Joy Reid started this segment by highlighting a call Chris Hayes made to the hotline immigrant parents are allowed to call to try to locate their children. "This is what happened when they did that," she said in an introduction to the chilling results.
"Thank you for calling the ICE detention reporting and information line. Information you provide during this call may be transcribed and retained in our call logs. Addresses, phone numbers, other personal identifiers, vehicle information and information related to criminal and immigration history. Additionally, ICE uses caller ID to identify your phone number and may record your phone number if it's available through caller ID. ICE may disclose the information connected during this call within the Department of Homeland Security or externally as appropriate and consistent with federal law and policy."
"That is pretty chilling if you're calling looking for your kids, warned that anything you say on this call may be used to deport you," Reid said.
"That's right. Joy, this is a horrific moment in our country," said Marielana Hencapie, head of the National Immigration Law Center.
"This is a Trump-created moral crisis. Anyone who thinks otherwise is complicit. The fact that we are having 2,000 children ripped apart from their parents, right, a man who -- had a 3-year-old son ripped apart from his arms. and a few weeks later, he was so desperate and the pain from being separated from his son was so great that he committed suicide in border patrol custody.
"What we are doing to people who are seeking asylum? They have the right to seek asylum at our borders. that is how the system works. We have a domestic and international requirement to do so. They are not entering unlawfully as the other guest has been talking about," she said.
"And the fact that when you as a parent are trying to find out where your children are and that hotline number that is given to you is about reporting yourself, basically, is frankly unconscionable, and I think we, as taxpayers, we are the ones who have to have a zero tolerance policy against this administration."
Reid asked Daily Beast reporter Jacob Sokoluv about defense contractors who are profiting off these new policies.
"That doesn't surprise me, Joy," he said. "The majority of ICE detention centers are also run by private contractors, private prisons essentially. The facility where the children are run by the Department of Health and Human services and contracted out to nonprofits. So the owner of that building is a company called Southwest Key. They're a non-profit organization.
"One thing I do want to say about this whole idea that this is a deterrence to people coming into the United States illegally -- the U.S. government has tried this before. In 1994, there was an official border patrol policy called 'prevention through deterrence' during the Clinton administration, built the first round of walls, fencing around urban areas and in the document it said, 'We think people are going to stop coming, or end up going in more dangerous ways where they risk their lives.'
"Guess what, people didn't stop coming. They went the more dangerous ways. And the number of people dying trying to cross into the United States ended up going up. What do you think will happen now? People are not going to declare asylum because they're scared of being separated from their children. So instead of declaring asylum, walking across the border between these ports of entry, you'll have migrants that run from the border patrol with little kids in places like Arizona or Aho or around the check point in southwest -- southern Texas. You're going to see an increase in people dying, trying to get into the United States, not a decrease in people trying to enter. They're just going to try to do it a different way. It is an inhumane way to stop people from trying to come into the United States."
