morning, cindy mccain believe wreath at the vietnam veterans memorial in washington to honor her husband's military service. we are live at washington national cathedral for the memorial service for senator mccain. speaker simply former presidents george w. bush and barack obama. include former president george w. bush and barack obama. c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington dc and around the world. c-span as brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. president trump today announces a drug-free community

support program grant. that is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. eastern. you can watch it live here on c-span. >> a discussion on the with alan gomez of usa today. good morning, sir. you have a front-page story today in the paper taking a look at the case and particularly what it does for the e-verify system. put the case in context for our viewers and put e-verify in context. guest: this was a terrible case out of iowa we have been hearing a lot about. a 20-year-old college student named mollie tibbetts went out for a jog. she was apprehended by someone. when they were able to find somebody in charge of the murder, the person ended up being an undocumented immigrant from mexico. he has been working in a nearby

farm in brooklyn, iowa. a dairy farm. the employer says they had tried to run a check on this guy to make sure he was available to work in this country. there was a lot of back and forth over the process they used. he had allegedly given a falsification to get his work clarence. clearance.rence -- about half the people that work in the was farms -- on the u.s. farms and ranches are undocumented immigrants. , a systemfy program that allows employers to check status, to run it against databases to see if they are here legally and allowed to work. a lot of people are calling for the system to be nationalized. it is only required for federal

government contractors and requires some degree in 24 states but it's still a voluntary program. host: walk us through the process? guest: you run them through the usual hr paperwork stuff. one thing everybody has to fill out is a form. they take that and run it against the e-verify system. you do it on your desktop. you can put in the information given to you and the government runs that the social security administration databases and department of homeland security databases to see if there are red flags. the person is given provisional period where they are allowed to work until the check is cleared. the worker is given time to rectify the record if they think there has been some kind of problem. generally at some point you are supposed to get a check to live your workers and say they are authorized to continue working. host: how often do someone come

back is unauthorized? guest: that is one of the rubs. there have been several studies done. the question, how often it flag people that are undocumented? one study done for the federal government turned out 54% of undocumented immigrants run through the system were proved. that's because they were using either stolen identities or identities they borrow from relatives or friends. old but wes a little have been updating the data. it shows there is pretty big problems and these numbers can get pretty big. there are over 30 million e-verify checks run last year. over 800,000 companies are using this either because they are required or voluntarily. we are talking very big numbers. the topic forem, the conversation with alan gomez. (202) 748-8000 for those of you

in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 from the mountain and pacific time zones. (202) 748-8002 for business owners if you want to comment. you can post your thoughts on twitter. what is typically the reaction from business owners about this system? do they embrace it? are they hesitant about it? guest: there are two reactions. i think everybody -- there is a broad agreement that there should be some system in this country to check if that person applying for a job is eligible to work so you don't run into problems later on if they turn out to be undocumented and if you will face any civil penalty. there is agreement that some system like e-verify should be there. but, especially in industries that rely knowingly or not on

the undocumented population, there is a lot of resistance. the agriculture industry specifically in the story, they are arguing if you implement e-verify nationwide tomorrow, a lot of their workforce will disappear very quickly and it will affect their businesses and on down the line. it will affect consumer prices and have a snowball effect. they need a workable guestworker system where they are allowed to bring in foreign laborers to work the harvest in the fields because they say they can't find enough american workers to do those jobs. they can take it. itthey implement e-verify, would improve, modernize and expand the guestworker program. host: in the mollie tibbetts ofe, what is the liability the farm and the legal recourse for them? guest: iowa is not a secret

requires all employers to use e-verify. there is no legal obligation for the owners of that farm to use this system. they voluntarily said that it -- they said they had been using it. the person who ran the check for the company, and this is a small farm, was using a different system where you can run them through the social security administration and make sure there is a social security number and the name matchup. -- match up. they were not required legally to run somebody through the e-verify system, but they said after this happened they would proactively begin using the program to ensure all future workers they hire our run to the system properly. host: when it comes to the states that have systems, how many states as opposed to the whole of united states? guest: right now about 24 states

have a lot requiring businesses to use e-verify. for the most part it is state contractors, private companies that do work for state governments. they require them to use it. in some cases they can expand it a little bit more. the university systems, state university systems are required use it. they have taken different approaches and implemented different rules on their employeer -- employers. there is always talk about expanding it. back in 2010 when arizona passed b-1070, ination law, s several states followed suit and they started adopting e-verify. it's about 24 states right now. host: this is buffalo, kentucky. james, you are on with alan gomez. go ahead. caller: thank you for c-span.

'lls guests.me ya host: go ahead. caller: thank you for c-span and for your guests. here is how i feel. i have nothing against immigration, legal immigration. but i feel ifist you come into this country illegally, is to be a 10-year mandatory federal sentence. that would put an end to it. i'm tired of paying hard taxes going up for this kind of stuff. another thing, the liberals -- it's ok for people -- i lost a brother due to any legal. the liberals -- due to an illegal. if it happens to your family, you got what you asked for. host: the reason we brought our guest is a talk about the

employer's role in this. caller: that's the thing. you should use e-verify. the reason why people don't go out and work is because it is temporary and they don't pay enough money. i don't care what they say, there is not enough money involved in it. the farmer is making out like a bandit. the farmers are greedy as all get out. host: you put a lot out there. guest: my condolences to your family from whatever happened there, but like you said, he raised several issues. you talked about the greed when it comes to farmers. we have the h2a guestworker program. that's the main program they used to bring in guest workers to work in agriculture. in that case what is happening is that program requires employers to show they are

paying a decent wage, and they have advertised that job and have done it extensively. i have sat down with farmers who have shown me the paperwork required for every single piece of. -- every single visa. they have to post on state employment report websites and basically get the word out that the advertised it as much as they could. this is run through department of labor. there is a check department of labor runs when these visas are being applied for to make it not being paid under minimum wage or dirt cheap prices. the mechanism in that process they are trying to ensure or bring in a guestworker, that the are being paid a decent wage, but that program has a lot of flaws. it is something congress needs to get into and try to improve to ensure they avoid the kind of things you are talking about. host: pam in florida, go ahead.

caller: you said 54% of illegal immigrants successfully run through the system using friends and families id. how would you even know that? my second question is, you said the study was done in 2009. why has it not been anything more recent? those are my two questions. thank you. guest: two very good questions. study was run by a private company that was doing work for u.s. immigration services, a federal agency that administers this program. they did a follow-up study in 2012. they did not cite that statistic in that report. orr since we have not seen has not been a big of a push to pass an e-verify law in this

country. government agencies have not spent as much time analyzing the program if they normally would if it was debated every day in congress. are awaiting to see a good update on the success of this program, on the flaws and how much has been corrected. host: i have a website for employers to create a case, part of the verification process. get results, close the gate. how long is that transaction? guest: it could be just a couple of minutes. if the information they had put in checks out, it's a couple of minutes. you get a green check the comes back. in the vast majority of cases that is what happens. -- 98%ng like 90% or 99% or 99% come back. when you are dealing with that many, with over 30 million searches a year, the 1% coming

back -- it does not come back as negative. on-formation. confirmation. you deal with the federal agencies responsible for clearing up the record to clear up whatever discrepancy there is so they can be approved to work. or if that person is using a stolen identification, that person either goes to another company or we talk about what these unscrupulous employers that is find another identification for that person to use. ron, goom kentucky, ahead. caller: i have used e-verify for years and years. i wanted to bring out a couple of points. kind of blame e-verify for this incident that happened. but if the employer had actually

used a valid drivers license, which has a photo id on it and make sure the person was actually who they said it was on the drivers license then you can't blame e-verify when the employer could not look at the picture or make sure the person in the driver's license valid id photo matched up with the person in front of them. that is one thing. turnedt sure how we this tragic death into this employer-immigration thing. were 30,000 people killed by guns in the last 12 months and nobody is talked about that, but they wanted to bring up this one issue. that is two different things. host: ron, thanks. guest: that is interesting what he is saying. there are ame --

lot of questions about how much responsibility somebody like ron should have for determining if a person in front of them is an undocumented immigrant. the drivers license presented to you, the way the law is written, if it is flagrantly forged, obvious and clear it is not a legitimate document they have a level of responsibility to turn that person down. but there are a lot of good forgeries out there. at a lot toifficult ask employers to be the first line of defense when it comes to these things. there are a lot of steps in the e-verify that take over and take the responsibility off the employer. that is one of the things they are looking at when they talk about improving and making modifications to e-verify. if i could follow up on the second point he made, the reason we are talking about this and the recent mollie tibbetts' case became as prominent as it did is within a minute of the farm

-- the law enforcement official announcing the arrest, as soon as he said he was in the country illegally, immediately we heard the political ramifications of that. we heard from the former governor of arkansas mike huckabee say this shows us sanctuary cities are a scourge amanita crackdown on illegal immigration. casedent trump cited the in a broader discussion of the illegal immigration and the dangers posed by it. the reason it's on the front page this morning is because republicans were very quick to make this an issue. a lot of them brought it back to 2016 in a very similar but different case with kate steinle, the woman who died in san francisco. and undocumented immigrant was charged in her murder. he ended up being acquitted, but

people were saying it was that case all over again. and that is why it was important for us to provide some context about the e-verify system, about undocumented immigrant labor. immediately this was made a political issue. host: you said the employer has the responsibility to turn someone down if they don't pass the test. do they have a responsibility to report concerns to authority about -- authorities or the like about this person? guest: people are running a lot of these checks. they come in. down, person is turned the employer just has to say sorry, you are not turning to authorized. they eventually get a final non- confirmation, all the employer has to do is say thank you very much, i'm sorry but you will have to go.

you don't have to pick up the phone and call ice. host: you mentioned from 2006 to 2018, the number of employers enrolled grew to 3000. what is a responsibility behind that? guest: monumental growth over the last decade in using this program. a lot of it has to do with states passing laws requiring companies to use the program. one of the other things that happens is employers, especially in industries like agriculture and construction, a lot of them will voluntarily sign up for the program. i have heard from a lot of attorneys for these companies that say they do so under pressure from the federal government that threatens to rate a factory or a nursery or theirfarm -- raid factories or a nursery or their farm. they will sign up for the

program. under the obama administration they used i-9 audits. for george w. bush used a high-profile work rate, president obama audited the company's and their paperwork and checked all the i-9's. can drain a company and make it difficult for them to continue their normal operations, to operate without that uncertainty over them. a lot of them take the voluntary step and sign up for e-verify. lawse combination of state and companies that want to sign up so they can show they are trying to abide by these work authorization rules and stay away from either a federal audit or worse, one of these big raids. host: alan gomez walking us through the e-verify system. that's a store you can find in today's paper and online. michael from alabama, go ahead.

caller: in my opinion the illegals would not want to work for these low wages on the farms if the liberals would push a living wage on the farmers instead of trying to push for a living wage in mcdonald's and taco bell and these other places. and asm a decent wage long as the u.s. chamber of commerce and the business roundtable have their claws in these -- theyn are not going to pay a living wage. host: gotcha, thanks. at that point, mcdonald's, large chains, do they fall into the e-verify system? guest: i don't know the answer

to that. i have not looked at the bigger companies. i can tell you that he brings up a good point. what these employers are paying their workers. , therebsolutely clear are employers that knowingly and in mexico anduit central america to try to bring workers into the united states knowing they will pay them well below market rates and the conditions some of these people have been put through is just remarkable. they will put these workers almost as indentured servants working on their farms, paid on thewages and it drives down wage for other workers in the field. i have met with so many farmers. a lot of them around the country want to do this right. one of the previous callers said they have no problem paying good wages to their workers.

what they want is stability. for them it is more important to get a guest worker program that works and fits their needs so they can have a consistent workflow as opposed to scattered piecemeal approaches a lot of them have to take by picking up whatever immigrants come in. host: john from council bluffs, iowa. hi. caller: good morning, pedro. you are the one starting to politicize this by bringing up some of the republicans. schumer and none of the other guys said anything about this. don't know what you want to politicize it. the girl was dead. the kid had a drivers license, out there killing people. --ebody has to verify thes

verify where they come from or it will keep happening. writingigrating or about -- my writing about read -- ii did not did not hear the news about mollie tibbetts' death and said i will write about this. the president spoke about it immediately at his rally in west virginia that night. again, there were republicans throughout the day who immediately were trying to turn this into a political issue. we are tying it to the murder from 2016 in san francisco, oversight mollie tibbetts' staff was reason the crackdown on sanctuary cities, a wreck a border wall, pass e-verify. they were the ones saying on fox news throughout the day and later that night i decided to write a story about the

politicization of that case and how quickly it had happened and why we came back with a more in-depth look at the agriculture labor situation to try to lay out some facts. this was a story we had today. we had a basic explainer on the e-verify program. people who like it, people who don't and possible ways forward with it. we are just reacting to what happened in washington after the news of her death was announced. host: from new orleans, this is walter. caller: how are you doing? i appreciate c-span taking my call. i had a question about what initiates this e-verify. if someone is an employer, and i have a group of people, prospective employees. judgingthem, i believe,

by the language they use, at that point do you have to initiate e-verify? when does it end? guest: i would tell you that i hope you don't run your immigration status based on the language they speak or have a look. i hope that is not-based that judgment. if you use e-verify, you were supposed to use it for all new hires. according to the law passed in washington and the 24 states, not require employers to go back and check all their employees on staff. it's a forward-looking system. the way they happen passing this law is to look at new hires. but once you are enrolled in e-verify and using the program you were supposed to use it on all employees, no matter what they look like or language skills. host: there is a patchwork

system of 24 states. is there effort and congress to make it a 50-state kind of system? guest: absolutely. representative lamar smith of texas has been pushing an e-verify bill for years in the house. his bill would be the stand-alone bill. if you require e-verify to the nationwide. this is one of the interesting things -- his bill has gotten quite a lot of attention in the past week. people saying we need to look strongly at that. president trump in his laundry list of things he would like to change by congress on immigration has always maintained e-verify as one of the pillars of his immigration enforcement. he wants that to be nationalized as well. the reason it has not gotten their and we don't -- gotten there and we'll see these bills going anywhere, is democrats and

a lot of republicans insist on the guestworker program before they require every company in the nation to use e-verify. host: could the president make an executive order and order all 50 states to employ this system? guest: no. the president has broad authority when it comes to the immigration laws, but this is something different. this is something congress would need to pass. 1996, a law signed by president clinton created the first e-verify pilot program. the president would have to go back to congress for it to be required nationwide. host: virginia, jay for alan gomez. caller: good morning. host: you are on. caller: i want to tell you a story about what happened around here. there is a lumber yards down the road here.

themalled them up and told the next day they would do it inspection on them. the employer took all his illegal aliens and shipped them down in north carolina, into a motel room the whole day and night. the next day, ice came and inspected. time.e them jail have -- if they gave them jail time, would that stop them from shipping them out? guest: just a quick question. are you refer to getting jail time to the employer or worker? host: i apologize. i already let him go. guest: a couple of colors say jail time for the undocumented immigrants themselves is one way to solve this problem. if he was talking about the employer in that case, that is

true. that's a pretty flagrant violation of all kinds of laws. iat is one of the things think democrats in some cases -- a lot of people would like to see changed. it is impossible to just say undocumented immigrants are the only ones committing wrong here. we have a long history of employers willing to bring it undocumented immigrants, higher them -- hire them and go to great lengths to conceal them working here. what kind of penalties should they face? profanity all-time they should face? that's a question that has come up repeatedly. on of the george w. bush under thetion -- george w. bush administration, they were focusing on those high profile rates. rounding up dozens and some cases over 100 workers at a time

and arresting all of them. under his administration, the last year of the administration they ran about 503 audits of employers. president obama came into office in they changed that and pushed that over 2000 audits of employers every year. under the bush and administration, one company was barred from getting federal contracts as a punishment. under the obama administration it was over 700. -- under trump, they are going after workers, has beener -- ice arresting more of them throughout the country whether they are working or not. they also increased dramatically the audits of these employers. under obama, it was about 2000. 1500 to 2000 a year. in the first half of fiscal 2018, there are already over

2200. the number could be double what it was under obama, which was quite a bit more than it was under president bush. we are seeing a gradual increase in the focus being paid to these employers. bush was more on the employees. obama was more on the employers. trump is going after everyone. host: the dallas morning news reported 160 people taken in in paris, texas. guest: those are happening more and more. we saw the beginning of this earlier this year. january, the administration ran a whole prior file -- ran a high profile raid. we started seeing this little by little -- not little by little. we have seen some very big raids around the country. in the first six or seven months of the trump administration i was wondering if they would employ that.

it becomes clear that was the intention from the beginning. it just takes a long time to carry out these operations. ice and other agencies have combined to do the legwork, get the preparations ready to do these big raids. this year we have seen so many of them. it is perfect timing to show another one. -- in oklahoma, you were on with alan gomez. caller: thank you for being neutral. against bothe parties, the employers and employees. thank you for remaining neutral in that aspect. all i want to say is it is not only the workers. it is also their kids. whatever it from state to state, my sons did not have a vaccine is required and it would not let him start school until he had that. the students coming in here -- there are illegal students at the high school he went to.

those cats don't have to have immunization records. some of them have never had any immunizations and their entire lives. as far as e-verify, that should apply to everything. we have to have id to get a drivers license. have -- on the disabled veteran. just to go and get my access to v.a., i still have to have an id card. the one thing i did take exception to was the word you said that everybody had automatically politicized it. it is not a political issue. it is a commonsense issue. these people are speaking into our country -- sneaking into our country. i have a fenced around my property. the white house has a wall all around the property. it is for security. guest: a few points made

there. get intonother show to what is going on to the southern border wall. id -- youwe needed mentioned we needed id. even if someone does not use e-verify, you were supposed to fill out an i-9 form and have fun with edification to show that i it is you. doesthe e-verify program is takes all of that and then the next step. it is one more way of verifying. running them through the social security administration, the department of homeland security databases. right now healing responsibility for an employer who does not participate or have to participate in e-verify is to get the worker's information, a photo id, and if it generally

looks ok -- you are asked us to be a forgery expert. you are not supposed to be able to decide that person is not the person they are claiming to be on the identification card. e-verify system is a way to try to help them do that work for them. host: on the ipad we have the i-9 form. it seems like three pages long. one for basic information, one for the employer section and a list of acceptable documents allowed. guest: the key information you are providing is your name, date of birth and social security number. everything else is more information to verify all of that. host: there is a copy of the form available online. let's go to dubuque, iowa. tom is next. caller: i want to make a comment, an example. i have a relative in the midwest with a 10-acre horse ranch.

they hired two illegal aliens. they worked on the ranch for five years. paid them $200 cash a week. every year they would go back to mexico and visit their family and then return. they were absolute gentleman and hard workers. i don't have any other point them to give you an example. guest: i have heard those examples throughout my career. i have been able to travel a lot of places. to hear firsthand cases like that, i would bet that former who wants that force ranch, i bet he wants -- horse ranch, i bet he wants nothing more than for those workers to do with they do legally. pay them a wage, let them return to mexico to be with her family or whatever for however long they are going back for. that is the problem with the h2a system.

it makes it difficult and cumbersome and hard for these thaters and farmers to use a lot of people use it because it is their only option. it is very difficult. i would guess a lot more ranchers and farmers wish they could do with a german you are referring to is doing. host: for the employer who uses this system, is at a specific type of computer network or software? how complex is it or is it something you do online? guest: you can do it on your laptop. you can do it on your ipad. just go to the e-verify website. on there you have to go through an initial step of signing of your company and putting in all your information to sign up for the program. again, you just go to a different page on the website that allows you to start inputting information for the job applicants and people coming

into work in your place. it all comes back online. they will show you immediately within a couple of minutes if the worker is verified. if there is a problem, it will alert you to the problem on your website. then all those updates and changes, everything is reflected on the website. you don't have to download some new program. it was designed to be as easy to use as possible. we have talked about a couple of red flags and problems with the program so far, footings designed to be as quick and easy as possible. host: owen from california. caller: i have been thinking about the problem with the illegal aliens for a long time. i'm very fond of the mexican people and the mexican culture, but illegal is illegal. is the social security administration and this

goes back to that report from 2009 where they do not clean up the social security number files. there are people who have been dead for years that still have active social security numbers. there are -- in this report there were two corporations that had 35,000 irs tax returns that could not be verified because of the numbers not matching. there are many people on one social security number earning enough money that went person would earn in a lifetime instead of the year. the president could clean it up with an executive order to clean up social security. secondly, make e-verify mandatory for everyone.

corporations. individuals. people going out to try to get construction jobs. they see there are illegals on-site. report the company. make these employers pay a huge fine. not a white-collar fine, a pat on the hand. make up a major fines and jail time for them. host: ellen, thank you for the call. point we the second are definitely seeing more that under president trump. cracking down on employers and employees. you make a good point. one of the things any of these isls to expand e-verify calling for cleaning up databases. and to ensure they can communicate better because one of the big problems they have are people who are deceased but their social security numbers are still active.

else cannot use it unless you approve it. and to avoid a situation where some people are getting jobs based on one fake or stolen identification. the other component is there are so many errors in these databases where if you happen to , a lotpretty common name of asian and hispanic names, there are a lot of flags they go up even though you may be perfectly legal. 164,000estimated illegal workers in the u.s. would be initially flagged as not were compliant because of -- compliant because of putting names into the system. everyone agrees we need to clean up those databases so we are working on the right information. host: tony from new orleans, go ahead. caller: first-time caller,

longtime listener. i have a listening since 1981. lamb would not let have to viewers on to make these comments. back in 1986, i was in los angeles. we were watching these cars pull up to the border at san diego coming from tijuana. 15 to 20 people would jump out of the car and run it cos -- run across oncoming traffic. i was listening to don apartment -- don hartman. it is disgusting how these companies were running spanish peoplemexico telling that if you can get here, we will pay you $16 an hour. they used to give employers five-your sentences at a $5,000 fine for each violation for each employee.

one ronald reagan stopped doing that, pc a flood of them coming to america. -- you see a flood of them coming to america. today we say we have 30 million people in america that are basically undocumented. i don't have a position against them but we have to look at the facts. host: thank you for the call. guest: we have about 11 million people that are on document direct -- undocumented right now. it's interesting he said 1986. one thing that is amazing about undocumented labor in a culture -- this country has had a debate for a very, very long time. even in times when the united states was trying to minimize people coming into this country during world war ii when we were sending people to japanese internment camps, we had a

separate program that allowed mexican guestworkers to come into the program and work our fields. millions of people came in that way. president reagan signed the honesty of 1986, almost half as people who got and is the, about 1.1 million of them were agriculture workers. 2013, when the senate was debating immigration bill, ever going to get agriculture workers a blue card to make the process easier of getting into the country. nationalize e-verify. the only car about was for -- carve out for that program was agricultural workers. they had two years before they had to start using e-verify on fieldworkers because her has always been a recognition that a lot of the work is sent by a not a lot of that

work is done by undocumented immigrants. alan gomez reports and immigration for usa today. you can find his story on the website for usa today. mr. gomez, thank you for your time. a president trump announced drug-free community support program grant from the roosevelt room of the white house. that is coming up in about 10 minutes and is scheduled to get underway at 2:30 p.m. eastern. we will have live here on c-span. host: welcome back richard norton, author in presidential historian to talk about the 50-year anniversary of the 1968 democrat and republican national conventions. set up where america was at the time and the issues that led to those events. guest: it is remarkable. we think the countries being in some ways toward apart now -- toward apa