welcome back to "amanpour on pbs." tonight, he's one of a league of state officials using the skauz to push back against some of president trump's policies but how will the retirement of supreme court justice jack kennedy change all that. my conversation with the attorney general of washington state bob ferguson. plus, chasing the american dream, and the struggles of migrant families trying to live that dream. the film director kim hopkins with her story of one such family from cuba.

good evening everyone and welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour in london. the supreme court holds a crucial place in the hearts of americans as literally the court of last resort. where the constitution protects the most vulnerable. where no man or woman is above the law, but historically speaking, the ideal of blind justice is a bit of a myth. the court has been a major voice on the political issues of its day, increasingly politicized. for the past several years, justice jack kennedy provi justice anthony kennedy provided a swing vote. though he was reliably conservative in most cases. his retirement will impact the daily lives of every american at schools, in the doctors' office and at the polls. as the attorney general for the state of washington my guest

used the court to fight and win on lgbtq rights, environmental safety and shutting down donald trump's first travel ban. he joins me from california. attorney general ferguson, welcome to the program. >> thank you for having me on. i really appreciate it. >> today you wake up to news or went to bed last night to the news of supreme court justice a anthony kennedy's retirement. giving president trump an opportunity to appoint another justice. tell me what you feel about that. >> it's hard to overstate justice kennedy's retirement and president trump appointing another justice on lgbtq rights or roe versus wade.

these are huge issues, justice kennedy played the middle roll. >> did justice kennedy play that roll enough or have we seen a conservative tilt over the last several years? in other words, how much more can a new justice do or will that new justice, do you think historically, have to think twice about, you know, political issues? >> that's a good question. i think it is more than fair to say that the court has tilted to a more conservative tilt in recent years, no wet about that. that said, justice kennedy has on significant issue, like gay rights, played a role in advancing those rights for lgbtq individuals in the united states because of his vote. so there's a conservative bent toward the court we've seen it on a number of issues. but on certain high profile issues justice kennedy did come to the other side. i'm worried, as are many that

this independence he would display may be lost with a new appointment from president trump. >> this directly affects some of your work because you have been using courts, lower courts as well, to challenge in the last year and a half some of the policies of this presidency. also we see the administration rushing to fill lower courts with new judges whenever there's a vacancy. how does this all -- what is the confluence of this? what is the result of this on the cases you are trying to push right now? let's say the travel ban, let's say your recent case along with other attorneys general on the separation of families that you're challenging. >> a couple things on that. washington state has filed 28 lawsuits against the trump administration in the last year and a half or so. many of those cases we joined with other states so it's a group effort from democratic attorneys general like myself. but we have filed 28 lawsuits, nine of the cases we had decisions from the lower courts,

we won all nine of those. some are still working their way through the appellate process. many of the positive decisions we've gained have come from federal judges appointed by republican presidents. so it's not black and white that you can simply assume because a judge is appointed by a republican or democratic president that they will have a certain orientation or vote a certain way on key issues. that said, the fact that president trump has the potential now to really impact the u.s. supreme court and to your question deeply impact lower courts where many of our cases are initially fought, has significant repercussions. now it will not change how we do our business. if we think the trump administration is violating the law, we'll continue to file lawsuits and we think we'll still be successful, as we have been, we haven't lost a case yet because the trump administration continues to violate our constitution and our laws in this such deeply fundamental ways.

>> you say you haven't lost a case yet and you did challenge the first version of the travel ban and that version is still not allowed. so you have that. however, the supreme court as we all know this week approved and allowed the third version of the travel ban. at the same time, you know, a lower court, the ninth district, basically ordered the government to reunite separated families. that was a case by the aclu. so on your specific issue, what are the messages to the administration, do you think? >> our messages are always quite consistent. my message is no one is above the law. no one in my country is above the law, that includes me and also the president of the united states. and this administration, the trump administration has over and over and over again violated the law in deeply fundamental ways and violated our constitution. it's why they keep suffering defeat after defeat in the

courts. notwithstanding hawaii's lawsuit on the third travel ban, the trump administration was able to get through on the third version of the travel ban. but the first travel ban which applied to folks with green cards, who already had travel visas, that was shut down by the court. at the end of the day, our job is to make sure the president is accountable to the rule of law. we'll continue to do that. that's not going to change. that said, the potential change at the items supreme court, in particular, if it veers dramatically to the right, that can have an impact on the litigation we're talking about. >> i want to get to the travel ban for a moment and then get to the other fight, the separation of families. on the travel ban, there's conflicting as you know assessments of it. "the wall street journal"

sprazspra praised the supreme court by sticking to the rule of law, rather than succumb to rebuke the president's dubious policy. do you agree? >> no, i don't agree. i felt the third iteration of the travel ban was still unconstitutional. i thought president trump made it clear what this travel ban was about. he made it clear in his campaign and his words after the election calling for complete and total shutdown of muslims coming into the united states. those are his words repeated over and over again. we felt there was a religious an mouse, towards muslims that drove this policy and we don't think it's constitutional. the state of hawaii lost that case before the united states supreme court, but it is the decision and we need to live with it.

>> "the wall street journal" calls an unpopular president dubious policy, it adds that word dubious, now on the other hand a writer from political koe who happens to be a law pros at the zero at the university of michigan said when a president decides to act contrary to fundamental constitutional values we cannot counted on the courts to save us. is it really that bad? >> that is very strongly worded, right. but it's hard to escape that conclusion for this particular case. we felt the abundance was clearly in the record on hawaii's behalf and the challenge to the trump administration that this was an unconstitutional policy. it was motivated by the animus towards muslims. so, you know, this was a high profile case, you know, on the positive side, that first travel ban was shut downright and the

second one wasn't able to go through either. but this was a high profile case, it was an important one and i'm disappointed by the outcome. in my state of washington state, for example, the front page of our local newspaper has a picture of a local woman, she lives not far from me in seattle and she's married to a man from one of the countries affected by the travel ban she's saying she may have to leave the united states to be with him, to be with her husband. those are the type of real life personal impacts that are going to happen as a result of the travel ban. >> let's get back to the case you're contesting right now and the idea around this zero tolerance policy and the separation of children. so this aclu case we were talking about where the courts were ordering the government to reunite separated families. the judge writes that the trump administration does a better job

of tracking the property of criminal detainees than it does tracking migrant children separated from their parents. so i spoke at the height of all of this last week to the mayor of el paso and he told me as he was on a mission to inspect those detention centers he was quite concerned about figuring out how to get these kids back. this is what he told me. >> we've been given no information regarding the -- the children, where they are. all we know is they're being distributed throughout the united states, which was a surprise to some of us. we heard about them being placed in michigan, new york, rhode island, elsewhere. that's the reason we came together as a group of mayors to say enough is enough. this is ridiculous. this is not what we're about as a nation. >> so that was a few days ago. do you think there's any progress in trying to figure out how to connect children to their families? and do you know anything about what's happening to those children? we can't get any specific

information, reporters can't go in there to do a proper job of figuring out what's happening to the most vulnerable? >> it's complete chaos, i think is the word to use. and to the point raised to your question, we're not talking about property. we're talking about someone's children. my wife and i have 10-year-old twins i cannot imagine what it would be like to be separed from them for such a long period of time. even separated for a short time would be traumatic for any parent or young child. it's clearly a chaotic situation, we talked about the first travel ban earlier in the interview, that first travel ban when it came out, created a deeply chaotic situation as well. that executive order was signed without much thought, thrown out there, it wasn't thought through and the repercussions were disastrous. we're seeing the same thing here with the zero tolerance policy and separating parents from their children.

so it's frankly, typical, unfortunately of how this administration works on issues that have such dramatic impacts on people and their lives. >> very briefly, you have called -- your lawsuit calls this policy cruel and unlawful. we've heard some really horrendous things happening to the kids. the president signed the executive order ordering the administration's policy of separating children to be ended. does that solve the problem? >> the executive order, no. the executive order was really a publicity stunt. it was for press conference purposes. it does not solve the problem. i'll give you one specific reason it does not solve the problem. about 2500 children have already been separated from their parents before that executive order was signed. nothing in that executive order at all grandfathers in or protects or ensures those 2500 children will be reunited with their families. nothing it's silent on that. that's outrageous. and we think the executive order

itself is filled with so many caveats it'll be meaningless moving forward as well. third, this trump administration has demonstrated repeatedly they're willing to go back on previous statements, policies day to day, twitter to twitter. so there are deep problems with the executive order, there are deep problems with the policy overall, but the impact is real, parents are being separated from the children, that harm is dramatic and needs to be stopped right away. >> and your case continues. attorney general bob ferguson from washington thank you for joining us. border security is one of the hottest topics in politics today especially after thousands of families were separated at the u.s./mexico border. now my next guest has made a film which goes beyond the headlines, focussing on the lives and stories of people trying to make it in america. ber but her setting is a remote

fishing village in cuba where he explores a young mother's dream o of escaping the endless cycle of poverty. kim hopkins joined me in studio to talk about her documentary called "voices of the sea". >> thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> i'm used to cuba documentariries being done by mostly cubans or americans. you are english, what first drew you to this project? what made you want to do it? >> in the late '90s i was involved in starting the documentary department in the cuban film school. and i got to know what cuba is. >> the authorities were clear about what you could show about cuba. >> very much. >> is it subversive to what you did? it's not in havana, it's out in a fishing village. it's a different look at cuba

than we usually get. >> i was looking to do a hemmingway, kind of old man and the sea. so i was looking for what might hemmingway be preoccupied with. >> as we're speaking we can se l beautiful pictures and sun sset and you're right, it's old man of the sea. >> that was my project i ings that were -- what was aw happening with the kind of migration issues. which had been kind of compounded by obama made an announcement in late 2014 of the new relationship between the u.s. and cuba. and that started an exodus of particularly poor cubans trying

to get out of the country. >> tell me about the family that you focussed on. the young woman, the husband, named peter, he's a fisherman and we see from the very beginning that it is not easy that sometimes he can't even catch his daily bread, for instance. much less be able to sell and make money off it. s she, we can see, is kind of thinking about leaving. i'm going to show the first clip. a couple discussing whether they should leave. you see the argument between them. i'm going to show the first

. it is incredibly poignant, isn't it. i called it an argument but it's a discussion of what to do. and the families, certainly this one, seems to be stuck in limbo. and you hear throughout the government is not providing for the poorest of the poor. >> i think it's pragmatic. it's the elephant in the room in that particular scene. >> the elephant being? >> the elephant being the american dream. and i think, you know, she is of a different generation. she has dreams. she's slightly more educated. so that kind of gives her her -- her drive.

and, of course, you have four children who are not getting a very good education. >> she talked about having already to pull the oldest out and may have to pull the others out. >> yeah. >> it is actually tragic. and you have this unbelievable cell phone video which we're going to play of this ramshackle boat, people packed into it and surrounded by man eating sharks -- i don't know, sharks in any event. let's play it and we'll talk about it afterward.

i mean, there is so much there. you saw the american flag, their dream, probably also because of the cost guard and the rest of it, who are they going to run into it, you saw the sharks and the huge wound. eventually michelle does get there, but how did you get that footage. >> michelle is peter's next door neighbor and best friend. he gave the information he was going to leave. fishermen go a lot because they

are the helmsmen of boat and get a free ride. usually around 400 u.s. dollars which is a lot of money. once we found out michelle was going to attempt this journey, we quickly realized we would never get the consensus of the other 20 who were also going to do it, that we secured a domestic camera on the island and trained michelle how to film, keeping it wide, not to zoom in and out like his mom does and make sure he filmed himself. we thought they may get intercepted and if they did, jetson the camera and try and hide somewhere, that's what they did. when we got the material back, we expected minutes. and michelle actually came back with about four hours of amazing material. >> you can't help but compare and think about what's happening

across the mediterranean from north africa to italy, the countries saying no or yes, you can't help also comparing it to what's happening at the u.s./mexico border. it's incredible your film landed right in this moment and also deals with family separation and the dilemma of what to do as a family. >> i was really interested in that kind of emotional journey. as you can see from the last clip, the actual physical journey is dramatic and dangerous. but it's kind of a phase to the migrants. what is the emotional toll on the family to make such a decision? >> the other real dilemma for families like peter and mariella and others in a place like cuba, they probably want a better life, they have no more faith in the revolution and the promise of the castros, they worry about

what's in the united states but they're worried about the erosion of their culture, community, their friends, everything they know back at home. i'm going to play this clip where peter is talking about being the only beachman left. so speak to me about the love these people have for their country. united as it may be in terms of meeting their needs. >> peter has lost many of his closest friends. he lost family members. he was in danger of losing his wife. they had only just lost -- mariella has just lost her brother who reached america.

he eventually -- he's a fisherman and he ended up in phoenix, arizona in the desert. and he -- you know, basically he swapped a wide screen television and a second-hand car for community and family -- >> he left community and family for that second-hand car and wide screen television. >> yeah and peter wasn't buying that. he didn't think that was a good deal. >> so interesting. i wonder what people coming across into arizona and new mexico and texas and all these frontier states right now from, you know, central america, what they know about what they're going to and whether they think they're going to find the american dream or is it going to be a bit of a let down? >> i think what's in cuba is mariella's brother had made 20 previous attempts he arrived on the 21st attempt. i think to get on the phone back to the family in cuba and say,

after 21 attempts, actually not quite panning out, i think pride gets in the way. and i think they tell the cubans that are still in cuba that things are better than it really is. and that myth kind of spreads around. it just perpetuates the american dream. >> what do you want people to take away from this? >> may be a slightly unfashion able thing to say. but i think sometimes for some economic migrants in certain circumstances is maybe not always the best thing to do. and i guess that's the kind of -- another choice that people should think about. >> that is so important that you just say that. because right now the politicians are saying, economic pie gra migrants you go back. if you're in legitimate fear of persecution or war or the other

things that can get you refugee or asylum status -- it's hard to say what you said, but they're going to have to be making those decisions, if not the government will. >> it's an old fashion thing to say but it's what i witnessed. >> you told it beautifully. that is the most spectacular visual certainly in your film. and a really interesting relationship. kim hopkins, thank you very much. >> thank you so much. and that's it for our program tonight where we explored the politics and the humanity of migration. thanks for watching "amanpour on pbs," and join us again tomorrow night. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

>> you are watching "beyond 100 days." a watershed moment for the european union. the german chancellor says europe's response to the migrant crisis will determine the union's fate. >> a highly charged debate and enough to make brexit a secondary issue at this two-day summit. >> angela merkel is under severe pressure. unless they agree a common migration plan, her interior minister is threatening to close germany's border. there are also concerns over worsening relations with the united states. at midnight, the you imposing new tariffs on american imports. theresa may has been