they can't. that's not the criteria. >> that's not true. >> those people would have a case for asylum. my goodness, their leader is starving them. >> economic hardship isn't

enough. you know what the law is. rampell, tell him. >> they can say, look, i have a fear of persecution. >> that is not what the law says. we have asylum laws on the books, we have a process for this while people are screened for credible fear they're passing that initial screening and they're still being put in jail and having their children ripped from them. if you want to talk about enforcing the law. enforcing the law would mean not punishing these families, a m.d. if they have, in fact, broken the law but respecting our international treaties to remind everyone we signed on to the refugee convention that says countries like the united states should not imprison people who are refugees.

the system is broken in lots of ways but ripping babies away from their mothers is not -- does not go further towards creating a system that is fairer to these people. >> here's the problem -- >> hold on, let's set the context because i need you to explain something. you're pro-immigration, that's fine. however you're defending a practice right now that doesn't make sense. >> by the way, i'm not defending it. i don't like what's happening. >> but he does, right? >> i'm just saying i think trump has made the case that illegal immigration is a big problem. >> everybody knows it's a problem. >> but i keep hearing this, though. i keep listening to cnn, he keeps hearing liberals say we care about illegal immigration but they don't want to fund the wall, they're not in favor -- >> because a wall wouldn't do anything. >> what is the policy, catherine, of liberals to stop illegal immigration. >> imlegal immigration has been at record lows. >> that's because the economy has been terrible. the economy is booming right now. you're going to see a huge

inflow of people. >> last year, so are you saying the economy was terrible last year under your beloved president trump? they were at record lows last year. >> i'm talking about in the first five or six years under obama people didn't want to come here because there weren't any jobs. >> what about last year? what about two years ago when they were also low? when the economy was good. >> you have to go to the border and see what's happening. >> i've been there. >> i have, too. i've seen the massive number of people that want to come in at night. >> they don't like the idea of enforcing harshness -- >> i don't like it either. >> but the president does and that's why he came out and said hey, these stories you're hearing, they're phony. the same stories his wife went down there to see and said weren't phony. the same stories he said moved him to sign the executive order. now they're phony. and if you care about these people -- you don't care about the victims of violence? >> you shouldn't be lying about this and you keep using this

language about kids in cages and a lot of those photos -- >> there are kids in cages. >> but it happened under obama. that's what's so funny. >> those were kids who came here unaccompanied. >> were kids kept in steel cages with four steel corrugated walls around them? >> sorry. >> do you think kids are being kids are being kept in things that you could suggest are cages. yes or no. >> no, i don't think they are cages. >> so your argue. is yes they are -- >> hold on. hold on. one voice at a time. you just said" so too were they under obama." you can't have it both ways. either you're treating these kids like crap or you're not. if you are -- and you are -- then you can't say "so did obama" because we just had the aclu guy -- and you know they'll go after anybody, they do it all the time, they were upset in 2014 about those unaccompanied minors and how they were treated

like crap, they went after obama but they didn't see it as the point of a policy perfect ed yo guys wanted it to happen, you knew it would happen, you knew it would send a message now you have to own it. >> what message is that? >> if you come here, we're going to do bad things to you. >> i don't agree with the policy but the message he is trying to send is that migrants from all over central and south america don't come to our border and think you're going to get easy access to our country. we can't take everyone. >> so put them in cages? that's your policy solution. >> and the proof is this. the argument must have teeth catherine is making because george will is echoing it. put up the screen of what he just wrote. you can't say george will and not say conservative. he's a bona fide rock rib gop conservative. in today's gop which is the president's plaything, he is the mainstream so to vote against his party's cowering congressional caucuses is to

affirm the nation's honor while quarantining him. what do you think of that? >> are you asking me? >> i knew it wouldn't be you, stephen. >> i would be glad to answer it. i think it tells you how badly things have gone that george will, who as you said is a bona fide conservative, is calling for the democrats to win an election and it's not because he suddenly found jesus and decided that he needs to become a hard core liberal, it's because he's seen the republican party has become the party of trump, the republican party that used to care about free trade, family values, small government. now we're creating this huge bureaucracy to put babies in jail, that cared about low taxes and tariffs, that cared about small deficits, all of those

values have been thrown out the window and so george will is calling for somebody else to come into power and to serve as a check on trump. >> rebuttal by stephen then i have another issue i want you to give me one take on. >> my rebuttal is this. i respected george will, i consider him a friend but he's always hated george bush -- i mean he's always hated donald trump and he's hated donald trump during the election, he hates him still and there is a small wing of the republican party that is anti-trump but it's very small. if you look at the polls now within the republican party about 90% of republican voters support trump. >> not just trump, the congress that won't stand up to trump. >> that's george's point. >> no, my point is why do they support him? because he's created the best economy in 20 years and that's what -- >> oh, we're going to have this argument again. >> no, not tonight, we don't have time. sum it up. >> so we like growth, we like

jobs. if that's the charge we're guilty as charged. >> so you're going to sell your soul to continue the exact same trend with unemployment and more or less the same trend with gdp growth in order to put babies in cages. >> catherine, before the election three out of ten americans rated the economy as good or great and now over six in ten do. >> but it's not just about the economy, that's what george will and rampell are saying. >> but bill clinton and people like that said it's the economy, stupid and i still think it is. >> it was carville who said it but he was speaking for clinton. this was a good and robust debate. we're going to give yo t audience an extra value. both of you take to twitter and here's the question i want you to take on. are we in a trade war with china? yes or no. start tweeting about it, i'll retweet the tweets. what else would people want to talk about on friday night. thank you very much catherine rampell and stephen moore. next up she said the trump

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all right, why the trump argument that the pain at the border is phony is fugese. he says that it's fake but according to an hhs spokesman, trump's team, health and human services, the total number of unaccompanied undocumented children in custody exceeds 11,600. so the facts take us here then there are the tender age kids. i hate that term. . infants, toddlers, those under the age of 13. how many of them?

2, 458. 2,4 2,458. what else do you have? under age five. guess how many? 482. 482 kids under five years old. the numbers headlight on the reality. >> they're overcapacity. they're unsure how to reunite or coordinate the situation. president trump promised the system would reunite families but the primary onus is on the detained parents to do so. that takes resources they don't have, sadly they don't have, access they don't have, as a result what are we seeing? hundreds of cases of lawyers looking for kids, taking weeks to track them, even longer to get them back. how is any of that phony? how is that the fix that president trump promised? it leads to one word. crisis.

c-r-i-s-i-s. thanks, bob. so how do you representatives in congress see it? what are they going to do about it? that's the subject of our next interview right now. joining me is democratic congresswoman pramila jayapal of washington state. thank you very much for joining us. >> great to be with you, chris. >> we saw a big move by the president today. apparently trying to change the theirty of what's happening on the border by making an allegation of misplaced sympathies. take a listen. >> these are the american citizens permanently separated from their loved ones, the word "permanently" being the word that you have to think about. permanently. they're not separated for a day or two days, these are permanently separated because they were killed by criminal illegal aliens. >> the suggestion is the people like you who are fighting for

mercy and for sympathy and the kids and the families being separated on the border are not feeling sympathy for the right people, which is the population victimized by these migrants. your response? >> i find it so offensive. these people should not be thrown in the middle of a political debate in the same way immigrants trying to cross the border are being treated like a football. secondly, i find it incredibly offensive that the president of the united states refuses to focus on the crisis that he created of thousands of children who have been separated from their parents and the fact that he is proposing to indefinitely detain, hold in prison camps families and that actually goes against what the courts have ordered. so he has no plan to reunite these children and he has no plan for what to do on the

border because the courts i think are going to say that flores still stands, you can't detain children for more than 20 days, he's going to have to separate the children all over again and this is a crisis that he created and i think that americans across the country, democrat, republicans, and independents have been calling my office because i've been out front saying we may not agree with you on other things but this is not about politics, this is about right or wrong and we want the president to pick up the phone or get on twitter and tell them to put the children out of torture and abuse situation situations. >> if you can't bring charges, if you can't make a case, you won't get to hold somebody that long. but he's making a different argument, congresswoman.

he's making a policy argument where he's saying you care about the wrong people. you don't care about american citizens who have been victimized and that these migrants are dangerous people and they can make more victims like these people standing behind me. what's your response to that? >> again, i would say it's a ridiculous argument, of course everybody cares about safety but this president since he started campaigning until now is conflating all kinds of issues and trying to make people afraid that somehow immigrants coming to this country have been coming to this country are somehow to be feared. that's what he's trying to do with this press conference and this narrative. >> of course he wants to shift the narrative. this is a terrible narrative of children being separated from their parents at the border so yes i agree with you. he's trying to shift the narrative but it's ineffective. i think americans see right through it. >> you've raised the level of your rhetoric as well, congresswoman. you put out a tweet that had a

very harsh suggestion for a member of the trump administration. as i told politico, i don't think most americans understand that a 33-year-old with connections to white supremacists is crafting policies that are going to literally destroy our country and what we stand for, stephen miller should be fired, he should not be in the white house. why single him out? >> because stephen miller has been an architect of many of the policies that the president has put forward, the muslim ban was stephen miller's creation. he has actually in the time he was in the senate he has been working on a lot of these policies trying to get them through and his whole belief is that this kind of racial animus, if you can fire that up then you will energize a certain group of people. i happen to believe, chris, it's a minority of americans across this country. >> but you think stephen miller

is one of them. you think he's a white supremacist? >> i said in my tweet he has ties to white supremacists. now others, southern poverty law center, a number of researchers have gone into this in some depth and they see -- some people tweeted back and said he is a white supremacist, not just ties. i don't know enough to know exactly where these intersections start and end but he is craftsing many of these policies. >> what do you think the motivation for this strategy that is being in part architected by stephen miller but certainly carried through and extended by the president of the united states, what do you think the motivation is? is it race? >> i think it's race and race as it relates to winning elections. >> not just law and order and protection and border security? >> no, no. because we've actually -- if you look at the details, we've increased border security tremendously, democratic administrations have also increased border security tremendously. the amount that was in the 2013

immigration reform bill that i actually worked on from the outside at that time, we have spent way more than what was in that bill so this is not about border security. this is not about anything else. this is about how to use immigrants as a political tool to generate anger and fear even more than anger sometimes, fear of people who look differently, who speak different languages who come from other places. >> in terms of fixing policy, curative, legislation, congress doing its job. this notion that if you give trump what he wants, which is the wall everything else can be compromised on and solved. is that true >> it's really not trump.

i've -- i may have thought early on it was about getting a wall and i no longer think that. he has been given that opportunity numerous times, every time he moves the goalpost to something else. >> i hear you. this is going to come down to whack be done, what can be negotiated and what can be stood on and fought. we'll see how it plays out. congresswoman, thank you very much for making the case. >> thank you, chris. very great to be with you. whose more important, a kid from texas or tijuana? it's a relative statement right? wrong. closing argument. next. (♪) i'm a four-year-old ring bearer with a bad habit of swallowing stuff.

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obvious. listen to how the president sees the crisis. >> they have pictures that were so bad, they had a judge that said it was inhumane the way they were treating children. take a look at some of the court rulings against the obama administration. they talked about inhumane treatment. i i looked at them, they were all over the place. inhumane treatment. we have a situation where some of these places, they're really running them well. >> okay, to tim what does he see? oh, it's okay it's all good. listen to fox. >> like it or not, these aren't our kids, show them compassion. it's not like he's doing this to the people of idaho or texas. these are people from another country. >> so, that makes it okay? this wasn't a one off. fox has deliberately downplayed

this crisis all week. >> more kids are being separated from their parents and temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps. they're not in cages, they're not being gassed. >> i spoke to some of the african-americans that say, gosh, the detention centers are better than the projects. >> no matter what they tell you, this is not about helping children. their goal is to change your country forever. >> change the country, they're not gassed so it's okay. scary talk, and its designed to push this "us versus them" philosophy. paining migrants as dangerous folk, infesters, killers, gang bangers, and drug pushers, inhumane. there is no question some people come to america for bad reasons and do horrible things. we all know the system has to be

stronger, congress has to do its damn job and make that better. but, a few is not all. statistics bear out the fact and none of what they are telling you about migrants if general, representing a threat physically, economically, it's not true. this has never been about the facts, it's about feelingsism politics of emotion. powerful stuff. just like president trump learned earlier in the week, people no matter how partisan, don't like to see kids being done wrong. making some kids more important than other because of their nationality, suggesting we shouldn't be that bothered because they aren't us, they are others. that is ugly. once fox realize that that's not playing well with the public, they backed off just like trump. >> all kids are important, all kids are special. what i'm trying to say, in this country when they come in, that

as a president of the united states you can only do so much for so management. >> the truth of that is right, you can only do so much, to separate, put them in bad conditions, not let them reunion fie. but that's not what he men or anybody on fox. here's the good news. i think we're better than this. i think when most of you see these kids, your mind goes to your own babies, just like mine does. i see someone's little boy and girl, i see the center of someone's world. i see common traits that trigger common concerns. my three, my bella, mario, cha cha, and some detained mothers, three kids. i look at them and see similar ages, a similar bond with one another. i don't know what i would do if i were in that mother's situation. even if you don't have kids, you remember being one, right? imagine how you'd feel living

this nightmare being locked away from the only normal you know. right there, you know all you need to know about what is right and wrong in this situation. no matter how some might try to tell you that these kids are somehow less than our own, we know that is empty. someone selling something that no one should ever buy, why? because here's the truth, we are all interconnected, we are all interdependant, we're all in this crazy world together, that's just the fact. some day these kids may be in school with mine, in my house, one of them may be my boss. who knows. law and compassion can be partners. a secure border doesn't have to wall off decency. i know this has been and always will be a melting pot nation. diversity will always be our strength. my friends, listen to your heart