♪ ♪ this sunday, crisis on the border. president trp blames democrats. >> they don't care about the children. they don't cre about the injury. they don't care about the problem. they don't care about anything. >> blames mexico. >> they can stop the immigration on the spot, but they choose not too it. >> blames theedia. >> they are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe. >> in the end, the president moves to stop separating children from their pents. >> we signing an executive order. >> but then says fellow republicans should stop wting their time on immigration until after the election. so what is the administration's plan to housthe children to reunite the families?

my guest this morningan republ senator james langford of oklahoma and independent senator angus king of maine who cathuses he democrats. also, refugee crisis. why are so many people from central america coming to the united states? what are they fleeing? richard engel of nbc news has a report from his trip to el ndlvador. s a political culture wars. white house prescretary sarah sanders is asked to leave a restaurant because she works for president trump. her father, mikeuckabee tweets this picture with the caption, nancy pelosi introduces her campaign committee. is all of this the new normal? joining me for insight andys is are nbc news capital news correspondent kasie hunt, and erick erk son editor of the t.resurnt welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press". >> the longest-running show in

television history, this t "me press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. for perhaps the first time in his presidency donald trum lost an issue that was defined by television. not the facts that parents and children were separated at the border, that was the administration's policy,hat ttered was what happened next. it was the wall to wall parade of desperate parents and the first ladies and the growing number of reps wublicans, and i was the sound administration officials articulating a policy from separating children from their parents and then denying that their policy was to separate children from their parents. in the end, president trump didh agree to do whinsisted could not be done. he signed an executive order ending the policy. there are reports of tense infighting at the white house over how to reunite families anu confusion where to house tens of thousands of people. o be fair, this crisi

immigration crisis which more properly should be called a refugee crisis has confounded presidents beforehand, with children at shelters at the border thks much is clear. the tmp administration has inflamed a humanitarian crisis and it has no idea yet how to >> people walk in, they put a foot in. lease, would you like to register? other countries they say get the hell out of here. >> president trp is on defense. after first denying the administration could even end dministration's policy. >> congress and the courts created this problem and congress can fix it. >> theres only one body that eated this legislation and it's congress. >> you can't have an executive order. >> mr. trump signed an executive order he now says wouldnd it. so we're keeping families together and this will solve thatroblem. the reality is more complicated.

in 1997 flores settlement the tagovernment cannot dein children with their parents for 20 days, likely not enough time for adults to get a court hearing and out of 2300 children the government hascoirmed were separated from their so far since may 5th, the administration says only 522 children have been reunited with their families. >> what happens to the kids now that they've been separated from their parents? why di you guys sign it yesterday? children are scattered across the country, housed in about 100 shelters in 17 states and despite repeated requests, the department of health and human services has not allowed cameras inside forcing on government to rely on government handout images and in the midst of this crisis the white house declined to hold aing to answer questions for the public for four straight days. >> in this audioreleased by a

civil rights attorney, a 6-year-old jime from el salvador begs to talk to her aunt. jimena is lucky becahe was able to memorize her aunt's phone number. ected with her this week on the phone. thspeaking forgn language ] >> many ofe charged with the illegal entry into the united states say they have only been given a flyer on how to locate their child. >> the children don't have the capacity to even maybe tell them their parents' full nam b ng able to identify the parents through the children is something that'simpossible. >> despite the bureaucratic confusion and questions of pure competence, the president has been pretty clear about one thing, the message he wants to send >> but if we did that everybody come -- if we did at, you would have -- you're right.

the word is overrun. we would have millions and millio of peoplepouring through our country. > joining me now is republican senator james langford of oklahoma. he's been taking the lead on finding the short-term congressional fix to the family separation issue. setor langford, welcome back to "meet the press" sir. >> thank you. good to be back with you. >> let me start with the basic question. have we misnamed this? is ts a refugee crisis than an immigration crisis considering this ia specific region of the world where this is emanating from? >> this has been a long-term issue. i'm not sure i'd call it a refugee crisis, about you it's been destabilizing for a long time. there was $650 million into elnd salvador, as and they'll provide some stabilizing force in their government and toide able to prthem a reason to be able to stay. i've been in the region multiple

times, to be able to oversee how that money is being spent, but this is a long-term issue. you bac to 2013 there were families coming as a family unit and now we're up to 89,000 families a yearom that areg at the united states as a family unit. >> let's go to someic spec here because we haven't gotten a lot of answers from the trump ti administ, maybe you have gotten some of these answers. lfilling their duty to at least let you know what's going on in congress. do youknow howmany of these kids that have been separated -- how many of them are in shelters? how many of them are at detention facilities and how many of them are in foster care. do you know how many are a good idea wit the categories. >> we know where every single child is. this is an issue that's gone out there in some of the other media and it's not been responsible with this with the that the administration's lost track of that. so let me clarify a coue of things. these are career professionals

that work with hhs and that work with dhs and customs and border patrol and i.c.e. these are not political appointees and they are career folks and they know where every child is to connect them with relativ trying to be able to make sure this. connect the dots on of the 12,000 children 10,000 of those are unaccompanied minors. >> rightit >> that cameh no parent at all and then you've got another 2,000 that are out there that came with a family member of me type. they're all in hhs custody and they're trying to be able to reconnect them now,but hhs often puts them in foster care across several states they can't handle the load on the southern border. >> to be clear, while you saidw now where every child is that the government knows where every child is. the gvernment of the 2300 that were separated from their rents, that the government has said the number might be higher, we don't know, but of the 2300 they've confirmed do we know where those parents are?

that's an unknown, correct? we don't know where the parents are. >> well, i's a known of the adult they came with so the child and adult they came with, we doow if that is the parent. oftentimes the parent that is somewhere in the country oftentimes illegally, as well. they came with another relative and so to be able t connect the dots to see if we connect them with their parent that's here in the country and connect them going through procedures and whatever that may be and yes, we are able to connect them as well. >> the child, you identify the parent and the chil then what happens? is the parent brought to whe the child is? are they sent to a separate facility? what can you tell us abo that situation? >> it's a mixture. we are trying to work through the process to connect through the adult and some of the adults are given an ankle monitoring system and an ankle bracelet and they get a notice appear

hearing and as you put in your lead-in which was very well done. thes settlement from 1997 says that you can onhold that job for 20 days and it takes about 35 days to get a hearing. what the court set u p in1997 was this conundrum. you have to either release them as they comes a family when eyey come into the country and hope t show up. to be very clear, only 2% of the fa ulyts that come to the united states illegally actually go through and actually had t notice to appear, finished up with the notice of removal and actually leave the country. so the family units at are coming here. 98% of them end up somewhere in the ountry, most of them illegally because they never actually leave after they're give the responsibility for an order of removal. >> your congressional fix here and let's get to the 20-day conundrum. the trump administration's asking for relief from the courts. ey're probably not going to get it because the obama administration asked for the very same relief.

they didn't get it either. you want todefund it. how is that going to make the matter easier to deal with? if you don't fund the flores not ement essentially, allow any money to go to it, how is that going to help the situation? confused. >> so let me give you three different options. one is to y we don'tund it, push it back to the court and say we don't give theanexecutiv the ability to be able to operate this, and we want to go to the court and be resolve it. the next is to change the dates on it. to say it's not 20 days or maybe 60 days to gives enough time to get through a hearing and soe keep families together the entire time to be able to do that. we've t to add additional judges which we've asked for 225 additional judges across the country to be added for am gracian and ultimately we've got to deal with flores as a whole. the lowest level i'm trying to find the lowest common denominator so we can make sure we funk together.

the best thing to do is to reform it so thatct welly keep families together and keep them there long enough that we can get through proper hearing. >> are you in favor of using military bases to house the families? it appears dhs has made a request to the defense department. is that y is that something you think is a good idea. >> >> president obama used basis for the minors and some were in my home state in oklahoma which by the way, members of congress from my staie tto visit those facilities that are in my state where president obama was g the unaccompanied minors and they were turned away at the door and told they were not allowed in. this is something new the trump administration is doing blocking people out. no, it's the exact same policy hhs had before. we made an appointment and after we made an appointment we were able to go through >> should that be the process or should there be more transparency? do you think the white house has been fully transparent with the american public about what ey're trying to here?

>> i don't, actually. this has been one of the great s ations. the white house has not been clear on how bad the flores settlement is. they tried to i s say it and say it. you shouldn't allow just anyone to view a spot with children. this has been policy, if you're coming to the location where edere's children, we to know who you are and we have to know background and wet ca trust that you have an chlt if you do that you can get in as a member of congress just like prident obama had the children at a military basew as l. >> my final question is whether the president is creating more problems or making it harder to lve by the rhetoric he's using. this is how he's described people coming across the border just this week, senator. take a listen. >> they could be murderers and thieves. >> they endanger all of our children. >> millions of people flowing up and just overtaking the country. >> they're human traffickers,

they're coyotes. we're getting some rea beauties. >> we want people in our country based on rit. not based on a draw where other countries put their absolute orse in a bin and they start drawing people. >> do you believe that rhetoric demozes immigrants and makes your job harder? >> it does, actually, but the challenge t it isre is a percentage where the president is absolutely correct on that. >> what's the percentage? the percentage is pretty small. >> it is. it is pretty small. >> to do two for tw-- go ahead, sorry. >> i would prefer the president are cominthe folks for check reasons they want to be flee into an area where they have greater economic opportunities. every family wants to be able to see that for their family, but there are also some individuals that are there. on average, every day dhsstops or interdicts ten people that are on the terror watch list trying to come into the countryv so ie a real concern that we're demonizing law enforcement folks that really are tryi to

be able to do their job because there are very real threats, but the vast majority of individualses are coming f economic reasons and they're coming from central america and they're not fleeing costa rica, belize or ecuador who have great asylum laws. they're coming to the united states because they want the luonomic opportunities and not just a and they're trying to come for economic gainsnd i don't blame them for that, but to tell you the truth, 1.1 million people a year become citizens legally andthis can b done legally, but the challenge is for those individuals that's a much smaller number that are doing it illegally, how do you process that? >>senator langford, i'm going to leave it there. thank you for coming on and shing your views. much appreciate it. >> thank you. joining me from brnswick, maine, is independent. i want perspective from the other side of the aisle. >> good to be with you, chuck.

>> are we misnamed this? is this a refugeeor crisis than it is a migrant or immigration crisis? >> think it is. i think that's exactly right. it's more of a asylum and refugee. it's important to make distinctions. these are almost entirely people coming from central america and not mexico, particularly honduras, el salvador and guatemala, and they're fleeing violence and that's one of the reasons that this deterrent may not work, if you're looking doel the ba of a gun in your home community, whatever your chances are to get to a free untry, you're going to take it in order to save your family's life. so if that really is what we're talking about here and this is different dfrom, veryferent from the waves of illegal immigrants coming across the border 15, 20 yes ago, mostly from mexico,ly siooking for jobs. mexican migration has diminied enormously. >> if it is -- if you believeeat

should be d more as a refugee crisis. for instance, how we ndled the cubans in the '50s and the '60s and vietnamese in the '70s. how has the approximately see changed -- does the government intervention, should it be different if it's a refugee crisis? well, yeah, because if you're crossing the border with no claim of asylum or refugee status, then that's ae crd we have a process for deportation. people have -- people coming to taim asylum are not illegal immigrants and und law they have a right to establish their claim of asylum that are in legitimate fear for their life and they're fleeingrs ution in their country and that applies to people from other parts othe world,ut you have that right and the problem is james langford mentioned this. we don't have enough judges and

theria there's a bureaucratic backlog to getic adjed. what do you do with the people in the interim and the administration made a terrible choice of separating children from their parents and now they're saying well, we'll keep them together and we'll keep them together in detention. i don't think that's a necessary choice either. there's a lot of da that there are alternatives to detention that can still ensure thatw people s up for their court hearing which by the way are a lot cheaper for the taxpayers. >> very quickly on this senator langford, he's leaving to fixth flores amendment and you heard a lot of ways to do that, defund it mpletely and make it something and the administration can't do it and extend it to 60 days rather than 20 days. what do you favor a i kn a bill with senator fieinstein, bt there's no republican support i and assume it's a bipartisan deal. are there things that you can support? >> well, there are a number of

proposals kicking around and i was in a meeting in susan collins' office and it was very interesting sitting next to dianne feinstein and ted cruz. ted cruz and dianne both have a bill. the opportunity to vote for a feinstein/cruz bill. they're talking about not separating and talking about some alternaisves and thi where the discussion is, does it have to be detention? i don'nglike the defundea and that's essentially saying, you know, the courts, we're notn going to li to you. i don't think that makes sense, but i think some may be true, but i want to talk about how do we deal with these ople? the other thing, chuck, we've got to talk about is what's going on in these countries and why is this sge coming toward us. >> right. >> in fact, before the program this morning james and i were talking about going to central america. he's been there a couple of times. >> right. >> and trying to figure out what n we do to stabilize those

regimes so people don't feel they have tofoun their lives to america. >> i'm curious, considering what happened in 2014 when the obama administration wastackling essentially the same surge of folks coming from central america. the obama administration didn't exactly welcome those folks with open arms either. the goal was, while they didn't separate, the goal was to get hethem back toome country as quickly as possible. hindsight?mistake in >> i think they were overwhelmed. if you go back and read aatut period, and i went with a couple of other senators to mcallen, texas, during that period to see these kids were being treated. the difference between then andt now,ee years ago they were unaccompanied kids.'s whappened this time is kids are coming with their families, with their parents and they're bein that's what i think caused this firestorm, but there clearly has to be a better way to deal with this, and i think there are alternatives to detention, more

judges and more timely processing of these things because we're a nation ofgr imts, number one, except for the african-americans who were brought here, against tir will and the native american, but all the rest of us are a immigrants ao asylum seekers. the pilgrims were escaping religious persecution. >> right. >> andrew sullivan argues this week, just give trump his wall. he used more colorful language than that and go get something mocrat if you're the d give him his wall because maybe there will be more heart in the rest of these policies and the ref this migrant crisis. are u there yet? give the president has wall and figure this out? >> ironically, chuck, we did that. mike grounds and i had an amendment and it was the one that got the most votes on the floor of the senate.ot we 54 votes. it was in a sense daca for the wall, and the wall was fully funded. the democratic caucus voted, i

think, 46 out of 48 member, and 49 members for it. that was a hard sell, but the white house itself torpedoed the bill. they threatened to veto and they ess out a scurrilous release from dhs and we had the votes. we had probably 65, 67 votes. they kled it. they had the wall in their hand and they letec it gose they wanted more and the question is they keep sort ofaising the ante and saying you have to limit legal imm you've got to change this. you've got to change that and that's one of the problems is we never know what the goal line is. >> want to show you a movement growing on the democratic side of the aisle and a hash tag, abolish i.c.e. referring to the tenforcement agency when comes to immigration. listen to kamalaarris said about the idea of abolishing i.c.e. >> i think there's no questio that we have to critically

re-examine i.e. and its role and the way it is being administered and we probably need to think about starting from scratch. >> what do you make of that? is i.c.e. the bigger problem here? >> i don't -- i don't know how u aboli an agency without abolishing the function and i think the function is necessary. as far as what she said about examining what they're doing, that's absolutely what we shoula it's our responsibility to provide oversight and ultimately there would have to be an agency. before i.c.e. there was i and there was a way to enforce the immigration laws in the country, but taking a look at howhey're doing it and how they're approaching it. the question we had we had border patrol stop up here in maine a couple of weeks ago. is that constitutional? do we stop american citizens in the middle of aighway and ask for their papers? there are a lot of questions to be answered.

i don't know if i s abolish. i don't think that makes a lot of sense, but i do think looking at it makes a hell of a lot of sense. >> senator ,gus ki independent senator from maine, thanks for coming on and sharing your views, sir. >> thanks, chuck. when we come back, more on what's behind therd crisis. you heard both senators refer to the issue in central america. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel is back from el salvador, one of theountries where li is so theountries where li is so desperate people are their experience is coveted. theountries where li is so desperate people are their leadership is instinctive. they're experts in things you haven't heard of. researchers of technologies that one day you will. some call them the best of the best. some call them veterans. we call them our team.

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those two countries have the ghghest homicide rates in the world. t homicide rates in the world and you wonder why people are fleeing. richard engel returned last night from a trip to el salvador where he reported why people a willing to risk this dangerous journey and family separation to come to the united states and richard joins me now from seaside, california, where we made him stop he to get on our show. richard, thanks very much. let me start with this. normally i'm talking to you and you're in a war zone somewhere, maybe you're in syria, maybe africa or maybe somewhere in asia, but here you are in central america. does it feel like the war zones you cover when you cor the war? >> reporter: ifelt very much like a war zone, a low-grade war zone and there were places in el salvador where you can't go, and where the police and government

don't feel safe to go. 0e're talking about a population of000 active gang members and when you have that many people with guns and when you have ao government thatn't feel in control of the capital city, then you're having a zone dynamic. people we talked to said they're afraid to go out in the countryside. when they do they see gang members carrying their weapons openly there are gang checkpoints stopping you, asking you where you're from and what affiliation you have and if they don't like your answers they will kill you and drop you in the street. we went t a prison and met very hard-core gang members and one of them bragged to us that he'd killed 35 people just himself andhen you have that number of dangerous people who feel that emboldened it is not surprising that people want to leave the country and seek different opportunities and don't want their children to get sucked into the gang life and have them ion of the next gener killers or victims. >> in some ways you'vepent way too much time in syria for us at

nbc.he compare story in el salvador. how much of that country are they actually governing and how much of it are the gangs in charge of this is it like syria where you had parts of the country governed by certain entities? >> reporter: well, not just the 100,000 people or so who are active gang members, there are some estimates that you have to multiplyhat number by five or ten to get the real number of people who are actually w affiliath gangs, supported lively gs, make their hood with gangs and this is a small country, el salvador. we're only talking 6.5 million people. that is roughly one in ten people there is either a gang member orakes thei livelihood from a gang member. we're talking about 10% of thep lation, just of the population living outside the law, and this is a population that i armed. so they are able to control and exert their will over a lot more

of the percentage than that. so there are large parts of the y that are not fully under the government's control. >> i'm curious, you spent a lot of times on the front lines covering the migrant crisis into southern europe. give me some similarities, differences between what you witnessed with this migrant crisis coming up from central >> so you were talking to a lot of your guests earlier. is this a refugeeom crisis central america or a migrant crisis? usually they're always mixed together. you have people fleeing from war zones and people actively afraid for their lives and want more economic opportunities. but whatav i't seen before is this family separation. as i was there in central america, watching the people t to leave, watching them be deported back home i remembered covering this massive migration crisis that was in europe a few years ago, and l we sawts and lots of refugees and lots and

lots of migrants, but we didn't see authorities deliberately separating people from families. they didn't see it as necessary and producve. i was in hun garry and hungary has most aggressive, hardline, anti-immigration crisis and people are coming into hungary, and i remember one image seared in mywebrain, the on the bus and people on the bus started becoming they were shouting and under guard and very agitated. what happened is one of the family members on the bus had gotten f separatedom their child so everybody on the bus started to scream. the bustopped. theypened the windows and people on the ground lowered -- raised the child, raised the babe o o bato the bus so the family could stay together and the family drovehe off, bus drove off. even in hungary that has one of the most anti-immigration policy

in the world right now, they were stopping the busses and making sure theeople could be reunited with their families because they didn't want to flict any more trauma on to the people, so they could control the situation and n cause unnecessary agitation and stress. >> richard engel, you'vea seen quitt of this in your travels around the world, richard. thanks for your reporting. much appreciated. before we go to break, a quick programming note. jac jacobon soboroff,ht he'll be reporting on the crisis on dateline sunday called "thevi ng line" it airs at 7:00, 6:00 central. we'll be right back with the we'll be right back with the i'm ray and i quit smoking with chantix.

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