constitution and the law. 8:30, its bookt tv with a look at some local authors from the cities we visited on our c-span cities tour. on c-span3, american history tv with programs examining how the vietnam war affected everyday life in america. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," ginger thompson. thompson talks about covering the u.s. immigration policy.

>> i grew up on the u.s.-mexico border. mexico has long been a part of my life. i learned to speak spanish very early. i spent weekends with my friends and their grandparents. i have been interested in mexico for a long time. journalist, the fact that i spoke spanish gave me a bit of an edge over some of my colleagues. there weren't a lot of spanish-speaking reporters in newsrooms. i was working at the los angeles times. i started as an intern, spoke spanish, covered spanish-speaking communities, and in doing that, it became a natural progression that i would

go to mexico for short assignments and eventually applied at "the baltimore sun" to be there latin america correspondent, but i think from the beginning, writing about people in spanish-speaking communities was of interest to me. host: how would you describe the difference between el paso and juarez? is one ofon: el paso the safest cities in america, rez has become one of the most dangerous cities in mexico. uarez has become a booming industrial time. el paso is dependent on military for its financing. it's a military base, military hub. they are divided by this border, and they earn their money in different ways, but the families

in those communities are very interconnected. kids go to school on both sides of the border. people go to the hospital on both sides of the border. families on one side of the border have relatives on the other side of the border. they shop together. they go to restaurants together. it's an interconnected community. this idea of a wall that divides them is a very loose concept when you are actually on that border. asple don't feel divided much as they feel connected. host: if you grew up there and know it so well, what was your reaction when it became such an issue in the 2016 election? i think for a very long time, people in washington have a different understanding of the border than the people who live on the border. i've known that for much of my life because i've lived on the border, and i understand it.

when i come to washington and hear people talk about the security problems and the people, ibetween think that is not at all representative of what is going on down there. easy to politicize. immigration has always been a third rail in american politics, and having that border, it's a very easy target for politicians who want to blame others for problems that we have in this country. mark. long been an easy i think one of the reasons that reporting on the subject is important to me is because i think i bring a background that allows me to have an understanding of these issues that maybe others don't who haven't lived there. host:

up, what service were your parents and? ms. thompson: my father was in the army. he was an electrician. he joined the army because he was a young man and florida who was able to finish high school, but not able to go to college. this was his way to get an education and get a job i wish he could support himself and his family. brian: where did he meet your mother? ms. thompson: they met in pennsylvania. he was in a military base outside of harrisburg, where she is from. brian: how many different places have you lived? ms. thompson: i have not lived in that many places. we lived in alaska and kentucky, fort campbell. we lived on fort bliss. we went back and forth between el paso and alaska. it was mostly alaska. and texas, where i grew up. brian: what year did you go to work for "the new york times" and what was your assignment?

ms. thompson: i went to "the new york times" -- i always have to count back. i was at "the baltimore sun" in 1992 to 1995, so i went to "the new york times" and it went to in latin america for "the new york times" in 2000. brian: how long were you there? ms. thompson: six years. i had been there for "the baltimore sun." altogether in latin america, i have spent 12 or 13 years. brian: where did you live? ms. thompson: mexico city. i lived in a neighborhood which is a west village of mexico city. it has become very hip. it has some of the coolest restaurants. there is a beautiful park called mexico park. brian: i looked up statistics on mexico and how it fits in the world.

it is the 14th largest country in area. it has 31 states. what i am getting at is, what do you find americans know about mexico and what do they not know? ms. thompson: what americans unfortunately see mexico through the lens of the working class people who are the largest numbers of mexican people who live here. they are gardeners, factory workers, restaurant workers. mexico is a very large, vibrant, diverse country. the southern part of that country does not look anything like the northern part. very much like the u.s. california is nothing like kentucky. oaxaca is nothing like the state

in the north. i think people misunderstand the sophistication of that country. its capital is an intellectually vibrant place where people have a real sophisticated understanding of the world and of their history in ways that sometimes we don't in large part. they are very aware of the united states in ways that i do not think we understand mexico with the same degree of complexity and sophistication sometimes. brian: there is something like 38 million mexican descendents that live in this country. how many americans live there? ms. thompson: good question. i am not sure.

it is a fraction of that 38 million. it is not many. many of them are in places in the north where there are retirement communities, like san miguel de allende, a large enclave of american ex-pats. brian: gdp is like $20,000. what kind of lives do they lead? ms. thompson: it is a very diverse place. it is hard to generalize about mexico. in some parts of the country, farming is the leading economic engine. and other parts, it is industry. in other parts, it is tourism. it really depends. mexico has one of the richest men in the world, who makes the "forbes" list every year. it has very poor people who earn

$2, $4 a day. everything in between. just the way the united states is. what happens is there is a larger percentage of people who are poor and feel they do not have opportunity for education or to own their own property. loans in mexico are very complicated. so when you are looking at reasons so many people came -- because they are not coming in the same numbers anymore. for a while, so many mexicans came to the u.s. seeking better opportunities for education or living because their minimum wage is much lower than ours. their minimum wage is $4 a day. here, they can make $6 an hour. when you look at those economic factors, it is easy to see why so many people would come to the u.s.

brian: someone on this network yesterday was talking about the fact we have lost one million jobs because of nafta since 1994. how much of that has gone to mexico? ms. thompson: a large number -- more of those jobs have gone to asia. there has been a couple hundred thousand of those that have gone to mexico. asia is a much bigger draw in terms of manufacturing jobs for the u.s. there have also been a large number of jobs created because of trade with mexico. and oftentimes, some of the

factories -- a lot of the factories that are american factories in the u.s., they are putting together pieces of machines or cars or appliances whose beginnings were in the u.s. the initial assembly happens on the u.s. side of the border. the larger less sophisticated parts of the assembly happen in mexico. this idea that nafta has been more of a drain on our economy than a generator of jobs and opportunity is not right. brian: how do you explain the fact that hundreds of journalists have been killed since the year 2000 in mexico? ms. thompson: so mexico's biggest problem is with rule of law, with impunity and corruption. when crimes happen in mexico, 98% of those crimes go unsolved. just unsolved. people literally get away with

murder in that country all the time. the weakening of the institutions -- not even the weakening, but the lack of strong institutions in mexico, particularly when it comes to the justice system, i think is what has created the problems of violence in that country in general. right? it is not just journalists. it is -- mexico in the last two years have had more murders than anytime in its history. tens of thousands of people are killed a year. when criminal organization or criminal government institutions want to send a signal to the society is to stay silent about these abuses, they go after journalists.

of journalists are killed, since no one is often punished for those crimes, more journalists will be killed did you live with that in mind. brian: were you careful? ms. thompson: i am always careful when i go down there. one thing that has been true about this number of journalists is that none of them are american. american journalists enjoy a level of protection that our mexican colleagues do not have, because they are american and because the cartels do not want to bring the wrath of u.s. law enforcement down upon them. they have not yet attacked -- or killed -- there are threats and

there is intimidation. there have not been actual murders of american journalists. if americans were to travel to mexico -- brian: if americans were to travel to mexico, what part of the country would you have no crime at all? ms. thompson: i'm not sure there is any place where there is no crime at all. brian: you know what i'm talking about. ms. thompson: look, people ask me all the time, is it safe for me to go? i think it depends on where you're going. many of the beach communities that people enjoy our fine. some are not. acapulco has become one of the most dangerous cities in mexico. i do not suggest people go there and neither does the state department. cancun is still fine. i think staying in tourist areas of cancun, rather than going into the non-tourist areas, are

important. mexico city is a safe place to spend time. a lot of the same ways you do in barcelona or madrid. you need to be careful of street crime in mexico city. large parts, san miguel de allende, there are many cities that are still safe and good for tourists. brian: what is the difference between dass and the way we view our border from the way we do? ms. thompson: that's a good question. i think mexicans see in the border an opportunity. they see the border as an opportunity for trade. they see the border as an

opportunity for cultural exchange, for travel. the american concept of the border is about a threat. we see the border as a threat. and as a source of potential harm. we think it is a kind of place we like to avoid. so we do not see it it as a bit of an optimistic opportunity kind of focus. we see it as a scary great -- a scary place. when i tell people i'm from the border, they often think you go across. i walked across.

brian: what about the $25 billion that is sent back to mexico from the united states? ms. thompson: mexican migrants send more remittances than nationals in this country back to their home country. and that money pays for everything from paving roads to building schools to building hospitals in places where the government's does not -- where there are not government institutions to fill those avoids. mexican immigrants often do in

their home communities. that relationship with mexican migrants is a very important one to the mexican government. brian: correct me if i am wrong, 125 million people live there? it is the eighth most visited country in the world. there are 1.3 million afro- mexicans. ms. thompson: yeah. brian: 83% of them are roman catholics. ms. thompson: that's right. explain the free agency of the american government, the d.o.a., the u.s. immigration and customs enforcement, ice, and border patrol. have you done stories about how those three organizations relate to mexico? ms. thompson: i have done a lot of stories about those three organizations. a lot of my work has been about the role those agencies play in mexico, sometimes covert roles

they play in helping mexico fight the drug war and helping mexico control the movements of people across the border from mexico. the immigration and customs enforcement recently, for example, hasworked with mexico -- has worked with mexico on its own southern border to deter central american immigrants from coming into mexico who are headed to the u.s. and to turn those immigrants back around. the drug enforcement administration has a long history in mexico since the 1970's, and has sent dozens of undercover agents. the drug enforcement administration has more agents abroad around the world than any other federal agency of our country. most of those foreign agents are in mexico. we have dozens of dea agents all

over the country helping that government, helping the military, helping the mexican federal police force dismantle drug cartels. and we do that in ways we do not always talk about because mexico is very protective of its sovereignty and does not like to talk publicly about the ways it has allowed american law enforcement to operate on its territory. we are there in big ways. brian: there is a big political controversy in this country about ice. can you explain why? ms. thompson: i think what -- ice is the immigration and customs enforcement, which grew

out of the creation of the department of homeland security after 9/11. what a lot of its work has been involved in finding undocumented immigrants who not only are on the border, not only stopping them at the border, which a lot of people agree is the right thing to do, but to go into neighborhoods and workplaces and schools and hospitals and churches and courtrooms across the country to find immigrants who are living in neighborhoods. and that has been a controversial thing because oftentimes, these immigrants have families here, have businesses here, they have children. so they are deeply rooted in the -- our communities. and going after them has created tension between immigrant communities and their own law enforcement. so it has been hard to get police to get immigrant communities to cooperate with

them in investigating crimes and even reporting crimes. so there is a conversation now about whether ice should be allowed to do that kind of work, whether it is so disruptive to the overall good of the community, which needs to have immigrant families cooperate with law enforcement and other agencies to protect the community against potential public harm, whether it is illnesses and people not wanting to come forward to report when their children are sick with the measles, for example, to domestic violence, assault, to homicide. when you have got these communities that are closed off from the rest of society, it can pose problems for everyone. brian: what year did you leave "the times" and go to propublica?

ms. thompson: i left in 2014. brian: why did you do that? ms. thompson: i was really committed to investigative reporting. i really love the idea of pursuing investigative stories with the goal of impact, the goal of making change. i was interested in writing for -- writing in ways that went beyond newspaper journalism. i was interested in writing for magazines and potentially doing television and podcasts. the range of opportunities that were offered to me from propublica were appealing. brian: how does operate? ms. thompson: propublica is a nonprofit investigative news organization that is focused on

stories in the public interest, meaning we look for stories that expose harm or wrongdoing that is being committed by public agencies, by corporations, or by any organization or institution that serves the public. so we write everything from stories about hospitals doing harm in their communities to and schools and educational programs that are not serving children as they should to civil rights litigations against school districts. and so criminal justice stories, people who have been wrongly prosecuted, we cover the military, and so it's the whole range.

brian: when it started, a man of "the wall street journal" went over to run it. a very active democratic group gave $10 million to start it up. how much of it is involved in partisan politics? ms. thompson: propublica is a nonpartisan organization. and we have written critically about democratic public officials, president obama, and republican public officials. so we are an equal opportunity investigative news organization. and we identify wrongdoing wherever we see it. it does not depend at all on partisan politics. brian: who pays for it today? ms. thompson: so we have a range of supporters now, everything from the open society to the

sandlers to macarthur. we have increased the numbers of people who donate to us in small individual donations. it has increased significantly in the last couple of years. so we have a broad range of people who fund the organization. brian: recently you got involved in a story on the border with the mothers and fathers and the children being separated. let me run this. this will be a good setup. representative ted lew, a democrat from california, on the floor of the house of representatives in june 22 did this, you can tell us what it is

only running. [video clip] imaginetative lew: being ripped away from your mother or father and not knowing if you will ever see them again. and then being placed in a detention facility with strangers. imagine the horror and fear you would see. [crying] what musttive lew: that sound like? [indiscernible] representative lew: these are babies and kids at detention facilities. why do you not let the american people here what they are saying? brian: have you seen that before? ms. thompson: no. brian: he turned on an audio recorder. what were the hearing? ms. thompson: what we were hearing are the cries of children, immigrant children who have just been separated from their parents in a border patrol

detention facility. it was an audio that i obtained a month and a half ago with the help of a lawyer, a civil rights attorney. she had obtained this tape and thought it was important and shared it with me. she asked what i thought about it, and i told her i thought we should try to publish it. it was not an easy decision for the source of that tape, who felt that the tape could put them at risk for being identified and fired. the source ultimately agreed to allow me and propublica to publish the audio. brian: where was it made? ms. thompson: i cannot say exactly where it was made. but it was made in a border

patrol detention facility. and we were able to verify the tape was authentic. there is a little girl on the tape from el salvador named allison jimena. she is 6. you can hear on the table asking an official to let her make a phone call. she is pleading with this official, saying, please, let me call my aunt. i have her number memorized. she rattles off the number. i called the number. i found a woman in houston who is her aunt who talked to me about her niece and the detention of the border and about how she had gotten a call from her niece from a border patrol detention facility and we were able to corroborate the tape was real. brian: what were the

circumstances that the mother and daughter came across the border? ms. thompson: so the mother is a salvadoran woman who says she was walking with her daughter salvador.she lives in a small community outside of the capital, san salvador. she says she was walking with her boyfriend,and he was shot by a gang member, a gang leader who is well known in the community and told her if she said anything about who had committed the crime, she would be next. brian: was he killed? ms. thompson: the boyfriend was killed. so she stayed quiet. but he continued to threaten her and her daughter. at some point she felt she cannot take it anymore and she was really afraid that something would happen to her little girl.

and so they came to the united states. brian: where do they access the u.s.? ms. thompson: they came across at reynosa, on the rio grande. we have a picture of them on a raft crossing the river with a smuggler who was their guide. they were picked up very quickly after they crossed the border into the u.s. into south texas and detained. brian: what happened to them when they were picked up? ms. thompson: they were detained and held for two days. on the second day, an official said to her, asked her child to come with him, and she said, why are you taking my child? he said you are going to court today. do not worry, your child will be here when you get back. and when she got back from court, her child was not there. and they were separated for a

month and two days. brian: where did the mother stay? where did the daughter go? ms. thompson: she stayed at a facility called port isabel. it is near the southern tip of texas. the daughter was flown to a shelter in arizona. it was in phoenix. she was kept there and the mother was kept in texas. they had their first phone call 10 days after they were separated. the little girl, because she had memorized that phone number, was able to be in touch with her aunt. it prevented her from being lost in the system. when they separate the kids from the parents, there are no

records kept of which kid belong to which adults. their cases, their asylum cases were separated in the system. and no agency kept records that linked them. because jimena remembered the phone number, she could tell authorities to she belonged to. that made all the difference. brian: what was the law that they had to obey in our country with that situation? ms. thompson: the administration, in an attempt to deter people like jimema's mother from coming, began to enforce operation zero-tolerance. nobody comes to the u.s. zero tolerance. and what that law was call for everyone who cross the border without documents to be criminally prosecuted for the crime of illegal entry.

we have not done that before. typically, if you cross the border illegally, you would get a fine, charged as a misdemeanor, and turned back. now they are criminally prosecuting these folks. and in the process of criminally prosecuting them, they said they needed to be taken away from their children. right? and this was meant to stop people from coming. and so they enforced this policy and began separating parents from children, separated close to 3,000 children from their parents from the time this policy was implemented in april until a time when a judge ordered an end to the policy, forced the administration to retreat from the policy and a court ruled against the policy

shortly afterwards, i want to say it was a month ago. brian: what kind of a facility was the mother kept in and what kind of facility in phoenix was the daughter kept in. -- kept in? ms. thompson: it was a very traditional immigration detention facility. she was in a bunk, a room with dozens of bunks and there were 70 women in the barracks she was held and they all slept in bunk beds and had a mess hall and things like that. the child was kept in a children's shelter in arizona. i do not know exactly what the shelter looked like. there are very few reporters that have been given access to these shelters. or access to the detention facilities. it used to be routine for reporters to go into these facilities to interview

detainees or to see how children were being housed. but once this policy began and the coverage of the policy began, the administration quickly shut down those opportunities and made it difficult for us to go into the facilities, except on very restrict did guided tours. brian: there were a bunch of stories during that time where where the american airlines said they would not fly these children. how was this 6-year-old flown to phoenix? ms. thompson: not all airlines agreed to do that. there were some airlines, a period of a couple of days where a couple passengers realized there were unaccompanied minors being flown, accompanied by shelter staff, and it caused an outrage. my understanding is that did not go on for very long because the

fact is these children needed to be transported, and moving them by car was going to be worse for them than flying. so i do not think that decision lasted long because jimena was flown both to phoenix, and when she was reunited with her mother, she was flown from phoenix to houston. brian: somebody in border patrol or one of these groups have to accompany her? ms. thompson: that's right. someone from the shelter accompanied her back to houston. brian: when we were originally going to do this interview, you were on a train coming down from new york. and what happened? ms. thompson: i got a call

the train saying that jimena's mother was about to be released. i thought her release also meant jimena would be reunited with her. and jimena, this girl, had kind of become the voice for so many of these children who are in detention or who had been separated from their parents. and i thought being able to follow the story from the time of the separation to the time of the reunification was important. readers wanted to know after the audio was released, i was inundated with calls and notes from people saying, please keep us informed about what is going on. is there some way i can help this little girl or the mother? there was a lot of public interest in what was going to happen to this family. it was also a way for us to

watch the process, to see how the government was going to try to fix this mess it made of separating these families. how are they going to put these families back together? so i wanted to be there from the moment that she stepped out of the detention facility. and i barely made it. brian: what did you find when you got there? ms. thompson: when i got there, she had just been released. i managed to find a fabulous photographer who met her outside of the facility, who met with her lawyer and was able to send me photographs of the actual moment she was released. and then she and i met for the first time in a hotel lobby in

texas, our first face-to-face conversation. we had spoken on the telephone. brian: where are the two now, the mother and daughter? ms. thompson: they are both in houston. the mother has family in houston. and she and jimena are staying with relatives in houston. brian: what is the mother's legal status? ms. thompson: they are pursuing their asylum claims. their first hearing is coming up in a couple of weeks. it is really important hearing that will determine whether her asylum case will proceed. brian: as you know, there are people watching this who are not at all happy about this. ms. thompson: absolutely. brian: and on your website, i found something you have probably seen and i will read part of it because this is somebody by the name of sky trooper 70. a comment after your story on the propublica website. here she says, you have been

covering this story for a month now. yes, it is heartrending to see examples of separated families/ brian: let me stop there. what do you say to that? ms. thompson: i think, you know, it's hard to accuse people of gaming the system without a hearing. that is all season asking for. -- that is all she is asking for. gaming the system would mean she is coming here and somehow presenting herself as something that she is not. and if that is the case and she does not have evidence to back up your claim, a judge will

decide that and will send her home. at this point in cindy's case, there is no game yet. she is about to go to court. she has crossed the border. she has asked for asylum. she crossed the border illegally. she -- and if her illegal crossing and her asylum claims do not prosper, then she will be sent back. but asking for asylum, seeking asylum is legal. there is no game in that. we are signatories to international conventions that require us to hear asylum require us to hear asylum pleas from people who make them. that is where she has at this point.

brian: more from the comment. it says-- ms. thompson: propublica writes about people who live in poverty all of the time. and i would really encourage this reader to take a look at our entire website. because there are stories about people who are poor and have been prosecuted criminally for no reason or who have served in the army and not gotten what they are due about vet hospitals that are supposed to serve in veterans and are doing it well, veterans who have been sick with

agent orange and not gotten the attention they need. we cover all of it. that does not mean we should not cover immigrants and what is happening to immigrants. and this policy of separating children from their parents is on the government. this is not the immigrants' fault. the immigrants come here seeking an opportunity to make their case for staying. and it was the government of the u.s. that decided to take the children away from them without any finding that these parents are unfit in any way to raise their children. and so it's a -- what i call this mess that has been made, the government has to own that. and it is not just me saying that. there is a federal judge in san diego who has ordered the government to try to fix this because he has found exactly

that, that this is a mess and that it needs to be fixed. brian: where did the zero tolerance policy start? ms. thompson: it started with the trump administration. attorney general jeff sessions announced it officially in march of this year, right? so it started with the trump administration. brian: back to this comment. he has a question -- why wasn't the same 10 million allocated to create detention centers to clothes, house, and feed immigrants used to address our country's very own malnourished children, homeless vets, and impoverished citizens? ms. thompson: i think it is interesting. i do not completely disagree with this person.

i disagree in that somehow the media has focused on a problem that is not as big as other problems. i think that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. we should be and are writing about all of those things. by writing about immigrants does not mean we do not need to write about homelessness among veterans or that we should not be writing about on the immigration among children. i think propublica and many news organizations do all of those things. i think taking one story and turning a blind eye to everything else is not fair either. in fairness, he is right that we are, as the media, we are big enough to tell all of the stories and we should be pursuing all of them. but that does not mean we should

not be telling this one because this one is important. it is how we treat newcomers. we call ourselves a nation of immigrants. and so i think examining how we treat immigrants is an incredibly important and legitimate pursuit for a journalist. brian: you know more than i do how rich the mexican economy is. do we ever say to them, look, this is costing us a lot of money? why aren't you working harder at stopping the flow across the border into the u.s.? ms. thompson: we say it all of the time. brian: what are they say? ms. thompson: what they say, rightfully, is they cannot restrict the free movements of their people, just like we would not want the u.s. government to restrict our free movement. but they have been helpful to the u.s. and trying to stem the flow of central american migrants into mexico and into

the u.s. mexico has very tough immigration laws and deports large numbers of central americans every year. a lot of the central americans do not mean to stay in mexico. they are using mexico to get to the u.s. so mexico is a partner to the u.s. in trying to stem the flow of third-country nationals into the u.s. stopping mexican people from moving is not something they can -- is not something the mexican government can easily do. they do respond and they do want to be helpful in ways they can. they have tried and they have put money into it. we have given them money to help. again, the two countries are partners. brian: how many americans have been killed because of mexican

cartels that send drugs to the country and where do they get the drugs in the first place? ms. thompson: the number of drugs death in this country has been soaring in the last several of years. we know that a lot of the addiction problems in this country and the source of the addiction problems in this country is an issue that has been under great debate. played-- and the role not only by mexican cartels, which is significant, but the role played by prescription drug companies in this country. both are significant. the fact that mexican cartels move drugs into this country is real and a problem. it is an effort that requires mexico and the u.s. to work together.

and it is one of the reasons our relationship with mexico is so important because we need them to work with us on security problems like drug cartels. can i put a number in lives on that fight? i can't. but we know it is a significant number of people who die from prescription -- addictions to both protection medications and from heroin that is made in mexico and shipped across the border into the u.s. brian: i think this is an accurate statement. since 2001 and we have been in afghanistan, they have never had more drug production with the poppies over there. it is part of the drugs they get to mexico and find their way to the u.s.? ms. thompson: a lot of mexican heroin is made from mexican poppies.

it is not usually from afghanistan. production-producing countries in south america, america, peru, bolivia, colombia that still send a lot of heroin from that region. a lot of heroin is mexican made. it is made there and shipped to the united states. brian: you have been writing about mexico for 20 years or so. what has happened to the drug trade over those years? thompson: it has changed in that -- in the time i began writing about it, mexico played a larger role. before i started writing about the drug war, colombia was the

primary -- played the leading role in the drug trade, in the american drug trade. and once we, the u.s., began prosecuting colombian traffickers in the u.s., meaning we would ask colombia to extradite them, and we entered into a really sophisticated partnership with the colombian government to bring down those cartels. and once those cartels understood the risk of being prosecuted in the u.s., they shifted a lot of the transportation part of the drug trade to the mexicans. so they would produce the drug and select the mexicans and a lot of mexicans to say control of transporting drugs from south america through mexico into the

u.s. so mexico became a leading player in the drug war. its cartels began to control the trade in ways the colombians used to. and that is when cartels began like the sinaloa cartel began to play a more prominent role in the drug trade. it continues to be the case to this day that the mexican cartels are still the larger players. but they have taken several significant blows in recent years. many of the leaders of the cartels have been arrested. there is a lot of disarray in the cartels right now. some of them have not fully recovered and are looking for new leadership. they are struggling to

reorganize. and so there is a bit of disarray in the world of cartels. brian: a couple thousand miles down on the mexican and u.s. border, what is your thinking as to whether or not the wall will ever be built? ms. thompson: well, there are parts of the wall that already exist. the president has talked about it. you know, parts of the wall that began being built under president bush's administration. and whether or not there will ever be a wall that stretches from one end to the other, it feels far fetched to me, not only because congress does not seem to really want to spend the money that would take, but the physical -- being able to

actually physically put a wall on all of the parts the border. there was a story last year about what the border looks like. and if you flew a drone over one length of the border to the other, when you actually see the geography, you understand why how physically impossible to put a wall and some of these places. it feels far-fetched to me. there are communities that don't want it down there, people who own pieces of land that will not give it to the government easily for a wall. there are so many obstacles to actually making the while of reality. i'm not quite convinced it will happen. brian: a few moments left. so today, under the zero- tolerance policy, if the same thing happened to cindy and her daughter coming across the

border, what happens to them today? ms. thompson: zero tolerance doesn't exist as it was. a judge ordered the administration to stop separating families, to stop separating parents from their children. and frankly, it is still unclear what is going to happen. but what it looks like at this moment is the administration -- what happens to families is they will cross and be held together in a family detention facility until their asylum interviews happen. and if they are granted an opportunity to fully pursue an asylum claim, they will be released on bond and allowed to pursue their asylum claim outside of detention. brian: ginger thompson is based in new york. she's a senior reporter for propublica. she is a veteran of 15 years of "the new york times," several

years of "the baltimore sun" and the "l.a. times," and is a graduate of purdue university. thank you very much for joining us. ms. thompson: thank you very much for having me. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] for free transcripts come &a.org.s at q atgrams are also available aw.c-span.org through podcast. >> here is a look at our schedule. starting at 8:00 on c-span, remarks from stephen breyer on the u.s. constitution and the law. on c-span2 at 8:30 from it is

"book tv," with a look at at local authors. american on c-span3, history tv come with programs examining how the vietnam war affected everyday life in america. the charles koch recently posted an event researchers presented the results of a new survey of foreign affairs views among baby boomers, generation x, and millennials. foreign-policy analysts discuss the survey's findings. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> i'd like to thank you on behalf of the charles koch institute for joining us today for what promises to be an engaging and interesting