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CNN NEWSROOM

Trump Defends ICE Raids Leaving Children Without Parents as Deterrent for Undocumented Immigrants; Suspicious Calls After ICE Raids Put Schools on Lockdown; White House Proposal Would Have FCC and FTC Police Alleged Social Media Censorship; Pilot Flies Back Remains of His Vietnam Vet Father; Latinos Live in Fear, Crowds Panic After Mass Shootings. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 9, 2019 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[15:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: -- at least 377 undocumented immigrants detained in the nation's largest single state raid remain in custody. But it's not clear as of this moment just how many children have been left without their parents. The President, though, was focused on sending a message to the families who have yet to reach U.S. borders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want people to know that if they come into the United States illegally, they're getting out. They're going to be brought out. And this serves as a very good deterrent. When people see what they saw yesterday and like they will see for a long time, they know that they're not staying here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: In the meantime, CNN has learned more about how families are coping after being torn apart by the raid. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says about 300 people detained were released often times so someone could take care of their children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARLENY LOPEZ, 14 YEAR OLD'S FATHER WAS DETAINED: They don't have their parents at all. They're upset, they're scared. They're like little kids. They're like elementary. Like I'm in high school maybe I can understand a little bit more, but elementary kids they are like they don't know anything.

RANDY GARCIA, 12 YEAR OLD'S FATHER WAS DETAINED: He said to my mom, take care of the kids because the immigration has now captured me. I started praying to God to let them go. I hope you come back. That God protects you.

LOPEZ: She didn't do nothing wrong. She isn't a criminal. Hispanic people, they don't come here to hurt or injure anybody. They come here to make a better future for their kids.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: And the fallout from the immigration crack down is disrupting school. One district in Forest, Mississippi, had to go into lockdown after suspicious calls following those raids. Another district, Scott County, says 154 students were absent yesterday. That is 25 percent of the county's Latino student population.

Rukia Lumumba is the director of the People's Advocacy Institute, a community activist organization based in Jackson, Mississippi, that's Mississippi's largest city. Her brother is Jackson's mayor. So Rukia, thank you so much for joining me today.

First just I have these children on my mind. Have you met or spoken with any of these kids who have been separated from their parents? And how are they doing?

RUKIA LUMUMBA, DIRECTOR, PEOPLE'S ADVOCACY INSTITUTE: I haven't had the opportunity. First of all, thank you for having me on the show. Thank you for your attention to what's happening here in Mississippi. This is very painful for all of us here.

I think it is really important that the world pays attention to what is happening. And so thank you for continuing to talk about what's going on. Today I had the opportunity to go and wait at the bus station while we waited on some immigrant families to come in. Immigrant families come in every day here to our bus station.

And we want to be there with the Mississippi Immigrants' Rights Alliance to provide them with support and food as they wait to journey on to their next location after leaving a detention facility out in Texas. What I do know is that people are struggling in the areas, the seven towns that were hit.

The people that were literally stripped from their jobs, stripped from their homes, ripped from their families, literally were working folks who did nothing wrong but go to work. And what people don't realize, what hasn't been talked about is the fact that the majority of the folks that were even picked up by ICE came to work at those factories with legal visas. And it has been the corporation's failure to renew the visas in the way that they should have renewed.

BALDWIN: Let me jump in, Rukia, because this is what CNN has learned. CNN has learned that ICE was working to release many detainees from the raids because of childcare issues. I can't speak to the visa situation. But this was as long as they were not being criminally arrested. Can you speak about the status of some of these separations? What do you know?

LUMUMBA: Yes. What we know is that Mississippi wasn't informed. That Child Protective Services was not informed that these raids were going to occur before they happened. That our school districts were not informed. That everybody had to go into crisis mode to figure out how to care for these children when ICE came in and ripped their parents away.

Right, and so what we do know is this was a horrible example of how to do anything within government in a proper way. What we do know is that this was actually an act to terrorize the people of our state. It was not an act to right any wrong.

[15:35:00] BALDWIN: To hear it from the President, he says it was a very good deterrent, his word for undocumented immigrants. You hear the pain in the children's voices. Rukia Lumumba, thank you so much for being a voice. I appreciate you in Jackson, Mississippi.

I want to move on to what we've learned this afternoon on El Paso. We have now obtained the arrest affidavit for the suspect there. We can tell you what he told police and why he has now told them he carried out his anti-Latino attack. Stand by.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:40:00] BALDWIN: Just into CNN, new details on a potential White House plan to regulate social media content. We are learning a draft executive order could put the Federal Communications Commission in charge of shaping how Twitter and Facebook and other large tech companies curate what appears on their website. CNN's Brian Fung is following this one for us. And so, Brian, please explain.

BRAIN FUNG, CNN TECH REPORTER: Well, according to a summary of this draft order that we've received, the White House is considering asking the FCC for new regulations that could shape the way that companies like Facebook and Twitter curate the content that's on their platforms.

Now, at the same time, this draft order according to the summary would also affect the Federal Trade Commission and ask them to take these new policies, these new regulations written by the FCC into account as the FCC pursues its own actions against enforcement of companies that it has deemed to have broken the law on anti-trust or consumer protection grounds.

Now, legal experts I've spoken to say it's not entirely clear how this proposal could work in practice given these two agencies existing missions, but at the same time, there could be First Amendment questions that are raised here also. But if this proposal does get approved by President Trump, it would represent a significant escalation in terms of his campaign against tech companies and social media websites overall.

BALDWIN: Yes. To have the government be in charge. Follow that for us, please. Brian Fung, appreciate you.

Coming up next, an incredible moment that played out at Dallas airport. Southwest Airlines pilot flying home with the remains of a fallen Vietnam War veteran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRYAN KNIGHT, PILOT THAT FLIES VETERAN FATHER'S REMAINS: I remember as a kid watching every single POW come off those airplanes and I watched every one of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Only this time that fallen soldier was his own father.

[15:45:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: After weeks of tragedy, this is a story we all need to hear about a homecoming more than five decades in the making. Dallas Love Field the scene of military honors for a fallen Vietnam War pilot. His name Colonel Roy Knight was shot down in 1967 over Northern Laos.

It is already an unforgettable moment, but more incredibly Knight was flown back by his son, a Southwest pilot Bryan Knight. Knight flew his father's remains back to the last place they saw each other when he was a little boy, Dallas Love Field.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KNIGHT: January of 1967 is the last time I saw my father. I was 5 years old and that was at Love Field in Dallas, Texas. When I first got the call, it was almost surreal, because I really didn't think it would ever happen. Wow. He's really coming home. He's really -- we're going to be able to bring him back. We're going to have a place where we can honor him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Southwest 1220, we got a message for you.

KNIGHT: I'm ready, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On behalf of regional approach, we welcome your father, Colonel Knight, home. While he is gone, he will never be forgotten.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wow. Global News Canada correspondent Jackson Proskow is on his way home to Washington, D.C. from covering that tragic story in El Paso and was there to witness and record all of it. He tweeted out the poignant play by play of people just taking it all in and Jackson is with me now. Jackson, my goodness, so you're at the gate at the airport. Tell me everything.

JACKSON PROSKOW, CORRESPONDENT, GLOBAL NEWS CANADA: Yes. We walk up to the gate for our connecting flight and the gate agent comes on and tells us we're about to witness this very special arrival, but he doesn't quite say what it's going to be yet. The staff from Southwest started handing out American flags to everyone there and immediately it became clear this was going to be something special.

As the gate agent told the story that you just told about this 5-year- old boy who last saw his father at that airport and then mentions that he's flying his father home today on that plane, it was just silence that fell over the terminal.

BALDWIN: What were people doing around you?

PROSKOW: Some people burst into tears. How could you not have a lump in your throat at hearing a story like that, about hearing about the pilot we're waiting to pull up to the gate. Immediately everybody in the gate area stood at attention. There were hundreds of us there because the flights we were waiting to board, it was a full flight.

And so are the gates around us. Then we saw staff from the TSA, we saw other pilots who are in the terminal, we saw other staff all stand at attention. I looked out the window as we all crowded around and you could see the all gate staff, the ramp agents down there standing at attention as well waiting for that plane to pull up to the gate.

BALDWIN: See, we do have our moments, America. I know the response to this story has been stunning. It's my understanding you got a reply from someone who actually had been wearing a POW bracelet with Colonel Knight's name as a child. Connect those dots for me.

[15:50:00] PROSKOW: That is my absolute favorite part of the story. This person wrote and said, when I read your tweets the name was familiar and then I realized I've been wearing that POW/MIA bracelet with his name on it since I was a child. He then asked how to get the bracelet to Texas and found the information because it was there in the obituary.

And that bracelet is being mailed to Texas we understand. Colonel Knight's family has said in the obituary that any POW/MIA bracelets that are mailed to them will be placed will be placed in the casket for the funeral tomorrow.

BALDWIN: I've got nothing. I'm speechless. This is absolutely extraordinary. And how about you for -- thank you for calling everyone's attention to it and sharing it and may he rest in peace. Jackson, thank you very much.

PROSKOW: Thank you. It was a privilege to see and to share.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

More on our breaking news. The suspected gunman in the El Paso attack told police he was targeting Mexicans. What the arrest affidavit also reveals.

But first, let's honor this week's CNN hero. Woody Faircloth jumped in to help after the campfire devasted Paradise, California last year and to date he has donated more than 65 refurbished RVs to people who lost their homes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOODY FAIRCLOTH, FOUNDER RV4CAMPFIREFAMILY: As news of the fires broke and we saw more of what happened to people in the fire and how many people were impacted, that is when it really hit home that, wow, this is a really big deal. Tens of thousands lost their homes, entire families were sleeping in their cars, in parking lots. It was total chaos.

Today the majority are still displaced. When we actually hand over the title and the keys of an RV to someone who doesn't have a home any longer, such a powerful thing to provide such a basic human need. How can we not help if we're in a position to help?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: How can we not. You can watch the story of how Woody changed the life of a grandmother living in Paradise. Go to CNN heroes.com right now. We'll be right back.

[15:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: This has been a horrible week for America. I never thought in my 20 years in journalism that I would get a call last Sunday morning from my boss asking me to go cover a mass shooting. And I actually had to ask the question, which one?

And then for three days I stood there in Dayton, Ohio, on a street where blood was still splattered on the sidewalk in front of a bar where nine people were murdered. And there I was co-anchoring with my colleagues in El Paso, ping ponging back and forth between one mass shooting to the next.

That was a first for me and I am worried that it might not be the last unless there is real change in Washington. Today the President went on vacation, Congress is already on vacation and despite calls for them to return, Mitch McConnell says it can wait until September. But here is what is happening while they're away. People of color, Latinos, afraid to leave their house.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've seen a lot of fear in the community. Because of that. And because it is real now. It is not like we can't connect those dots and people know that they're in danger just because of the color of their skin.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're being attacked and our government needs to step in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: They will have to wait until September. While lawmakers are on vacation, I expect we will keep seeing scenes like this. Tuesday night here in -- here in New York in Times Square, a motorcycle backfired but that is not what people first thought.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a very crazy moment. I thought somebody was shooting -- shooting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If I didn't see the motorcycle, it would have definitely sounded like gunfire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That very same day, at a mall in Utah, a large sign fell but that is not what it sounded like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We didn't know what was going on until somebody went in to tell them we need to leave the place. So we just basically ran.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: It is evidence of a national anxiety. And what about the children and teenagers who are returning to school next week?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, my message to young children going back to school is go and really study hard and someday you'll grow up and maybe be President of the United States or do something else that is fantastic. They have nothing to fear. They have nothing to worry about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I want to leave you with the words from a school-age child. This is Skylin. She lost her mother in El Paso and then she asked her grandmother, is my dad dead? Yes. She had to be told her stepfather, the man she called dad was also dead. And she responded with tears in her eyes and then asked this question about the killer.

Is he going to come and shoot me? Skylin is 5 years old.

"THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: The check is in the mail and I promise I'll do something about background checks. THE LEAD starts right now. President Trump again makes a promise to get tougher on gun background checks and said --

[16:00:00]