Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and
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Speaker 1: I'm Maria Inojosa. Today a challenging conversation with former Secretary
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security under Barack Obama, Jay Johnson.
Speaker 2: We're in the middle of a crisis on our southern border,
Speaker 2: the unprecedented surge of illegal migrants from Central America.
Speaker 1: In recent years, the US Mexico border and immigration policy
Speaker 1: have been front and center in the public conversation.
Speaker 3: We have an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, invasion
Speaker 3: of people, and it's unacceptable.
Speaker 1: But a humanitarian crisis at the border and the fierce
Speaker 1: debate over the appropriate government response is nothing new. Jay
Speaker 1: Johnson was the Secretary of Homeland Security during President Obama's
Speaker 1: second term, from late twenty thirteen through twenty seventeen, when
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children and families were
Speaker 1: arriving at the border asking for asylum.
Speaker 2: Were here to update you on the steps we are
Speaker 2: taking to address the surge and unaccompanied children along our
Speaker 2: nation southwest border.
Speaker 1: As Secretary of Homeland Security, Johnson expanded the detention of
Speaker 1: women and children seeking asylum by putting them into family
Speaker 1: detention facilities. This expansion of family detention would become one
Speaker 1: of the most controversial policies of the Obama administration. Secretary J.
Speaker 1: Johnson toward a temporary detention facility where currently four hundred
Speaker 1: women and their children are Anna was.
Speaker 4: There, Well, really, he wants to send a message, primarily
Speaker 4: to these immigrants and to the countries from which.
Speaker 1: They are coming, that if you come here.
Speaker 3: You will be detained and you will be deported.
Speaker 1: J Johnson was criticized for what many saw as an
Speaker 1: overly putative response to a humanitarian crisis.
Speaker 5: Obama had ordered Homeland Security Secretary J. Johnson to look
Speaker 5: into ways he could take executive action to scale back deportations,
Speaker 5: after several rights groups dubbed him the deporter in chief.
Speaker 1: At the time, j Johnson said that he expected family
Speaker 1: detention to be a determ for families considering migrating to
Speaker 1: the US.
Speaker 2: And I agree with you, Congressman, that we have to
Speaker 2: put in place, and I think we're doing this a
Speaker 2: number of deterrent factors. Increased housing to detain parents, adults
Speaker 2: who come to this country with their children, expedited removals.
Speaker 1: Many have questioned the effectiveness of these deterrens in light
Speaker 1: of the ongoing crisis at the border. Immigration is, of
Speaker 1: course an issue that we've been covering here at Latino
Speaker 1: USA for decades, So we had some pretty tough questions
Speaker 1: for the former secretary. You have no second guesses?
Speaker 2: Well, are there things that we could have done differently
Speaker 2: now that I'm a lot smarter sitting here in midtown Manhattan, Yes,
Speaker 2: of course, But what you know, I shouldn't have said
Speaker 2: that because you're new. You're going to follow up good question.
Speaker 1: In our conversation, we talk about his legacy and how
Speaker 1: his policies may have had an impact in current immigration enforcement.
Speaker 1: Under Trump. Secretary Johnson, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: us on LAT you know USA.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to our
Speaker 2: discussion really absolutely. I love public radio. I even guest
Speaker 2: DJ once a year for WBGO Newark.
Speaker 1: So the thing that people didn't know about Secretary former
Speaker 1: Secretary Department Film Land Security is that you are a
Speaker 1: huge jazz and R and B official.
Speaker 2: People who listen to that station though.
Speaker 1: That actually leads me to my first question, because you know,
Speaker 1: getting access to the head of the Department of Homeland
Speaker 1: Security is not an easy task, and so why are
Speaker 1: you being so open and accessible.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be I'm going to tell you a
Speaker 2: little secret. If you had approached me under the same
Speaker 2: circumstances three years before, I would have given you the
Speaker 2: same response. But over the last twenty six months since
Speaker 2: leaving office, I have tried to speak out where I
Speaker 2: think it is appropriate, where I have something to offer,
Speaker 2: particularly around some of the issues that I know we're
Speaker 2: going to discuss, because there's seems to be so few
Speaker 2: people who are willing to try to talk common sense
Speaker 2: around issues that are heavily politicized and heavily emotional. Everyone
Speaker 2: seems to have gone to their extreme corners in a
Speaker 2: lot of our public debate now, and so I've tried
Speaker 2: to be a moderate voice who's had to assess some
Speaker 2: of these problems from all sides.
Speaker 1: So Jay Johnson is a black kid who grows up
Speaker 1: in New York City, and I was like, I want
Speaker 1: to know a little bit more about that kid.
Speaker 2: Well, I was born September eleventh, nineteen fifty seven. No,
Speaker 2: you're nine. Eleven oh one was my forty fourth birthday.
Speaker 2: I was born here in New York, lived for the
Speaker 2: first six years in Corona, Queens. Louis Armstrong lived around
Speaker 2: the block. It was in the fifties sixties, really an
Speaker 2: enclave for African Americans who had left Manhattan, who had
Speaker 2: left uptown. When I was six, we moved state to Poughkeepsie,
Speaker 2: New York, in the Hudson Valley, and coincidentally, when I
Speaker 2: was in my thirties nineteen ninety four, I ended up
Speaker 2: marrying the girl next door who grew up next door
Speaker 2: to me in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Speaker 1: You go to Morehouse, tell me to House College. Why
Speaker 1: was it important for you? Interesting question to Morehouse.
Speaker 2: Interesting question is probably one of the most important turning
Speaker 2: points of my life. As a black kid growing up
Speaker 2: in a principally white community, I had very few role models.
Speaker 2: And I was a C and D student all through
Speaker 2: high school. And when I went to Morehouse, it was
Speaker 2: one of the few times in my life when I
Speaker 2: said to myself, this feels immediately right to me. I
Speaker 2: feel very much at home on the campus of Morehouse College.
Speaker 2: So by sophomore year, I was a B student and
Speaker 2: junior senior year, I was a straight A student, and
Speaker 2: I was inspired entirely by my experience at Morehouse College.
Speaker 1: So you become assistant United States Attorney in the Southern
Speaker 1: District of New York. You then get involved with the
Speaker 1: Clinton administration, then start working with the Obama administration as
Speaker 1: General Counsel of the Department of Defense. So obviously you
Speaker 1: were not surprised when you end up being named the
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 2: I was surprised. I was stunned. What was your reaction
Speaker 2: at that point, Well, I'll give you a little bit
Speaker 2: of detail. I had left government and I was on
Speaker 2: business in Hong Kong, and I received a phone call
Speaker 2: from the Chief of Staff, Dennis McDonough, who said, Jay,
Speaker 2: the President would like you to be our next Secretary
Speaker 2: of Homeland Security. And I was really surprised, and I said, Dennis, really,
Speaker 2: am I qualified for that job? And you know he
Speaker 2: gave the obvious answer, well, yeah, the President thinks you are.
Speaker 2: Isn't that enough? I served as Secretary of Homeland Security
Speaker 2: for twenty four days and not one more and not
Speaker 2: one more.
Speaker 1: So when you take over for Janet Napolitan, who the
Speaker 1: outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security, you were taking over a
Speaker 1: department that had a record number of people who were
Speaker 1: being deported, double the number of people being prosecuted for
Speaker 1: re entry, over two hundred thousand people in federal prison
Speaker 1: just for crossing the border. So you were walking into
Speaker 1: a real conundrum of problems in terms of immigration. So
Speaker 1: what did you as the head of the Department of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security, What did you want to do? What was
Speaker 1: your sense of, like, well, this is my mission in
Speaker 1: terms of immigration.
Speaker 2: On immigration early twenty fourteen, there was a confluence of
Speaker 2: what I would say were three events. One, we were
Speaker 2: working with the Congress to try to get comprehensive immigration
Speaker 2: reform passed. Second, we had the spike in migration from
Speaker 2: Central America in early twenty fourteen, spring twenty fourteen, early
Speaker 2: summer twenty fourteen. Third, as you will recall, President Obama
Speaker 2: was being heavily criticized for being the so called deporter
Speaker 2: in chief because of the numbers of deportations, and that
Speaker 2: I know that that heard him, that stung him. And
Speaker 2: I recalled a meeting in March twenty fourteen with a
Speaker 2: group of people who were it was. It was an
Speaker 2: intense discussion and.
Speaker 1: What was the president saint?
Speaker 2: What was?
Speaker 1: And you say he was stung by being called the
Speaker 1: deporter in chief.
Speaker 2: He had recited all of the things that we were
Speaker 2: trying to do to achieve comprehensive immigration reform that he
Speaker 2: had the gun Dhaka in twenty twelve, and we wanted
Speaker 2: to see path the citizenship codified into law. But nevertheless,
Speaker 2: we walked away from the meeting with a direction to
Speaker 2: me to make our system of immigration enforcement more humane.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about twenty fourteen. When did you become
Speaker 1: aware of the fact that children without their parents were
Speaker 1: coming to the United.
Speaker 2: States Mother's Day, May eleven, twenty fourteen. I had been
Speaker 2: hearing reports of unaccompanied kids entering our country. I had
Speaker 2: been watching the numbers rise in the course of my
Speaker 2: first few months in office, and in May twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: I was told it has reached crisis proportions and we
Speaker 2: went to McCallum. We went to the Border Patrol holding
Speaker 2: station there and it was flooded. And my first reaction, frankly,
Speaker 2: was a humanitarian reaction. And I'll never forget this. One
Speaker 2: little girl, she was probably eight nine years old, sitting
Speaker 2: at the desk being processed by a Border Patrol agent.
Speaker 2: She was all by herself, and through I asked her,
Speaker 2: where's your mother? Mother's Day? Where's your mother? And she said,
Speaker 2: I am trying to find my mother here in the
Speaker 2: United States. I left I think she said Guatemala or Honduras,
Speaker 2: to find my mother here in the United States. And
Speaker 2: when she said that, I started to cry. The translator
Speaker 2: started to cry, and the little girl started to cry,
Speaker 2: and that was for me a transformational moment.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Latino USA, we continue talking about the
Speaker 1: crisis at the border family separation, and our conversation gets tense.
Speaker 1: Secretary Johnson, have you ever thought about apologizing for your
Speaker 1: role in kind of creating the immigration detention problems situation
Speaker 1: crisis that we have now no stay with us. Hey,
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking today with former Secretary of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, Jay Johnson. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: the number of unaccompanied miners arriving at the southern border
Speaker 1: started to grow, but in twenty fourteen, the Obama administration
Speaker 1: was unprepared for a sudden increase in these arrivals.
Speaker 4: Our message absolutely is don't send your children unaccompanied on
Speaker 4: trains or through a bunch of smugglers. We don't even
Speaker 4: know how many of these kids don't make it.
Speaker 1: More than sixty eight thousand miners were apprehended between twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen and twenty fourteen. In this second part of our
Speaker 1: interview with Jay Johnson, we talk about the way his
Speaker 1: administration responded to the crisis. We also talk about his
Speaker 1: department's policies on deporting undocumented immigrants. Obama's promise was to
Speaker 1: focus on criminals, but data from ICE, Immigration and Customs
Speaker 1: Enforcement shows these deportations targeted immigrants whose only crime was
Speaker 1: illegal entry into the United States or cases of fraud,
Speaker 1: including possessing false immigration documents. We're going to pick up
Speaker 1: the conversation now, so with this influx of families and
Speaker 1: children coming without their parents over the border. You know,
Speaker 1: you say that your approach was humanitarian, You in fact
Speaker 1: decide to expand family detention. Before twenty fourteen, there was
Speaker 1: only one detention facility that housed families, that was Berks
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania. You open up three other detention facilities that
Speaker 1: are aimed at holding families. So why did you decide
Speaker 1: to do that and how do you look back on
Speaker 1: that decision now?
Speaker 2: So our response to any situation like this has to
Speaker 2: have a humanitarian component to it. We should hope to
Speaker 2: treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves.
Speaker 2: The other aspect of that is is we have sovereign borders.
Speaker 2: Our borders are not open. There are laws to enforce.
Speaker 2: When you have border patrol infrastructure built to accommodate a
Speaker 2: population of x and it ends up being x times four,
Speaker 2: the conditions are not going to be optimal. I was
Speaker 2: surprised to find out that in twenty fourteen we had
Speaker 2: immigration beds for thirty four thousand people, only ninety five
Speaker 2: of which were equipped for family units. This was a
Speaker 2: new demographic, new phenomenon because for a very very long time,
Speaker 2: the prototypical migrant on the southern border was a single
Speaker 2: adult from Mexico, usually a male, and the demographic had
Speaker 2: totally changed, and so we simply could not have a
Speaker 2: system of catch and release. Some people listening to this
Speaker 2: may not welcome that information.
Speaker 1: I think many people might not like that term.
Speaker 2: But you know, because we cannot have a system of
Speaker 2: catch and.
Speaker 1: Release, right people say, well, they're not animals.
Speaker 2: You just can't have a system of catching release. The
Speaker 2: message and goes out that essentially our borders are open.
Speaker 2: Family detention was not popular in a lot of quarters.
Speaker 2: I was acutely aware of that and always asking our people, Hey,
Speaker 2: are we doing this the right way? Is there an alternative?
Speaker 1: Can you tell me where you understand the humaneness that
Speaker 1: you wanted to achieve in your policy, How you were
Speaker 1: perceiving that holding families who had essentially were not criminals
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form crossing a border, how
Speaker 1: that reflects the humanity that you wanted to with them.
Speaker 2: Exceptions. Fundamentally, people migrants desperate too for a better life
Speaker 2: coming from Central America are not They're not criminals, So
Speaker 2: then why there are people desperate Because we don't have
Speaker 2: open borders. We don't have catch and release.
Speaker 1: So you said that the idea of family detention should
Speaker 1: be seen in fact as a deterrent for other mothers
Speaker 1: and children to not cross the border. Do you think, though, that,
Speaker 1: in fact it ended up paving the way for what
Speaker 1: became Trump's zero tolerance policy Families cannot be held.
Speaker 2: I would disagree with that. That was the Trump administration's
Speaker 2: own idea, independent of anything we did. The principal reason
Speaker 2: for expanding our detention capability is simply because the numbers
Speaker 2: were rising and we had to have some idea of
Speaker 2: who was entering our country and there were some people
Speaker 2: who were appropriate to be detained. Did that serve as
Speaker 2: a deterrent? I think the answer in retrospect is definitely yes. Now,
Speaker 2: the Trump administration decided to go down this road of
Speaker 2: a zero tolerance policy that they were never going to
Speaker 2: be able to fulfill because you simply don't have the
Speaker 2: infrastructure or the detention space to hold all these people.
Speaker 1: So, J Johnson, citizen, what do you think is the
Speaker 1: intention behind Donald Trump's zero tolerance policy in terms of
Speaker 1: immigrants and immigration?
Speaker 2: And well, you'll have to ask Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And John citizen. As you're kind of looking at this
Speaker 1: having been on the inside.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's a very good discussion. Having owned this
Speaker 2: problem for three years, I know a couple of lessons. One,
Speaker 2: real and perceived changes in enforcement policy have the effect
Speaker 2: of causing downturns in illegal immigration. But and here's the
Speaker 2: big butt, Maria, But so long as the underlying conditions,
Speaker 2: that underlying push factors in Central America persist, the overall
Speaker 2: pattern is always going to revert back.
Speaker 1: So Secretary, I don't know. I mean, when I think
Speaker 1: about my experience of covering immigration and meeting Central America
Speaker 1: and migrants, you know, most people really do not want
Speaker 1: to leave. And I have yet to find any migrant
Speaker 1: who is telling me oh, I was checking my phone
Speaker 1: to find out what the policy was in the United
Speaker 1: States in order to determine when I was going to leave.
Speaker 1: Usually it's an extraordinary crisis that lends someone to make
Speaker 1: this kind of a decision. So the notion of we
Speaker 1: couldn't appear to be open borders if we registered people
Speaker 1: who were coming in and then said okay, well we
Speaker 1: want you to come back and show up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just find it very interesting, you know that actually
Speaker 1: immigrants appear to their court cases overwhelmingly. So I don't
Speaker 1: understand why if you wanted to have a humanitarian response
Speaker 1: that you didn't in fact take the political blowback and
Speaker 1: just say, these are human beings. They are not coming
Speaker 1: to overrun the country. We're going to process them, and
Speaker 1: we're going to release them because we understand that they
Speaker 1: no threat. But your administration that.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the reality. Everyone wants a black or white answer.
Speaker 2: Either detain everyone or detain no one. It's not that simple,
Speaker 2: and people are very mindful of because the coyotes, the
Speaker 2: smugglers will publicize this and encourage this. What will happen
Speaker 2: when I get here? Will I be detained? Will I
Speaker 2: be released? And so if we were to say, if
Speaker 2: we were to declare publicly, if you come here, you
Speaker 2: will be arrested, processed, and then released. And that's the
Speaker 2: policy of the United States, you're just encouraging more illegal migration.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of people. Yes, really, I just absolutely.
Speaker 2: I know people don't want to hear that, Maria, but
Speaker 2: well that that is in fact the case. Migrants are
Speaker 2: very sensitive to our enforcement policies and perceive changes in it.
Speaker 2: They pay a difference to that.
Speaker 1: I just think that most migrants are. It's a very
Speaker 1: complicated situation. And in fact, recently I was on the border.
Speaker 1: We were in Brownsville, we were in McCallan, and then
Speaker 1: we crossed over into Matamoros and spoke with some of
Speaker 1: the people who were waiting to cross over. Let's let's
Speaker 1: just take a listen to this.
Speaker 6: Why did you live on Duras Jodsa.
Speaker 1: He told me that he left on Dudas because his
Speaker 1: daughter had been raped, that his house had been burned down,
Speaker 1: and that they were now living on the street, and
Speaker 1: that he never thought he would be in this situation
Speaker 1: with people treating him poorly, just because he was a
Speaker 1: desperate migrant. And then he was holding back his tears
Speaker 1: and he said to me, we came in search of protection.
Speaker 1: And then he said to the US government, if you
Speaker 1: hear this, have mercy. We didn't come because we wanted
Speaker 1: to come.
Speaker 6: Filicojo thing up Nome.
Speaker 1: So that kind of falls in the face of what
Speaker 1: you're saying, which has.
Speaker 2: Had that conversation with hundreds of migrants on the border
Speaker 2: after they're apprehended. I always ask why did you come here?
Speaker 2: I always want to hear their stories, and first and
Speaker 2: foremost the reason people leave Central America. Are the conditions
Speaker 2: that we just heard. No one's questioning that it's a
Speaker 2: powerful reason why people flee, and many people qualify for asylum,
Speaker 2: but a lot don't.
Speaker 1: Secretary, what is it like when you hear the criticism
Speaker 1: that that actually the Obama administration, the country's first black president,
Speaker 1: actually laid the seeds in terms of what people call
Speaker 1: the immigration, detension, deportation mass industrial complex. That, yes, it's
Speaker 1: It didn't start under Obama, didn't start under George W.
Speaker 1: It started under Bill k actually with the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six laws. But that what the Obama administration did was
Speaker 1: actually to put down the railings for the trains of
Speaker 1: the deportation machinery to start running.
Speaker 2: Well, the high for illegal migration on our southern border
Speaker 2: was the year two thousand, nineteen years ago, and it
Speaker 2: is now a fraction of what it used to be.
Speaker 2: The year two thousand was when Bill Clinton was president.
Speaker 2: It's now a fraction of what it used to be,
Speaker 2: although today as we speak, it's becoming an increasingly large fraction.
Speaker 2: Highest we've seen in twelve years. Do I have any
Speaker 2: second guesses or about the investments that our government has
Speaker 2: made over the last nineteen years in security in our
Speaker 2: southern border. No, I do not.
Speaker 1: You have no second guesses?
Speaker 2: Well, no, do I regret that we've made the investments
Speaker 2: we've made?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Are there things that we could have done differently now
Speaker 2: that I'm a lot smarter sitting here in midtown Manhattan, Yes,
Speaker 2: of course.
Speaker 1: But what well, when you sit and you say regrets, well.
Speaker 2: They're always you know, I shouldn't have said that because
Speaker 2: you're new, You're going to follow up good question.
Speaker 1: Well, it means. What it means to me, Secretary, is
Speaker 1: that when you're alone in your midtown office or you
Speaker 1: know whatever, that you are in fact sitting here saying
Speaker 1: whoa what happened here?
Speaker 2: No, it's not quite that way, Maria. No, it's are
Speaker 2: there things that I would do differently with the benefit
Speaker 2: of hindsight when it comes to our immigration mission, our
Speaker 2: cybersecurity mission, our counter terrorism mission with the benefit of hindsight? Yes,
Speaker 2: of course, But we're always smarter in retrospect. I hope
Speaker 2: this administration learns some lessons from its own experiences, because
Speaker 2: it clearly has not learned many lessons from history from
Speaker 2: prior administrations.
Speaker 1: So seeing how President Trump has enacted his immigran policies,
Speaker 1: essentially making it the centerpiece of his campaign now his
Speaker 1: reelection campaign. Do you think that things would be different
Speaker 1: today if the Obama administration in fact had passed immigration reform.
Speaker 2: We came very close in the House to passing comprehensive
Speaker 2: immigration reform and it did not happen. So by fall
Speaker 2: of twenty fourteen, at the direction of the President, we
Speaker 2: launched a series of executive actions to do the best
Speaker 2: we could to reform our immigration system, which included a
Speaker 2: doc A like program for parents of US citizens lawful
Speaker 2: permanent residents who had been in this country a number
Speaker 2: of years. One of the other executive actions we launched,
Speaker 2: which I'm proud of, is we asked our immigration enforcement
Speaker 2: personnel to focus more sharply on the criminals, and they did.
Speaker 1: You will admit, though, that many of the criminals who
Speaker 1: are considered criminals people who have just committed fraud.
Speaker 2: Well, the priorities in the policy we released in November
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen focused most sharply on convicted felons, not people
Speaker 2: who commit a crime simply by crossing the border illegally.
Speaker 1: But fraud would be one of those crimes criminal robbery,
Speaker 1: but basically, every single undocumented immigrant in the United States
Speaker 1: of America has committed fraud. That would make every single level.
Speaker 2: That's not the way we looked at it. That would
Speaker 2: be wrong. Now, that would not be the way we
Speaker 2: looked at it. That's not the way I told our
Speaker 2: enforcement personnel to carry out the priorities.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm a professor of Latino studies. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a Mexican immigrant. I have sixteen jobs, so one
Speaker 1: of them is I'm also a professor. And one of
Speaker 1: the things, thank you, One of the things that I
Speaker 1: hear from my students, many of them are first generation
Speaker 1: children of immigrants, and they would raise this question. They
Speaker 1: would say, it hurts us too, curly, deeply that we
Speaker 1: have a black president and a black man who is
Speaker 1: running the Department of Homeland Security, and that it is
Speaker 1: under them that we feel that we are being most
Speaker 1: targeted as immigrants. Of course, immigrants are of every single race.
Speaker 1: But what do you say to the people who say,
Speaker 1: and it's tough, right, it's not a pretty question. It's
Speaker 1: not something that I even like asking, But they're saying,
Speaker 1: these are black men who have an experience of being
Speaker 1: denied their role, their visibility their power in the United States,
Speaker 1: and they're the ones who are doing this.
Speaker 2: Whoever occupies the office a President of the United States
Speaker 2: or the office of Secretary of Homeland Security, whether you're black,
Speaker 2: you're white, Latino, or of any other race, religion, or
Speaker 2: national origin, has a responsibility to enforce the law as
Speaker 2: they exist. That was something that President Obama and I
Speaker 2: took very seriously. There are solutions to this problem area.
Speaker 2: There are solutions that are obtainable, and they're not easy fixes,
Speaker 2: and they're politically difficult. They're politically controversial. One of which
Speaker 2: is we have to continue what we started in the
Speaker 2: last administration of investing in eradicating the poverty and violence
Speaker 2: in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. It can be done.
Speaker 2: Will it happen in a week, in a month, in
Speaker 2: a year, or even life at one administration? Probably not,
Speaker 2: But we have to keep at investing in eradicating the
Speaker 2: poverty and violence in those countries. The push factors always
Speaker 2: overwhelm any level of border security or immigration enforcement you
Speaker 2: can put on the problem on our southern border.
Speaker 1: Secretary Johnson, have you ever thought about apologizing for your
Speaker 1: role in kind of creating the immigration detention problems situation
Speaker 1: crisis that we have now.
Speaker 2: No, are these issues controversial? Yes? Are people unhappy with
Speaker 2: the way in which laws or enforced policies are administered? Yes,
Speaker 2: on both sides, without a doubt, these were extraordinarily difficult issues.
Speaker 2: I handled them. President Obama handled them as best we
Speaker 2: could with what we had to work with.
Speaker 1: What would be the one thing that you're like, the
Speaker 1: thing that kind of keeps you up at night? What
Speaker 1: worries you now?
Speaker 2: What worries me now is that this administration seems unwilling
Speaker 2: or unable to learn from the experiences of the past.
Speaker 2: One of the things I did when I was in
Speaker 2: office during that summer twenty fourteen during Spike, was calling
Speaker 2: my Republican predecessor, Mike Tchurdoff and asked him, listen, how
Speaker 2: did you deal with this when you were in office?
Speaker 2: And I learned a lot from him. This administration doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be interested in doing that.
Speaker 1: Secretary J. Johnson, thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 1: on Latino USA.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: J Johnson served as Secretary of Homeland Security from twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen to twenty seventeen under President Barack Obama. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Miguel Marcias and Maggie Frieling. It was
Speaker 1: edited by Fernande Camarena and Marlon Bishop. It was mixed
Speaker 1: by Stephanie Lebau. The Latino USA team also includes Victoria
Speaker 1: Estrada Rinaldo, LEANOZ Junior, Andrea Lopez Gruso, Don mar Marquez,
Speaker 1: Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Nor Saudi and Nancy Trujillo. Ramirez
Speaker 1: is our co executive producer. Our senior engineer is Julia Caruso.
Speaker 1: Additional engineering support by Gabriel Lebias and JJ Krubin. Our
Speaker 1: marketing manager is Luis Lura. Our theme music was composed
Speaker 1: by Sean Ruinos. I'm your host and executive producer marieo Josa.
Speaker 1: Join us again on our next episode. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: look for us on social media, and remember yes Hi.
Speaker 3: Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising
Speaker 3: Simons Foundation, Unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities More at hsfoundation
Speaker 3: dot org, The Ford Foundation working with visionaries on the
Speaker 3: front lines of social change worldwide, and Michelle Mercer and
Speaker 3: Bruce Golden.
Speaker 1: Secretary Johnson Digits Ja Ja Here we Go