Obama Official: "We'll Send You Back"; U.S-Mexico Penetrable 1,900-Mile Border
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Next breaking news, crisis in the Middle East, the Israeli government not backing down tonight from threat of all out war. Hamas issuing a new threat tonight. This time aimed at Israel's main airport. Plus the so-called "Call Girl Killer," the woman charged in connection with a Google executive's death is now being linked to get another death. We continue our reporting on that. And Lebron James heads home. His announcement sends shockwaves around the country. Let's go OUTFRONT. And good evening, everyone. I'm Erin Burnett. OUTFRONT tonight, the crisis on the border, President Obama sending a top surrogate his homeland security secretary to the U.S.-Mexico border to see the situation. Now this is a stop that a lot of people on both sides of the political aisle are saying that the president of the United States should be making. The president defended his decision saying this week that he is not interested in what he called photo ops. The Republicans have seized on that statement today tweeting this photo of the president meeting with a student in Austin, Texas. The caption says, Girl, I'm not interested in photo ops. The tweet from House GOP, a picture says a thousand words. Now we are going to discuss the political fallout shortly and whether the president is at this point just being stubborn in his decision to not visit the border. First, though, Ana Cabrera joins me now from Artesia, New Mexico where Secretary Jeh Johnson toured a temporary detention facility where currently 400 women and their children are. Ana was there. Ana, the president was not there. Obviously, the DHS secretary was, what did he do?</s>ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, really, he wants to send a message primarily to these immigrants and to the countries from which they are coming that if you come here, you will be detained and you will be deported. That is the administration's main focus right now, expedited repatriation. And he says that a facility like this, these temporary housing facilities that are allowing them to really hammer home that message. Because once the undocumented immigrants are here, they are held here the entire time as their legal case plays out. They're not getting a court date and sent on their way. They are held here until their fates are decided, Erin, and we learned since this facility opened back on June 27th that they already have established a group of immigrants who will be deported next week. Listen to what the secretary had to say.</s>SECRETARY JEH JOHNSON, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: The message has to be that our border is not open to legal migration and we are sending people back. And this is an example of that effort.</s>CABRERA: So again, they have a group that is going to be deported next week. They are trying to turn these case quickly. We know that the people who are staying here are video conferences with judges in order to play out those cases and the goal ultimately is to have their legal cases completed within two to four days of arrival. They say that is realistic now they have this more efficient system for processing and housing these undocumented immigrants.</s>BURNETT: Ana, the 400 women and children that we talked about that are behind you, what are they doing? I mean, are they -- do they have rooms in there? Are they just sitting in one central space? What are they doing?</s>CABRERA: It's a far cry from those detention centers we saw in Texas that were overwhelmed and overflowing there at the border. This is more like a college campus feel, Erin. We looked at their accommodations. They are staying in what looked like dorm rooms. They have bunk beds and televisions and shared bathrooms, but they are separated by gender and private. Shower areas with a lot of toys for the children to play with. Everybody is allowed to roam free on this 3,600-acre facility campus, but they are closely monitored and again they can't leave until their cases are completed. There is schooling for the children who are here however temporarily. Really what we were told by one ICE official is we want to treat these people with dignity and treat them humanely because this is America and that's how we treat people in America -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right, thank you very much. Ana Cabrera there. And the question is, when you think about the 400 women and children and you hear how she was describing they are being treated so well. The question is how many immigrants are actually coming across that border and what is the reality of the security there? So I want to go to Tom Foreman in the virtual studio. Because Tom, you know, all of a sudden, I mean, this issue is certainly becoming exponentially bigger of a problem. But it has been going since at least last fall, so how many people?</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How many people? That's a big question. Let's talk about the geography of the area. First, 1900 miles, that is roughly the length of the border here and it's far from impenetrable. We talk about this fence, the fence only covers about a third of it. Most of that is clustered off in the western half particularly near the urban areas and towns. And that's where you find 40 legal entry points. But in terms of illegal entries, now near Nogales, there's a lot of crossing over in that area. Arizona and New Mexico, where we saw Ana just moments ago. And down at the point of Texas right down there, there are a lot of crossing over there -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: So how many people are trying this every year?</s>TUCHMAN: Yes, that is exactly we get back to the basic question. How many people? Nobody actually knows how many. Look at this chart from the Department of Homeland Security as they looked at these numbers. You can see it has been falling off in terms of the number of people who have been actually apprehended or turned back near the border. There are a lot of reasons for that including the economy here not being so good as to draw as many in recent years. But in 2011, 750,000 people turned away, but nobody thinks that's just the people they know about. The actual number is much bigger. The latest estimate is 11 million people living in this country illegally, Erin, mostly from Central America.</s>BURNETT: And somewhere in Central America obviously that's a big area. Where are they coming from? And they are trying to treat these immigrants well, but have a so-called expedited repatriation process. What is expedited? How long does it take for one of these people who comes in to be sent home?</s>TUCHMAN: Let's talk about that in a second. Let me answer your first question, where are these people from? Well, most of the people who are in this country illegally about 59 percent are from Mexico. When you move further down to El Salvador, the percentages are lower, 6 percent. If you go down to Guatemala, it's 5 percent and Honduras, 3 percent. These areas are driving this latest rush as people are convinced if they can just get here or get their kids here, they can stay. And if you talk about this processing system to get them out, to a degree they're right because it has been clogged up. The average amount of time for processing someone has gone to around 500 days or more. That's a long time to be here. The idea of expediting it and get people out much, much quicker, is clearly, Erin, about sending a message with them. If they can get more of those people to go home to those places and say it doesn't work, that might take some of the pressure off the border -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right, Tom, thank you very much. And this is obviously putting a lot of scrutiny on the president and how he has handled this crisis. Some have called this his Katrina moment. Joining me OUTFRONT, our political panel, our Democratic strategist, Maria Cardona and Matt Lewis, conservative commentator who writes for "The Daily Caller." OK, great to have both of you with us. Maria, let me start with what Tom just said there. 500 days. That is appalling.</s>MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I agree. And I think the focus needs to be to try to get that to be a lot faster. And Erin, the money that President Obama has asked for this Congress is exactly to do just that. So that the processing especially of these young children and of these women can be a lot quicker. But at the same time, make sure that they do have their due process because as you know, a lot of these kids are coming from places that they could -- their lives could be in danger if they go back. This is incredibly heart-breaking situation. As an immigrant myself and as someone who worked at INS under the Clinton administration, this really hits home. So it is appalling to me when the president is trying to focus on solutions and Republicans are balking at what he's asked for, number one, and number two, for more than a year and a half, have refused to do anything to pass real comprehensive immigration reform, which could have mitigated a lot of this in the first place.</s>BURNETT: I want to ask you about that, Matt. But first, I want to get your reaction to what Ana was reporting. We saw the pictures of the dorm rooms. The facilities she is at tonight, dorm rooms, toys, schooling for the kids, a collegial experience and these people could be here for a very long time. When you see that is that something that you are glad of and proud of or do you think that conditions as good, quote/unquote, "as those are" encourage more people to come?</s>MATT LEWIS, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: I'm proud of it. I wish we had conditions that good in Texas. I substantive agree with Jim Johnson on this. I think we have to humane in how we treat these young folks. Imagine how bad it must be in their country for their parents to send them with coyotes across Mexico in hopes for a better life. But it's we have to honor the rule of law. And I have to agree that when they're sent back hope Friday it will send a message that it's not worth taking the chance.</s>BURNETT: Matt, you sound like you are sitting here defending the president, a president who has said clearly, you could get killed coming here and when you do we're going to send you home. He has been humane but not soft on this issue. He has set records in terms of the number of people he has deported.</s>LEWIS: I think that the situation, the mess is a bipartisan problem but I think President Obama bears a lot of blame as well. Some of which is, I mean, just in terms of leadership and symbolism I believe he should have gone to the border in Texas. That's not show biz or a photo op, hat is called leadership. George Bush should have gone to Katrina immediately as far as I'm concerned. And I think that President Obama should send the National Guard to the border immediately and that's something he has the power to do. But substantively speak we need to be humane and compassionate, but we have to send the message it's not worth taking the chance.</s>BURNETT: Maria, to Matt's point, why not go to the border. Let's just be honest, presidents do things for photo ops all the time. The president has gone to Afghanistan and Iraq and given press conferences in primetime. He had done that for the visual power of it. Why fight doing it now? When people on both sides of the aisle are saying go to the border.</s>CARDONA: I actually do think he should go and I hope that he will. But he didn't necessarily have to go last week when the focus was all on Governor Perry saying he should go and the focus would have been political and it takes a lot of resources when the president travels and at that moment and we're in that moment right now every resource at the border needs to be focused on taking care of these children. I'm glad I'm hearing matt saying what he is saying. I hope he talks to his Republican colleagues to say instead of sending out stupid tweets and making stupid lawsuits on this president, show some leadership and work with the president to get this solved. I think the American people deserve that.</s>BURNETT: We're going to leave it there. Thanks to both of you. Interesting argument for why the president maybe shouldn't have gone to the border. The first I've heard that, pretty convincing. Up next, breaking news, American Airlines afraid that commercial planes should could be caught in the cross fire in Israel. Wolf Blitzer is in the scene in Jerusalem and going to talk about how dangerous that situation is. Plus new allegations against the price prostitute link to a Google executive's death. Police are believing that a prostitute could be linked to multiple additional deaths. And one year after George Zimmerman was found not guilty, CNN talks to the child's most controversial witness.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: George Zimmerman not a man. That still a little boy with a grown body.