Van Jones: Biden’s Acting on Border Because Even Dems Think It’s Bad Only After He Does ‘Trial Balloons’ to See Reaction

COOPER: “I want to bring in CNN’s political commentator and former special adviser to President Obama, Van Jones. So, Van, the executive action, if it’s actually implemented, it might certainly anger progressive Democrats. What other options does Biden have at a time when 79 percent of Americans, according to recent CNN polls, say the situation at the border is a crisis and a bipartisan deal can’t get a floor vote in Congress?”
Jones: “He doesn’t have a lot of options. And look, here’s the reality: everybody has a number that is too big before they say something’s got to be done. Some Republicans, if one person came across that are undocumented, they’d say, ‘Shut the whole border down, build a wall and never let the door be back open.’ Some people might be 10, some people might be a hundred thousand, a million, 5 million, 50 million. At some point, the number is too big even for Democrats. And now we’re at a place where, because Congress won’t act, Republicans won’t let Congress act, the number is too big of people coming across the border, even for Democrats, and so the President is going to take some action. Reality is, the courts might strike it down. Also, to your point, he’s floating these trial balloons to kind of see what the reaction is. But if Republicans are going to politicize the issue and then refuse to act on it, Biden has to do something.”
COOPER: “It’s interesting, Priscilla, because the Republicans who have refused to act on it have said, well, there are executive actions the President could take. Obviously, this is one of them. How does it compare to what the Trump White House tried to do before it was blocked by a federal court? I mean, is it exactly the same?”
ALVAREZ: “And that is certainly some of the pushback that the White House can anticipate if they move forward with this. But in 2018, former President Donald Trump issued a presidential proclamation in which he tried to invoke the same authority known as 212(f) to shut down asylum entirely on the U.S.-Mexico border. When it made its way through the courts, what the court said was essentially these conflicts with asylum law. You can’t do this because people are entitled to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. We don’t know the details of exactly how this new executive action, if the White House does it, would look like. But the key here in the White House pushback is that if there had been legislation that would have put this into a bill, into law, then there wouldn’t be any way for it to be legally challenged in court. So, former President Donald Trump tried to do it. He was stopped in court because of the law. the White House worked with Senate negotiators to change the law and Republicans walked that back. If it had been part of the law, then there wouldn’t have been any sort of legal argument. So that is the back-and-forth that’s happening between the White House and House Republicans who refuse to take anything up if it comes to anything short of what they themselves want to see done on the border.”
COOPER: “I mean, Van, the — one of the infuriating things about this is that many of the people who will be claiming asylum are, just on the face of it, not really eligible. I mean, they’re — you know, it’s understandable why they’re leaving their countries. They want a better life for their children. They want a better income. They’re fleeing a lack of security in their neighborhoods. But it’s not political or religious persecution, which is — or the — all the things — you know, asylum is a very particular thing that you are claiming.”
Jones: “Yes. And that is the challenge that I think America’s been facing. It’s like somebody figured out some clever way to jump the turnstile at the subway and kind of get away with it. If one person does it, two people, then pretty soon the whole subway is just full of people who are just basically exploiting a loophole. That’s what’s happened with our asylum laws. We put those asylum laws in place proudly after World War II, when people were trying to flee Hitler’s butchery and couldn’t get out of the country and couldn’t get here. And so we put those in place for a good reason. But now there are people who are just using it and abusing it. It’s got to be fixed. Biden was willing to cut a deal. The Republicans would rather leave the border open for a political purpose than keep the country safe. Biden’s trying to do something and I hope he figures it out.”
COOPER: “Yeah. Van Jones, Priscilla Alvarez, thanks.”