Transcripts For KQED Firing Line With Margaret Hoover 20240714

I would sign an executive order th would get rid of trump zerotolerance policy, the remain in mexico policy, and the metering policy. But will any of this deliver him the votes . The democrats wt open borders, they want anybody they want, inuding ms13, pouring into the country. What does Julian Castro say now . Firing line with marret hoover is made possible by. Additional funding is provided by. Corporatfunding is provided by. Secretary castro, welcome ring line. Thanks for having me. You were the youngest memberf resident obamas cabinet when you became the secretary for housing and urban development. And you were also the mayornt of sanio, and now youre running to be your partys nominee for the presidency to take on donald trump. And much like donald tru, the key issue that has distinguished you from your peers in that consideration set is immigration. Though i think its safe to say that your stances on immigration are considerably different from Donald Trumps. If quite arent vision for it, yeah. Why have you made immigration your key issue . Really, two reasons. First of all, thank h u very mr having me. There are two reasons for that. Number one, this is an issue thats close to my heart. I grew up with a grandmother who had come over from mexicoen he was 7 years old. She worked her whole life as a maid, a cook, and a babysitt cause shed only gotten a 3rd or 4thgrade education. And to think, just two generations after my grandmother got here with almost nothing that one of her grandsons, my brother, joaquin, is a meer of the United States congress and the other one is running for president of the United States. Thats america. Thats our country. And the second reason is more political. Its that this president clearly believes that hes gonna win this election on the backs of immigrants, by scapegoating them. Da he has a ver heart when it comes to immigration and immigrants. And i want to give people a positive, alternative vision of what we can do to get immigration right. Lets talk about the border. cause that seems to be ground zero of the immigration debates right now. Theres a crisis at thborder. Do you agree . I believe that theres a crisis of leadership, sure. Do you believe that theres a crisis, though, at the border . If there is, its because this president has helped create that. Ill give you a great example of that. Theyve enacted a policy called metering, ngich basically means that theyre plaames with people who come to our ports of entry, who want to claim asylum. Yeah. About a month ago now, there was a father and a ughter who died trying to cross the rio grande river, car martinez and his daughter, valeria. They triedo make that trek across the river because they had been waiting for weeks at one of those ports of entry and had been denied the ability to make their asylum claim. En so this preshas made this situation at the border so much worse than it has to be. However, meteringegin under the Obama Administration. Well, not in e numbers that you have today, right . I dont believe that we shouldam be playing with people who want to make their asylum claim, right . Ar and so this isof the thing part of the policy that i would change. You really distinguished yourself in the first debate by drawing a contrast between a fellow texan and yourself. Id like to take a look at that clip. The reason that theyre separating these little children from their familiesr is that thusing section 1325 of that act, which criminizes coming across the border, to incarcerate the parents and then separate them. Some of us on this stage have called to end that section, to terminate i some, like congressman orourke, have not. And i want to challenge all of the candidates to do that. I just think its a mistake, beto. I think its a mistake. I helped to introduce legislation that would ensure that we dont criminalize those who are seeking asylum and refuge in this country. Fl if youring if youre fleeing desperation, then i want to make sure. Im talking about everybody else. Im still talking about everybody else. But youre looking at just one small part of this. Im talking about a comprehensive rewr of our Immigration Laws. Thats not true. To and if we do that, i dont think its askinmuch for people to follow our laws when they come to this country. Im talking about millions of folks a lot of folks that are coming are not seeking asylum. Of a lohem are undocumented immigrants. Howd it feel thave moment like that on the stage . Well, i felt good about it because it was about policy. It wasnt about personality. I think what people could appreciate was, that was sort of the apex of what these debates should be about, an exchange of ideas, argument about the direction that we should go in, in this case with regard to immigration policy. So, 1325 is the section of the Immigration Law thasays that crossing the border in an unauthorized way is a crime. Is a misdemeanor. Its a misdemeanor. You are for entirely decriminalizing crossings. Yeah, i want to treat these the way that we treated them during the Ronald Reagan era, the bill clinton era. This law was put into place in 1929, but until about 2004 in the george w. Bush administration, it wasnt treated as a crime. It was treated as a civil matter. So thenoes that mean repealing the law, or does that mean just prosecuting it differently . I dont want to rely on the prosecutorial discretion in other words, the goodwill. Of a future administrati inwant to help guarantee that no future atration is gonna weaponize that sectionw 1325a of thehe way that this administration has done. I guess what im getting at, though, is, isnt this the problem, really, isnt 1325h problem is the Trump Administrations zerotolerance policy, and what i hear you r ying is, you dont want 1325 there so that anotump administration in the future has the ability to implementd or re law in as draconian of way, in your view, t as presidemp has. Thats right. And i also recognize that 1325 is unnecessary, because reagan didnt use it, because bill clinton didnt really use it. Because for 70, 60 years, these administrations didnt use it even though it was there. So, heres whats interesting to me. I mean, as soon as you said this right . The next night, the majority of democraticandidates came out and aligned themselves with your position. Whats so interesting to me about the way this debate developing in this contemporary moment is how different it is from democrats in the past. I want to show you a clip just to help you see that point that all americans, not only in the states most heavily affectea but in every in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. Illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple. Protecting Public Safety and deporting dangerous criminals has been and will remain, the top priori but we are going to refocus our efforts where we can to me sure we do what it tak to keep our borders secure. What has change in the last few years . Well, one thing thats changed is donald trump. So, hes made it possible for policy on the left look to become more progressive i response to his restrictionism. Ait. In response to his utter crueltl to lchildren and to their mothers and fathers. The family serations ure referring to. In response to his racism, his bigotry, his outright appeal to white identity. Mmhmm. Theres something thats been going on for t last four years since he launched his campaign. Hes the biggest identityan politihat weve seen over the last 50 years. So hes created a backlash. He has created a backlash. Hes created, i think, a consciousness in a lot of people about the fact that, you know, we can do this a lot better. Were those democrats previous wrong . I think that, yeah, theres no question that we could do things better, right . You know, people dont always start off where we should be in the beginning. But, hey, i would certainly choose the people that are improving and want to go in the right direcon over this president. So, on your policy,ng if border cros are decriminalized, at what point in the process does it become a crime . Crossing the border would not be treated as a crime unless and i pointed this out in the deboke. If youre humantrafficking, if youre weaponstrafficking, if youre ugtrafficking, that is a separate crime. Then youre gonna be charged with a crime. What about not showing up for your court date . If you dont show up on yr court date, then, yes, there are consequences. And its a crime. For instance, if you have a spding ticket, for instanc and you fail to appear in court, peatedly fail to appear in court, then, yes, that can turn into a crime. So, there is no disincentive to comhere, in other words. You dont want any disincentive in the process for people to come. No, i mea i disagree. The disincentive that somebody is still subject to deportation. Somebody is still subject to everything except that misdemeanor. And this is the way that we treated it for 60 years, 70 years. Theres somewhere between 10 million and 11 million unauthorized immigrants who are living amongst many of them as americans, have been raised here. We know many of them ourselves. What is your plan for them . I would put them,on asas they havent committed a serious crime, on a pathway to citizenship that they can earn. Theres a new npr and pbs poll thats just out, d it suggests that decriminalizing border crossings is not particularly popular. Only 27 of respondents overall think that decriminalizing the border is a good deal, but 45 of democrats think so. More americans believe that our current levels of immigration are fine andhouldnt be changed dramatically. So, youre in a eat position for a democratic primary utt not for a general election. How do you think ahat . Well, i think that im gonna try and lead, not follow. And so, you know, even if you dont agree with mep i think i haven that will get us to a place where wectually are seeing less people ming to the border. And i have faith that enough people out there, no matter b what thekground is, that they are repulsed by how they see this preside treating these migrants and they see that i have a better plan to dea this than this president does. Because his plan has completely failed. I believe that, come election time, there are gonna be a lot of folks that remember that. v heard you say that your policy is not open borders. Help me undersnd help the viewers understand. To say that my policy is open borderson is to say thatd reagan had the same policy, to say that bill clinton had that policy, because that law, section 1325, was not enforced. So, basically, they were treating this as a civil violation. We should be clear that, under the civil violation, people are still subject to deportation, they still have to show up for their Court Appearances. If they repeatedly dont show up for eir Court Appearances, then it can become a crime. But then, how do we know if they for their Court Appearances . I mean, as you know, theres this policy called catch and release,h, wh believe, youre against detaining people, right . Youre against detention. Yeah. So thats a great question. How do we actually do that . At the end of ce Obama Administration, they had somethiled a family case monitoring program, and this program basically invested in sort of a caseworker model to closely keep tabs and follow and keep in touch with the folkr that were out that needed to come back for their court appointments. And it had a 90something percent success rate. And so and would the majority of those people,if hey came across the border illegally, be deported . If somebo came across the border undocumented . Yeah, in an undocumented way. Thats a great questi most people most of the people right now who are asking for asylum are not granted asylum. Mmhmm. Most of the people wh come over and are undocumented, some of them are able to apply for some sort of visath or means that allows them to stay here, but the vast majority of folks are not able to stay her so, does that mean they would be deported . T re would still be deportations in the future, of course, sure. S who gported, then . How do you decide who gets on a pathway to staying here and who gets deported . Well, i mean, in the past, the way that tt was decided was with a timeframe. If you had gotten here before a certain date, then you would be on a pathway to citizenship. And when i think about the future and how we would deal deth legislation on this or an executive thats the way that i think about it. Which is. . E uld handle it with a date certain. If somebody was here before aertain date, then you would put them into this category of folks who would be on a pathway to citizenship. And so everybody coming across the border right now, crossing in an unauthorized way, would they be subject to deportation . Well, it depends on what the date is that we would negotiate with congress. Yeah, its possible, sure. So, its not that you would vertise that theres a date. But certainly, if you advertise it as a date right . Its like its the way conservatives criticized barack obama from knowing when people are going to withdraw from afghanistan. If you know theres a date, people could rush the border before then so they could get across it. It just seems like there are a lot of variables. Yeah, i think the way that its been thought of before is, okay. Some amount time where people came and they established themselves, they were here for a little bit of time,ast. So what that date is, i mean, i wouldnt say right now,en but thatsally the way the framework that weve used in instructing legislation, and i imagine that would be the approach in the future. Youve criticized the conditions of the detainees during the Trump Administration. We have seen photos that hav of these Detention Centers that have been deeply troubling. But i want to show you some other pictures. Similar images of people crowding in detention falities with mylar blankets around them, in suboptimal conditio and theyre images, you can see right here, from the Obama Administration. Yeah, no, and ive seen those. The Obama Administration, frankly, deported 3 Million People in the course of eight years. And it even earned president obama the sort of pejorative deporter in chief, to the extent that donald trump has deported less people. How do you think about that now . Well, two things. First of all, yeah, i dont care whether were talking about Democratic Administrations or republican administrations, what i want to make sure of is that people are treated with a basic level of respect and humanely and with common sense and compassion instead of cruelty. The Obama Administration d get better over time. There were less deportations. There was daca. But, you know, i think its also clear that, in a future administration, we can do things a lot better than the Trump Administration and do things better than the Obama Administration when it comes to thi youve said and this is a quote i have learned the lessons of the past. It seems Vice President biden hasnt. Whatd you mean by that . Well, that was conversation about section 1325 of the immigration nationality act. And i acknowledge that we can do things in a better way than weve done them in the past, whether were talking about a Democratic Administration a epublican administration. And ive laid out a plan for how i would dom that if esident. And i hope that everybody will learn tho lessons. Yeah, well, 2013 was a real shame and a miss because the United States Congress Passed Senate Passed a bipartisan immigration bill, which would certainly fall short of your standard today, but in the process of sausagemaking, nobodys happy. And it mig have moved the ball forward had the Republican House been willing to vote on it. And i wonder what you think about the role of assimilation as part of that debate. How do you think about assimilation . E reason i ask you, mr. Secretary, is because you are from a texas family. You didnt immigrate. Your grandmother did. And i think the role of assimilation really could ameliorate some of the understandable concerns that some americans have in the immigration debatesr what is iew . I think that assimilation happens, right . I mean, my family a good example of that. There are plenty of other families of over the years, the generations of people from Different Countries that have come here. Thats the thing. I think theres a misimpression among a lot of americans about whether individuals who immigrate, whether documented or undocumented, want to learn english, want to fully participate in american life. Th i mean, ey love the country. My grandmotherearned to speak english. Nobody was forcing her to speak english, but she wanted to learn how to speak english. Right. And the flip side is, they raised you speaking english, right . Because they wanted you to speak english. What i dont get that a lot of people assume the opposite. They assume that folks want to be cliquish and that they dont want to embrace, whether its learning english or other things. I dont think anything could be further from the truth. In 1977, william f. Buckley jr. Had on this program the governor laja, and he was governor roberto dadrid, and they were discussing one of the elements that actually you talk aboutin our immigration plan, one of the key ideas behind it. Lets take a look. By which we can sell our products in the unit states and, therefore, create jobs and industry in mexico. So, what this concept gets at is, the reason people are coming to the United States is for economic opportunity, and one of the things youve discussed in your platform is a Marshall Plan for latin america, right . What youre trying to get at by the way, its not mexico anymore. Were dealing with the t northeangle el salvador, honduras, guatemala, these other countries in latin america where there is an economic pull to come here. Tell us, what is a Marshall Plan for latin america . It means partnering, investinin a mutually beneficial way so that people can find opportunity there and be safe there so they dont ha to desperately come to the United States trying to find those things. Of course, it means, are there ways that we can see investment that create opportunity fo people there that also benefit the United States . As you know, we have foreign aid that we deliver to the Central American countries. We have the Central American Regional Security initiative. T i think we need to amp t and that we need to focus, as well, on economic opportunity. The economy has essentiay been climbing in those three countries for the last couple of years and crime has gone down in those three countries, as well. How do you square that with the influx of immigration at the southern bord . I dont know that in those countries that that has been evenly distribud. Just like the United States, right . Ty you took a look at where economic opportuappens in the United States, there are some places that have prospered a lot more than others. And when you get to thesplaces that these folks are coming from in these countries, Central American countes, a lot of them are deeply impoverished, Rural Communities in central america. So i think that a more nuanced analis would reveal that a lot of the folks who are coming are desperate for economic opportunity. Theres nothing for them right now. After the president ial debates i just want to go back and put t on one part. On the second night, they askedr about healthice plans and if their healthinsurance plans would cover unauthorized immigrants. And every single person, the 10 people on the stage, raised their hands. The New York Post ran a cove the next day, with everybody raising their hand, and the captn was, who wants to los the election . Is that policy the real question there is, is that policy a generalelection policy, one that can wfo a general election . I believe so. I mean, is the picy of threatening nuclear war to another country on twitter a policyin that can general election . Is the policy of putting kids on the floor, not giving them soap or a toothbrush or putting men behind rs and not giving them something to eat, is that a policy that can win the general election . Look, were already giving undocumented immigrants healthcare. re giving it to them in the most expensive place, which is the emergency room. So, do the taxpayers ever st say, youre already paying for their healthcare, and youre paying it fward in the most expensive way . If we want to do it in a smarter way, what we would do is actually allow them right now to buy into the healthcare exchanges and engage in Preventative Care so that we dont have to end up footing the bill. Bernie sanders is 33 years older than you. Biden is 32 years older than you. Is it time for a new generation to lead . Well, what i hear out there when i go to iowa,sh new hae, my home state of texas, california, is that people want a new generation of leadership. They want new ideas. They want a new approach. I will s i mean, i dont think its necessarily only about age. I think its about a new face and new ideas. I actually believe that the most important thing for voters t sort through is somebodys judgment. Doesnt matter whether 3 youyears old or youre 88 years old, what kind of judgment haveou demonstrated . Thats why i would say i mean, this president is 73 years old now . But take a look at his judgment threatening people over twitter, nuclear war, ying hes gonna wipe afghanistan off the face of the earth. Just bad judgment. Doesnt matter how young or old you are. You say sanders even though sanderss is 33 yeder than you, he has had some new ideas and hes certainly infused the Democratic Party with new ideas, certainly last time around, but hes been critical of you. He was critical of you when you were hud secretary. He wasnt paying his staff5 the requisite nimum wage on his campaign. I mean, what do you thin about that . Well, i mean, i hope that he ends up paying his staffers the 15, right . All i know is what were doing. I promise that i would pay everybody at least a minimum wage of 15 r an hour, aht now, were in negotiations with the Campaign Workers guild, which is the union that represents our Campaign Workers, and we want to make sure that we get to this point where we have an agrment that is locksolid, where were absolutely abiding by it. So, yeah, im focused on my campaign there. I hope all campaigns will do that. I had no idea political campaigns could be unionized. Ma ive been in the wrong party. But, you know, i will say that it makes sense because t so many se staffers you know, i mean, you have covered campaigns. Youve been around campaigns. Ive been on campaigns. Thats the direction that these campaigns are going in. And why not . How do you handicap your own chances . Getting better. [ chuckles ] like, i know that, right now, im not near the front of the pack, but my vision for this campaigne has alwaysto get stronger and stronger and stronger, not to be flashinthepan candidate. And i started out, whether it was fundrsing or polling, and i was way at the back of the pack, and now im starting to come up into the middle of the pack. And i believe that im gonna do well again in the next debate eband i can do well in thee after that and so forth. And by the time we get d, february when the iowa caucus is, that i can be one of the front runners in the race. Whatyour strategy for the next debate . You know, i want to speak to the american peop about where we need to go in this country and talk about the contrast with Donald Trumps and folot on that. More immigration . I think thats inevitable because thats a hot topic, and trump has made it a hot topic, and im glad to talk about. Will you challenge biden on decriminalization . I think thatll probably come i dont think im gonna have a choice. I mean, i think people are gonna ask this question. Surelike, i have whatever happens in this campaign, im not gonna shy away from standing up for what i think is right for the country and doing right by the people who have been hurt by this president. Ye so i absolutely will defend that. Snd ill make the contrast clear, whether i with Vice President biden or with anybody else. Jian castro, thank you ve much for coming on firing line. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Firing line with Margaret Hoover is made possibley. Adtional funding is provid by. Rp ate funding is provided by. Youre watching p. Hello and welcome to amanpour company. Heres whats coming up. As foreign minister boris johns loose lips sunk the hopes of a british citiz imprisoned in iran. As prime minister, can he handle the csis with iran inhe persian gulf . T ialk to jack straw, t former foreign minister. I dont know what to do. 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