Mother and Daughter Reunited After 60 Days Apart
CABRERA: Such an emotional reunion. A 7-year-old girl is now back in her mother's arms. Hugs and kisses, tears of joy after 60 long days apart. This little girl named Yana is from Guatemala. She was held in Michigan hundreds of miles away from her mother. Watch as Yana and her mother reunite today in Miami. Let's get right to CNN's Kaylee Hartung now. We can't take our eyes off these pictures, Kaylee. You were there in that moment. What have you learned about this family?</s>KAYLEE HARTUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Ana. We witnessed this intensely emotional experience between mother and daughter right here in the Miami International Airport a short while ago. You saw Yana embrace her mother for the first time in 60 days. Very hesitant to let go. Other family members here as well. That's how Buena Ventura ended up here in Miami after crossing the border from Guatemala. I want to give you some context, through, to this family's story so you better understand the emotions of this moment and what they have experienced over the past 60 days. It was on May 1st that Buena and her husband made the decision for her to take their infant son and head to the U.S. border in hopes of finding a better life for their family. The plan was for father and daughter Yana to stay behind to let her finish her schoolwork for the year. But just a week later, they followed, too. By the time they, though, got to the U.S. border, the policy here had changed and that father-daughter unit was separated. So while Buena had made her way here to Miami to be with family members after being detained for a while in Arizona, she comes to find out her daughter has been sent to Michigan, her husband to Georgia. The process of reunification very difficult for this family as you can imagine. Buena was allowed to speak to her daughter on the phone once a day for just a few minutes. And her daughter telling her that her head hurt, that she didn't feel well. Come to find out she suffered a tooth infection while being held in Michigan, adding to the helplessness that this mother felt away from her daughter. You saw those tears. But we also saw laughter today as there was an agreement that Yana would get her favorite pizza tonight for dinner back together with her family. Buena also made the point of saying there is sadness here because this family is not yet whole. Her husband still being held in a detention facility in Georgia, his fate in this country still yet known. And another piece of emotion that Buena was able to share with us was her message for other mothers. As I said, they came here hoping for a better life for their family. She says to other families who are seeking refuge, find another country. She said don't come to the United States. The laws here are too harsh and people here don't have a heart. That is the feeling of this mother as she is reunited with her daughter.</s>CABRERA: The impact and a bittersweet moment obviously. Kaylee Hartung, thank you for sharing their story. It has become a desperate rallying cry in the nation's immigration fight. Families belong together. But bringing families back together, like Yana and her mother, is proving to be rather complicated. We still don't know exactly how many children have been separated. The reunification plan and whether parents and children even know where to find each other. The Trump administration now has less than a month to reunite families separated at the border and less than two weeks for children under 5. Judge's orders. As the administration sorts out reunifications, Democrats have a rallying cry of their own. Abolish ICE. Will this idea go mainstream and is it an effective strategy? Let's talk it over with CNN's presidential historian, Tim Naftali, former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, and Harry Enten, CNN Politics senior writer and analyst. So, Harry, let me start with you. I mean, President Trump is trying to tie all Democrats to this issue, this idea of abolishing ICE. Good strategy for him?</s>HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: I think it's a decent strategy. I don't know if it's a good strategy. There's been very limited polling on ICE, whether or not it should be abolished or not. But it's certainly something that the -- the Democratic Party, yes, there are some people like Senator Gillibrand who is saying, yes, we should do that. But if you talk to, say, other Democrats, it's not so clear. So this is a good issue at least to divide Democrats on. That's the concern.</s>CABRERA: Even Tammy Duckworth this morning was saying she didn't think that that was the way to go because if you have this same administration in place with the same policies, abolishing ICE isn't going to make a big difference.</s>ENTEN: Correct. Senator Dick Blumenthal of Connecticut said the exact same thing. So this is something to divide the Democratic Party, which is not something they want heading into this midterm election.</s>CABRERA: Tim, could this backfire on Dems?</s>TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: It certainly could backfire on Democrats because what the president would like Americans to believe is the Democrats believe in open borders and don't believe in following the rules. Here's the problem in my humble estimation. The zero tolerance policy does not accept the idea of refugee. You come into this country illegally, in other words, without a visa, without permission, and you are going to be treated in a very harsh way. Let's not forget where ICE and the Customs and Border Patrol Organizations come from. They're a product of the war on terror. They were important and necessary creations. 19 people from outside this country came into this country, and on 9/11 caused havoc and death.</s>CABRERA: And you bring up a good point because ICE was just created in 2003, post-9/11.</s>NAFTALI: Yes. But its organizational behavior, its patterns, its targets, the work it does, it's all linked to counterterrorism and work against narco terrorism. Absolutely necessary. We shouldn't get rid of ICE. The problem is the way in which it's being used to deal with refugees. It's not the right organization to be used to deal with the problem of refugees. And our government -- that includes Congress -- and the courts have to recognize what the world recognizes, which is there are refugees, and they have to be treated differently from criminals who are trying to come into our country to commit crimes. And that's not what's happening. So ICE is the symptom. It's not the problem. The White House's policy is the problem.</s>CABRERA: Now ICE becoming this sort of political football of sorts. I mentioned Tammy Duckworth a little bit ago. She had a warning to Democrats of going this direction. Listen.</s>SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D), ILLINOIS: You can't win the White House without the Midwest, and I don't think that you can go too far to the left and still win the Midwest, coming from a Midwestern state. I think you need to be able to talk to the industrial Midwest. You need to listen to the people there in order to win an election nationwide.</s>CABRERA: So, Harry, you touched on this earlier. But could immigration, specifically ICE but even more broadly, become a major issue dividing Democrats?</s>ENTEN: Absolutely. And it's something that more than divides Democrats, unifies Republicans. Donald Trump won the White House in large part -- at least he won the primary in large part because of his stance on immigration. And if you look at the exit polls in 2016, you saw the exact same thing. Those people who said that immigration was their most important issue went overwhelmingly for Donald Trump while on the Democratic side, look, Tammy Duckworth is no person who is in the center. She's no moderate. She's pretty far to the left. So the idea that she's against this, to me, indicates that, yes, this could be a problem for Democrats going forward.</s>CABRERA: You talk about some of the history as well when it comes to immigration. And so I'm going to just bring this up because we're looking at border apprehensions, and they have actually been largely going down. Most recent peak here was in 2000. 1.6 million apprehensions that year. And since 2010, really we've seen year after year, less than 500,000 border apprehensions. Do you think -- does this speak to Trump's ability as a messenger to create this narrative that this country has a major immigration crisis?</s>NAFTALI: No -- well, I don't -- look, I think part of the problem here is that we're not actually talking about why we have this migrant flow. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are in crises. These three countries. These people are not coming from Mexico. In fact, illegal immigration from Mexico has dropped way down. It was high in the '90s because Mexico went through an economic crisis. There's a crisis in three Central American countries. There's a way to manage this. It's not easy, but it's manageable. In other words, we go and we work with those three countries. We work with Mexico. We say to Mexico, these people are coming through your country. How can we help them? How can we help these people stay in their homes? And how can we deal with this as an international humanitarian problem? If we focus on it that way rather than thinking of these people as future, possible terrorists, I think we might be able to deal with it. Thinking about it just in terms of numbers, yes, the numbers are dropping, but there is a humanitarian crisis happening in those three countries. Most of the migrants are coming from three Central American countries. There was a time when our country had foreign policy and when we realized that working on problems abroad, before they came here, was the way of dealing with some of these challenges. We're not doing that now. President Trump could send the Secretary of State, Pompeo, to these three countries to talk to their leaders and say, we have a problem here.</s>CABRERA: Well, he did send Kirstjen Nielsen there. She was there, as well as the Vice President, just recently --</s>NAFTALI: Yes, and although --</s>CABRERA: -- in fact, this past week.</s>NAFTALI: But she is an -- she symbolizes a different part of the policy. Let's send our Secretary of State. Let's send someone to talk government to government and see how we can help together manage this problem. In the meanwhile, the numbers are dropping. There isn't a crisis on the border, but there are 600,000 people -- between 400,000 and 600,000 people who want to come through the southwestern border. That's still a lot of people.</s>CABRERA: Right, right.</s>NAFTALI: And there are folks in Arizona and Texas who worry about it.</s>CABRERA: All right. Guys, thank you very much for both of your input. Harry Anton, Tim Naftali. Up next, he has been called anti-establishment, country first, someone who knows how to draw a large crowd. No, I'm not talking about Donald Trump but, rather, the man running to his -- to be his Mexican counterpart. Live in Mexico City in just minutes.