CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York
Interview
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COOPER: Rosa Flores, I appreciate the report. Thank you.
As we said, children taken from their parents are now spending their nights not just apart from them but sometimes several thousand miles apart, approximately here in New York state. Today, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo visited one such facility in the New York City area. He joins us now from Albany.
So, Governor, the facility that you tour, what were you able to see and what were you actually able to find out about the kids there?
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: Well, Anderson, the -- first, it's a hodgepodge to use a word. I think what happened is when they started the zero tolerance policy April 7th, that triggered -- once they decided to arrest the parents, that triggered the problem of whether you put the children because the current law says you can't detain the children. And HHS then has been in this scramble ever since sending children all over the country as we well know.
We have a very large force, the care system in the state of New York, so we wound up with many of the children.
Basically today, the young people we spoke to, they're basically traumatized. They're in limbo. They showed up at the border with their parent. They were all excited. They were going to America.
Salvadoran running from MS-14, Guatemalan running from a dangerous condition, they get to the border and they are separated from their parent immediately. They're shipped to a state they've never heard of. They can't speak the language.
Your point about contacting the parents is very different, it depends where the parent is and what detention center. We have one young person who's been there for several months only spoke to a parent once.
But they're traumatized. Many of them have psychological issues. They have anxiety. They have depression. Many of them are on psychotropic drugs and under the care of a psychiatrist.
And they don't know what's next. They don't know what's going on. Are they seeking asylum? Are they going to be sent back? And much of this started in April/May, as soon as the zero-tolerance policy went into effect.
And, look, this is either gross government incompetence, unparalleled, or it is the most disgusting political display we've ever seen, right? It's one or the other.
COOPER: What's --
CUOMO: This was either a debacle.
COOPER: What's --
CUOMO: In any event --
COOPER: Go ahead.
CUOMO: -- you have 2,300 children. I'm sorry. In any event, for me, you have 2,300, 2,500. Who even knows what the number is?
I tried to get HHS, Health and Human Services, to tell us how many children were in the state today so I can provide help. They won't even tell me. I don't know that they even know.
But in any event, you have 2,500, 2,700 young people being used as political pawns, traumatized and this is a trauma that can last them a lifetime.
COOPER: What --
CUOMO: It really is that kind of traumatic situation.
COOPER: What I don't understand is, you know, when General Kelly was head of Homeland Security, he was publicly raising this idea of separating families, you know, when he was running it.
They -- you would think if they were talking about it back then, at the very least, they would have had a lot of time to kind of figure out the -- where kids would go, to figure it out, and it wouldn't be, to use your words, such a hodgepodge. I mean, did the workers at the facility you were at, that they seemed have guidance as to what was actually going to happen next? Or how these kids would be reunited or what the next step was?
CUOMO: No, they had no idea.
But, Anderson, it's what you said. April 7th, they put in the zero tolerance policy. We're arresting everyone. We're tough. We're strong, strong borders.
The law says you can't detain children. That triggers the children having to be sent somewhere else. The president does the executive order yesterday.
The headline is president reverses himself. He didn't reverse himself. The executive order is a sham. A reversal is a 180. This was a 360, this was a political pirouette. He wound up just where he started.
The executive order says the attorney general must go renegotiate the Flores decision, which is the decision that guides the fact that you can't detain juveniles. The attorney general hasn't even started that, and good luck. The Obama administration tried to renegotiate Flores and they couldn't.
[20:15:02] Today, they say, we're going to set up camps for 20,000 family detention -- you can't do that either under the Flores decision. So, none of it makes sense. None of it follows the law.
And I think what this is really about is making a robust political statement. We're strong on the border. We have an infestation, and that the children are the pawns in this national debacle.
COOPER: And it's not going away anytime soon.
Governor Cuomo, appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.
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