Interview with Rep. Jerry Nadler.
TRUMP: I am going to create a new special deportation task force focused on identifying and quickly removing the most dangerous criminal, illegal immigrants in America who have evaded justice, just like Hillary Clinton has evaded justice, OK? Maybe they'll be able to deport her.</s>CUOMO: Donald Trump slamming Hillary Clinton during his major immigration speech last night. Clinton hitting back, calling Trump's speech the darkest yet and accusing him of, quote, "pitting people against each other and demonizing immigrants." Let's discuss with Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler. He's endorsed Hillary Clinton. Congressman, it's good to see you.</s>REP. JERRY NADLER (D), NEW YORK: Good to see you.</s>CUOMO: The problem is real. Donald Trump, yes, the celebrity, yes, the media hype, but him grabbing this issue with both hands catapulted his candidacy early on. It's a problem. People think not enough has been done. And that is the momentum here. Isn't that a fact, that there is a real problem, it hasn't been handled the way it needs to be?</s>NADLER: Well, I don't know that. There is a problem, but we have been -- a lot of -- we have been doing a lot of things. Unfortunately, deportations under this administration are way up from what they were before. We have increased our border security budget, I think, by something like 1,400 percent in the last...</s>CUOMO: You say "unfortunately." Why unfortunately?</s>NADLER: Because I don't think there -- I think there have been too many deportations. But that's a different question. But we have -- we have been enforcing the law much more rigorously than previously.</s>CUOMO: But you still have, by a shallow estimate, about 6 million people in this country who have criminal records of one kind or another that are undocumented.</s>NADLER: I think 6 million is way, way overboard. You can get up -- the question was how...</s>CUOMO: Well, wait. Six million is overstayed visas and the criminal stuff. But so let's play with that number because the -- but that's a lot of people, you know?</s>NADLER: The number of people with any kind of serious crimes is in the tens of thousands, not the millions, No. 1. No. 2, this kind of scapegoating, I mean, Donald Trump made it sound -- he's scapegoating immigrants. He's making it sound like you have millions of illegal immigrants, undocumented aliens who are criminals running around, rapists, murderers. He had people there whose kids were victims. But the fact is that undocumented aliens commit less crime -- fewer crimes per capita than native American -- than people who are here. It is not -- immigration enforcement may be a problem, but it is not a criminal problem. Because the people who are here without documents commit crimes at a much lower rate or a substantially lower rate than people who are in...</s>CUOMO: Look, we've heard this argument also, that what happened to Katie Steinle is the exception, not the rule, that that's an unfair standard...</s>NADLER: You could take...</s>CUOMO: ... to point out. But you still have 6 million people who have cheated the system and are here. How is that a way of looking at it as success?</s>NADLER: Let me just say this. This kind of bigoted approach, you could take five or six people whose kids were victimized by Jewish criminals or Irish criminals or black criminals or Italian criminals and say the Italians, or the Jews or the blacks or somebody else is the problem. That is appealing to rank bigotry. You're scapegoating the foreigners, especially the Mexicans who are here, and saying they're the cause of the crimes. They're not.</s>CUOMO: Do you think that Hillary Clinton should have gone to Mexico?</s>NADLER: Well, I think as secretary of state, she was in Mexico many times, as she was in a lot of other...</s>CUOMO: But do you think it was a mistake for her to allow Trump to play to advantage, going down there, and making this appeal that he can be presidential?</s>NADLER: No, I mean, the fact is that he went down there because he has shown no ability to be presidential. He made a -- tried to sound reasonable for a few minutes with the president of Mexico and then comes back here and makes a blood-curdling speech, being as irresponsible and as bigoted as ever.</s>CUOMO: Why is it bigoted?</s>NADLER: It's bigoted, because you're blaming a group of people for larger crimes. It's exactly the same thing as the fascists did in Europe. The problems were all because of the Jews. Here, the problems are all because of the Mexicans. The problems were all because of Irish in the 1850s and an anti- -- an anti-immigrationist era in the 1840s and '50s. The No Nothings, it was all the -- the country's being destroyed by the Irish immigrants. It's the same thing. You blame all the problems on a group of people who are not responsible for those problems. Yes, there are people who commit crimes who are here illegally, who are here improperly. But most crimes are committed by people who are here.</s>CUOMO: Another stick that he swung during his speech last night was about Clinton's own problems with the law. Obviously, he's talking about the foundation. He's talking about the e-mails. Do you believe that she's handled that situation well enough, or do you believe that's why it's dogging her in the polls?</s>NADLER: Well, I think she's done what she could. About the e-mails, she said she made a mistake. She's apologized for that. There's nothing else you can say, really. The FBI investigated, said that there were no crimes. And that's it. Now, the fact of the matter is, the Republicans, and Trump in particular these days, but the Republicans for 30 years have been bringing up alleged scandal after scandal: Whitewater, Travelgate, Benghazi, that have proven, after millions of dollars of investigations, not to be anything. That she did nothing wrong in Benghazi; she did nothing wrong in those other things. But you throw enough mud against the wall, some get the basic impression she's untrustworthy.</s>CUOMO: You're not concerned by the foundation overlap of what happened as secretary of state?</s>NADLER: Well, I think that the foundation has now announced extraordinary steps that will happen starting immediately, especially if she's elected president. The foundation, remember, is a foundation. I mean, Trump said that she's benefitting from this, that there's pay-to-play. The foundation is not an income-producing thing. Foundation has been a tremendous charitable benefit, saved millions of lives of people with AIDS and other things in Africa and other places. And has she met with people who were donors to the foundation? Yes. As secretary of state, she meets with a lot of people. She met with Elie Wiesel. He's a donor to the foundation. She met with a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- I think it was Peace Prize, Nobel Prize winner whose donation -- who's a donor to the foundation. They're donating to a major charity, and she would meet with these people in any event.</s>CUOMO: Congressman Jerry Nadler, appreciate you making the case from the Clinton perspective.</s>NADLER: Thank you.</s>CUOMO: It's good to have you here -- Alisyn.</s>CAMEROTA: All right. He has not minced words about Donald Trump in the past and yesterday right here on NEW DAY. So up next, former Mexican president, Vicente Fox, reacts to Trump's immigration plan as well as his visit to Mexico.