Senior White House Adviser to Surrogates: President Trump Hasn't Yet Decided to Shut Down the Border, Depends on Progress in Coming Days; Rep. Eliot Engel (D) New York is Interviewed About Border Security; Still Undecided On 2020 Presidential Campaign
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening. With President Trump threatening to shout down the entire U.S. southern border and announcing suddenly he's suspending aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, aid which is meant to help people, prevent people from leaving those countries and coming to the U.S., we begin tonight keeping with honest a headline you might have missed. It reads: Secretary Nielsen signs historic regional compact with Central America to stem irregular migration at the source, confront U.S. border crisis. That's from a press release from the Department of Homeland Security and, yes, it is not the catchiest title, but the message is clear enough. The Trump administration, along with the three Northern Triangle countries, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, are working on the root causes of the border trouble here at home. That released was dated last Thursday, the signing was on Wednesday in Honduras. So it would seem that administration policy was pretty focused on increasing the focus on those front lines countries, working together, they said, on the root causes of the problem. But just a day after that press release, the president announced this.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras and to El Salvador. No money goes there anymore. We were giving them $500 million. We're giving them tremendous aid. We stopped payment to Honduras, to Guatemala and to El Salvador. We were paying them tremendous amounts of money. And we're not paying them anymore because they haven't done a thing for us.</s>COOPER: Again, that's just a couple days after his Department of Homeland Security secretary signed an agreement with those same countries about which he said and I quote, together we will prevail. Or maybe not. She signed the deal on Wednesday. The president spoke out on Friday. And by Saturday, the State Department announced that it is ending more than a half a billion dollars in foreign assistance programs to the Northern Triangle countries. So, the question is, why the sudden 180? Our Pamela Brown spent the day trying to find out. She spoke to an administration official who told her there was no interagency process behind the policy change, which is basically a fancy way of saying no meetings involving all departments, experts and various agencies. And people with a stake in the decision, or the actual responsibility for carrying it out. No options considered, no objections registered, no problems identified. Apparently just the president, for whatever reason, making the call and providing kind of a dubious justification for it.</s>TRUMP: They set up these caravans. In many cases, they put their worst people in the caravan. They're not going to put their best in. They get rid of their problems, and they march up here and they come into the country. We're not letting them into their country.</s>COOPER: The president appears to be suggesting that the Northern Triangle government that are rounding up their worst people somehow and as he described them and forcing them, again, somehow to walk several hundred miles north to the United States. There is no evidence that this is a plot by these governments to rid themselves of the worst people, as he said. He's also suggested with no evidence that liberal billionaire George Soros is bankrolling the caravans. No mention of people fleeing gang violence or police brutality or gang corruption. President Trump cut off the money that goes to fund programs addressing all these problems. According to the experts, even experts within the administration, they have had an impact. Maybe not big enough, but they have had an impact. The official that Pam Brown spoke to telling her that before the president made his decision, the Department of Homeland Security, his own Department of Homeland Security was looking at how to increase the amount of aid and better target it within those countries, something even the president's leading defender seems to recognize for a second ate least before glossing it over.</s>MICK MULVANEY, ACTING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: If we're going to give these countries hundreds of millions of dollars, we would like them to do more of that. That, Jake, I would respectfully submit to you, is not an unreasonable position. We could prevent a lot of what's happening in the southern border by preventing people from moving from Mexico in the first place.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Right, but that's what the USAID money does, is it makes those countries more stable. This is not according to me. This is according to experts in your own administration.</s>MULVANEY: Career staffers, but let's talk about that for a second.</s>COOPER: So, that's acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney who first acknowledges that USAID helps cut down migration, but in the very next breath says, no, only a career staffer believes that and is pushing that. Now, keeping them honest, I'm not clear when a career staffer became an insult, calling someone a career staffer. Career staffers are people who have spent years often working on particular issues. Another word for some of them is experts. Mulvaney relied on career congressional staffers when he was in the House. He used the work they do at the Government Accountability Office. He's praised it. Career staffers at the NSC prepared the briefing material he reads every morning. You can argue that a fresh set of eyes on a problem can be a good thing. That's a valid argument. But arguing that career staffers are somehow all just bureaucrats who push paper, that's not the case. It is also not the case that career staffers want increased involvement with Central American countries. DHS Secretary Kirsten Nielsen, she's a political appointee, the president's appointee, and she seems to think working with Northern Triangle countries and funding the programs to do it was a good thing, or at least she did on Wednesday. Now that the president has undone what she did on her Central American trip, we'll see if she still hasn't or she's suddenly changed her mind. As for whether the president will follow through on his threat to close the border, we've just gotten some new information CNN has obtained the notes of a White House conference call from today. They reveal that senior adviser Steven Miller told top administration surrogates that the president has not quite made the decision, saying it depends on how the week goes. Quoting Miller now from the transcript: We will see how much progress we are able to make in the ensuing days. Miller also described the asylum claims of migrants as, quote, meritless. I talked about the range of border issues tonight with New York Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.</s>COOPER: Congressman, I know you just got back from Central America. You were in El Salvador evaluating the importance of U.S. assistance to Central America. I'm wondering, what did you find? What did you see? And what do you think now of the White House stance?</s>REP. ELIOT ENGEL (D-NY), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: Well, we were actually flabbergasted. We were sitting with American officials when we heard that the president decided to cut all foreign aid to these countries. We had been touring and watching different programs that the United States is paying for, which will ensure that less people immigrate to the United States rather than more. And we saw programs where young people were making software to show that they could survive and have a good future. And you cut that program, what are they going to do? They will immigrate to America. So, it seems to me what the president has done is just the wrong thing, the opposite thing.</s>COOPER: There are people who support the president doing this, who say, well, look these programs are so great, how come there is this upsurge -- there is this, you know, huge number of people still coming?</s>ENGEL: Well, but I think -- and that's true. I think we need to deal with it. But to sort of have a temper tantrum and say we're picking up all our marbles and leaving, that's the worst thing we could possibly do.</s>COOPER: It does seem like this decision is not something -- I mean, normally, in most administrations, Republican and Democratic, there is sort of a process for having a major change or eliminating foreign policy to a country or having a major change in foreign policy. There is consultation with various experts, you know, who I think now people in this administration deride as being career staffers but people have actually worked on these issues and have the expertise in it. It doesn't seem like any of that was done. In fact, it doesn't seem like many people in the administration, including Secretary Nielsen, even knew this was coming when she was signing agreements with triangle countries.</s>ENGEL: Well, you know, time and time again we have seen this. I mean, even if you can take an analogy of Syria. One day, the president just announced we were pulling out of Syria, and his defense secretary was so agitated he resigned. We have these things coming out where the president makes these announcements. I don't know anything about it. He has no obligation to tell me. But you think that people in his cabinet or people who are surrounding him, I think the conclusion we all came to, there were five or six of us on the trip, was that pulling out would be the absolute worst thing. And clearly, the president should know this. It is just a matter of just scratching your head.</s>COOPER: In terms of the president's threat to close parts of the border, whether you agree or disagree with that, it is within his legal rights to do it, isn't it?</s>ENGEL: Well, yes. He's the president of the United States and he can do it. But what does that do to us? What does that do to us in the future? I mean, is that going to stop the flow of people coming, or is it going to accelerate it? I would make the argument it would accelerate it. So --</s>COOPER: Because it's going to hurt businesses in Mexico and elsewhere, it's going to hurt economies and that's going to motivate more people to come? Is that what you're saying?</s>ENGEL: Yes, absolutely, absolutely, yes. It's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don't understand it at all. And everybody who was there was blindsided by it, even the FBI people and other people doing these programs. Again, the president talks about MS-13 and these bad groups. Well, you know, I saw programs that talk with gangs that try to convert gangs, taking away from what they have been doing.</s>COOPER: It does seem to run counter to what people in this administration have been saying now for quite a while, which is they actually need to figure out ways to make programs more effective, to, you know -- I know one, you know, person who works in the administration wanted to institute a Marshall Plan for those countries to really get the U.S. involved preventing people from leaving in the first place.</s>ENGEL: That should, be as far as I'm concerned, our whole policy, our whole focus on what we're doing.</s>COOPER: Congressman Engel, I appreciate your time. Thank you.</s>ENGEL: Thank you. Thank you, Anderson.</s>COOPER: Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is not only defending the president's decision to pull the plug on aid to the Northern Triangle. He's also citing President Obama's former DHS secretary.</s>MULVANEY: Keep in mind, when Jeh Johnson says it's a crisis, I hope he will now believe us. A lot of folks -- many folks in the media, not you necessarily, but a lot of other networks did, they didn't believe us, Democrats didn't believe us a month ago, two months ago, when we said what was happening at the border was a crisis, a humanitarian crisis, a security crisis. And I'm very glad to see that Jeh Johnson now at least is admitting that we were right and that 100,000 people coming across the border this month, that's not a made up number by the way, despite the fact that many Democrats still think that it is. That is a crisis.</s>COOPER: Joining us now, the man himself, former Obama DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. Thanks, Secretary, for being with us. Is he right? Are you admitting that they were right all along?</s>JEH JOHNSON, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first, Anderson, it is not a matter of admitting and acknowledging somebody is right or wrong. There is a crisis, 4,000 apprehensions in one day 100,000 apprehensions in a month on the southern border. It's the equivalent of Albany, New York, showing up on the southern border.</s>COOPER: And it's unprecedented.</s>JOHNSON: And it's unprecedented. We haven't seen numbers like that in 12 years. We certainly never saw numbers like that in my three years as DHS secretary. The question now is what to do about it. And we are hearing talk about trying to shut down the border, which I'm sure you will get to and cutting off aid to Central America, which I think is the exact wrong thing to do in this circumstance.</s>COOPER: It also seems to run counter to what the people in the administration themselves --</s>JOHNSON: Just days before, correct. I was very pleased to see that the administration is intending to continue the effort we began to invest in eradicating the poverty and violence. I know from personal experience of owning this problem for three years that the push factors in Central America, the poverty and violence in those countries, it is the most violent place on earth, what are driving this phenomenon, there is no amount of border security you can put on our southern border that is going to stop it.</s>COOPER: So, when the president says it is the governments in these countries that are sending their worst and putting them in these caravans and getting them up north, is there any truth to that?</s>JOHNSON: That is not consistent with my experience. Illegal migration is driven by smugglers, by coyotes. Almost everyone who comes up to Mexico to our southern border has paid a coyote $2,000, $4,000, $6,000.</s>COOPER: So, why are the numbers now growing?</s>JOHNSON: These numbers and we saw this, but not at this level in 2014, they have a snowball effect. The coyotes sell some new discount or put out a new message about in 2014, for example, they were telling folks in Central America, the border patrol are giving out free permisos, free passes, which is totally false. And families -- the other families going and they think this will not be going around forever, so it has a snowball effect. That is obviously something that is happening right now. And the question becomes, how do we deal with this very serious, serious situation? I don't believe that cutting off aid to these countries is the answer. You talk to people within DHS and they will say that the limited amount that we have begun to invest is already beginning to have a positive impact. And, so, there are no easy quick answers. We have to stay at it.</s>COOPER: Folks that support the president's policy will say, look, if these programs are actually working, why are we seeing an increase? If they're so good, how come people are --</s>JOHNSON: Because you can't turn around a region of the world overnight, very clearly. And what is happening now is while the underlying causes may be addressed longer term, there is something fueling the latest spike. It's a messaging. Families are seeing other families going. President Trump has clearly not been able to deter this either by his hard line policies, zero tolerance policy and there is something driving this. And there are ways to address this. We addressed it in 2014. We got the numbers down pretty dramatically by the end of the summer of 2014 and they stayed low.</s>COOPER: How do you address it? Is it working with these Central American countries? I mean, how -- what happened in 2014?</s>JOHNSON: Well, working with the Central American countries is the longer term investment. Working with the government of Mexico to help them fortify their southern border, which is a smaller border with Central America had an impact. That's something that we did in my conversations with my counterpart and they agreed to do more on their southern border which had an almost immediate effect, as well as messaging about the dangers of the journey. But what happens is you can do short term things that have a short term effect, but as long as the underlying conditions exist, the patterns are going to revert back to normal.</s>COOPER: You could make the argument that President Trump threatening to shut down the border with Mexico, if it's just a threat, a way to motivate Mexico to do more on their southern border.</s>JOHNSON: Well, that's a threat and a gamble, I suppose. It is physically impossible to shut down a 1,900-mile border. The most a president can do is to shut down ports of entry, the bridges, the bridges into Laredo along the Rio Grande Valley. But what you're doing there is you're driving the migrants away that we've been encouraging to go to ports of entry for months. You are driving them to cross the borders illegally. We will know less about who they are coming into our country, and it will have an adverse effect on legal migration and legal commerce.</s>COOPER: Although now, I mean, the White House, Steve Miller, is saying that essentially these are baseless asylum claims. The president saying this is a con job. You have, you know, very big guys coming in, claiming they're scared of gangs in their home country.</s>JOHNSON: That's a stereotype.</s>COOPER: That's what the president said.</s>JOHNSON: That's a stereotype, frankly. What you have coming from Central America are women, children, families. And I know because I spent hundreds of hours in border patrol holding stations in South Texas. Every time I would go there, I would talk to the kids and say, why did you come here? Didn't you hear our messages about the dangers of the journey? Yes. Didn't you hear that DACA is not available for you? Yes. My mom sent me here because the gangs were going to kill me, or I was going to be forced to join a gang. And these families are making the basic judgment to flee a burning building. It's human nature. And as long as those underlying conditions exist, we're going to be banging our head against the wall trying to address this on our southern border. We have got to address the longer term problem.</s>COOPER: Secretary Johnson, I appreciate your time, thank you.</s>JOHNSON: Thank you.</s>COOPER: More on the politics now, joining us for that, Steve Cortes, the head of the Trump campaign's Hispanic advisory council. So, Steve, Steven Mueller saying the president still hasn't decided whether he will follow through on the threats to the border. What is actually going to change this week that would sway the president one way or the other? Do you think he should shut down the southern border? And by that, as Secretary Johnson saying, the ports of entry?</s>STEVE CORTES, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Right, correct. Listen, I think it should be on the table. I hope we don't have to get there because it is really a very severe penalty for both the United States and for Mexico. It is a severe price to pay, but I do think that option unfortunately has to be real and viable because Mexico has simply not responded to less onerous threats. Both Mexico and the Central American countries together have been willing, unfortunately, to make their problems our problems. And that has to stop. One of the ways to stop that, if you're not (ph) willing to listen to reason, is to make it their problem. I would rather he go trade sanctions rather than physically closing the border. But, again, I understand why he has to at least -- at least threaten that very drastic action.</s>COOPER: Does it seem to you the administration has no coherent policy? Because, I mean, you have Secretary Nielsen down signing this agreement on Wednesday. The press release goes out on Thursday saying, in fact, we are working together and together is the way forward. And then the president on Friday undercutting all that work. I mean, this is not her first trip down there. Officials from this administration have gone down plenty of times to Central America and have talked, you know, openly about increasing involvement in Central America.</s>CORTES: Sure. No, listen, Anderson, I will certainly concede that seems inconsistent to me and I would prefer a more consistent policy. I'll also say this though. The situation is incredibly fluid. And in just recent weeks, it has grown so much worse. I think it's a demonstrable reality.</s>COOPER: But from a Wednesday to, you know, -- to a Wednesday and Thursday when you are announcing this policy to a Friday, nothing changed in those, you know, 12 hours or 24 hours.</s>CORTES: Sure, right. I think also, look, it is a vast government. It is a vast administration. Different parts have different agendas, and I think the president, though, ultimately is the boss over the executive branch and the person, the commander-in-chief, charged with controlling and protecting our border and protecting America. Here's the reality, is that these countries, you know, Secretary Johnson I think said this is a stereotype. Look, the reality is these are economic migrants who are coming to our country. The reason I know that is because according to Secretary Nielsen, 90 percent of the people historically from those three Central American countries who asked for asylum are not eligible. Right now, according to ICE, over the last six months, 92 percent of families have ignored -- who we have let in with asylum claims have ignored their deportation hearings. And on top of that, the violence in those countries, while severe, not trying to diminish the situation there, while it's severe, it is demonstrably less dangerous than it was in years previous. And yet, the number of people coming in, the influx is vastly increasing. Why? Because they figured out how to game our system and how to take advantage, quite frankly, of our goodwill. [20:20:0] Through an abundance of altruism, we welcome the world's oppressed. If they are truly oppressed for political or religious reasons, that's not the case here.</s>COOPER: Right. OK, a couple of things. First of all, if crime is down and things have gotten a little bit better, isn't USAID part of that policy which we have now cut off? I mean, you know, these programs, according to people in Homeland Security, were working. People on the FBI were working on these things. State department was working, USAID. You're arguing things are getting better. You can argue part of that was the money that the U.S. was investing in these programs. You also seem to be agreeing with Steven Miller and the president that it is all a con job, people applying for asylum. The administration has changed -- you're saying that the asylum claims are baseless. The administration has changed the justification for asylum. So fleeing domestic violence or fleeing gang violence, that's no longer valid, according to this administration, for gaining entry on an asylum claim.</s>CORTES: Well, it's also not valid, not just according to this administration, Anderson, but it's not asylum according to U.S. law. U.S. law is very clear on this. Look, a lot of Americans live in dangerous neighborhoods. I live in Chicago. The West Side of Chicago was a dangerous, violent place. We are not offering asylum to the kids on the West Side of Chicago. We shouldn't be offering asylum and by the way often very generous cash benefits to people who are fleeing a tough neighborhood in Honduras or Guatemala. That's not what asylum is about.</s>COOPER: Aren't police trying to offer safety to kids in all parts of Chicago? Isn't the government trying to offer safety to people?</s>CORTES: Of course. But my point is, just because people live in a tough neighborhood somewhere in the world, someplace that is violent, or someplace where economic opportunity is bereft, does not mean they can claim asylum and automatically come to the United States. Asylums are for people who are being persecuted because of who they are --</s>COOPER: OK.</s>CORTES: -- because of their sex, their ethnicity, their race, their political beliefs. It's not because they have tough conditions. I would also argue, by the way, that the right way for these countries to develop is not through USAID. It is not through the United States acting like Santa Claus. It's follow the model of other Latin countries that have problems -- places like Chile.</s>COOPER: You don't think USAID programs work at all?</s>CORTES: I'm not saying at all, but I'm saying it is not the real route to economic development.</s>COOPER: Does it slow the number of people coming, do you think, some of the USAID?</s>CORTES: We don't -- no. We don't have people from Chile crashing our border. Why? Because Chile has a system that has largely -- there is largely an absence of corruption and you have entrepreneurial capitalism and real growth. Same thing with Colombia which is formerly --</s>COOPER: OK. So you are saying these programs do not work to slow people from coming to prevent people, it doesn't give them opportunities that they might not otherwise have. So, you're fine with cutting off the aid?</s>CORTES: Look, I'm certainly fine with cutting off the aid as a punitive measure right now, because I think these countries need to cooperate more with helping us. Again, they're happy to transfer their problem to become our problem. Same thing with Mexico.</s>COOPER: There's no evidence the governments of these countries are sending their worst people. It's not like -- I mean, there's no evidence of that. We've got to go. Steve, appreciate it.</s>CORTES: I'll agree with that. I don't know where the president got that information.</s>COOPER: OK. Yes, I don't think anybody does. Steve, thank you very much. Coming up next, breaking news, new reporting how the allegations against Joe Biden may affect his possible run for president. There's new word on how he may be leaning. Also later, fresh insight to long standing questions about whether senior White House staffers got security clearances over the objections of professionals in the field Mick Mulvaney I guess would call it career staffers. House whistleblower, what that House whistleblower has to say, ahead.