MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: "Barr won't recuse"

Interview

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O`DONNELL: Julia Ainsley, please stay with us as we`re joined in our discussion by two Democratic Congress congresswomen from California who visited the facilities in El Paso, and in Clint, Texas, last week, Congresswoman Judy Chu and Congresswoman Nanette Barragan joining us now. And, Congresswoman, I want you to know Julia`s still here if you want to ask her anything about what she found. I just want to add to her reporting to you, Congresswoman Barragan, let me begin with you. She talks about retaliation, a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy reports that when they complained about the taste of water and food they were given, the Border Patrol agents took the mats out of their cells in retaliation, forcing them to sleep on hard concrete. These are the reports of the negative experiences that the children are having.

REP. NANETTE BARRAGAN (D-CA): It`s the pretty sick and disturbing that you have border agents retaliating if a child is saying that the water tastes bad. I mean, to punish them so that they can`t sleep or have to sleep on a hard floor is very disturbing, Lawrence. This is why we need to make sure that Congress has the ability to go into these facilities, to have oversight provisions, but then making sure we`re holding people accountable. This is completely unacceptable.

O`DONNELL: And, Congresswoman Chu, Julia`s reporting also shows that the children don`t know whether it`s day or night because the lights are kept on 24 hours a day. They don`t really have a sense of time, and other kind of sense deprivation that they`re constantly going through.

REP. JUDY CHU (D-CA): The conditions that were described were absolutely horrifying, and these reports even go one step further with the sexual assault. It does remind me of what we saw at Clint, and it shows that there is a huge problem with the Customs and Border Patrol. There is a callousness on the part of the CBP agents, which we saw, of course, in their Facebook posts that showed them laughing at the deaths of migrants. So, there is a problem from the grassroots CBP agents all the way up to the very top, I think, and that`s why we do need to hold them accountable. That`s what our house bill would have done. We need to make sure that there are minimum standards of medical care, hygiene and nutrition and accountability as far as where these funds go. The funds that we just allocated better go to improving the conditions of these facilities, so that these people can be treated humanely.

O`DONNELL: And, Congresswoman Barragan, Julia Ainsley`s reporting is pointing directly to where this information is in governments. Are these reports that the Congress is going to be able to obtain?

BARRAGAN: We should be getting these reports and it`s disturbing that Congress has not heard about this. We`ve certainly had different officials come before Congress. Nobody has brought this up. As a matter of fact, when we had an official from ORR come in and was asked about sexual allegations, abuse allegations, they almost got offended by it. And so, this is critically important that Congress be informed about what is happening so we can continue to have oversight. And, Lawrence, I begin to wonder whether we need to have new procedures in place where we have female officers overseeing young girls at these facilities and not letting the men do it. It`s just disturbing when you hear about this, and then to hear that there was going to be no investigation, completely unacceptable and we have to do something to stop this from happening and exposing other young girls to people like this, if this is what is going on.

O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Chu, there is an accusation of sexual assault in Julia`s reporting, but that`s coming from a government report. It`s a government report that the Congress has not seen. Is there a way for the Congress to get every possible report of any accusation of sexual abuse in these facilities?

CHU: We need to get those reports and we can get those reports. We need to make sure that this sexual assault is investigated, but even more importantly, we need to make sure that there is fundamental change in what`s going on. Now, when we went to Clint, I was just shocked that the head supervising border patrol agent just denied all the accounts that we had heard. We know that when the Flores immigration attorneys went to investigate, 60 children reported pretty much the same horrific conditions and now we have nearly 30 accounts of what is taking place at the Yuma facility. This head agent denied everything. But you know what? I believe the children. And we should all believe the children. And we have to change these conditions.

O`DONNELL: Julia Ainsley, quickly, is there any way for -- in your reporting to determine how common this negative experience is? Is it something that most of the children experience? Is there a way of putting it into some kind of shape in terms of how common this is?

AINSLEY: That`s a really good question. I mean, what I would need to ask Health and Human Services is, out of all of the interviews you do with the thousands of children that are coming to your custody, how many of them report -- do the significant incident reports. I haven`t gotten that answer. But it is clear, you know, what Jacob and I reviewed, Jacob Soboroff, my colleague, what we reviewed is just the tip of the iceberg. We understand there were hundreds of other reports from Yuma. We`re just getting our hands on the first batch now. So, there are more where this comes from.

O`DONNELL: Julia Ainsley, thank you for joining us. Thank you for your reporting. And, Congresswoman Judy Chu, Congresswoman Nanette Barragan, thank you for starting off our discussion tonight. I really appreciate it.

AINSLEY: Thanks.

CHU: Thank you.

O`DONNELL: Thank you all. Thank you.

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