MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
As we've heard, one of the places most affected by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has been Minnesota, where federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens. So we've reached out to the senior U.S. senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar, for her take. She's a Democrat and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which had some tough questions for the outgoing secretary this week. Good morning, Senator. Thanks for joining us.
AMY KLOBUCHAR: Thanks, Michel. Great to be on.
MARTIN: So, you, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, others, have been outspoken in your objections to DHS operations in your state. I wanted to ask if you have any further insight, either from the White House or from your Republican colleagues, on why exactly Kristi Noem was removed yesterday.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, this was a major development. The president allowed her to stay on in this position through these unconstitutional stopping of so many Minnesota citizens, literally citizens who tried to show their ID. They were thrown into cars, the killing of two innocent Minnesotans, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. And still she remained. That ad campaign had gone on. I will say this was a power of two things.
One, the people of Minnesota standing up, 50,000 peacefully marching, bringing food to their neighbors, and two, the hearings. And a lot of times people say, these hearings, they're just kind of a show thing. Well, out of that, when I asked her, do you want to say something to these families? - she again denied that she had called Alex a domestic terrorist when she said he engaged in an incident of domestic terrorism. Fine line, fine line.
And she continued to stonewall and not be able to answer so many questions for me, including why they took a Hmong elder who - literally rammed through his door and threw him out and his underwear into a car and then found out they had the wrong guy. So it was Senator Kennedy's question, Senator Tillis who went after her on her killing of the dog and the goat. I mean, I've never quite seen a hearing like this in terms of the bipartisan pushback.
And also the House hearings, and then at some point, the president must have decided this is enough.
MARTIN: So, the president in his first term was known for firing people he was displeased with in a particularly humiliating way. So I just wonder if you read anything into the fact that he's created a new role for Kristi Noem.
KLOBUCHAR: Well, I think he's done such things before...
MARTIN: Yeah.
KLOBUCHAR: ...Where she was doing his bidding. She was enacting his policies. He did not, as I know, while he sent the border czar, who reported not to her but to the White House, Tom Homan, out there to start the drawdown of agents and to start working effectively with some of our law enforcement, he had to do that because she and her agents had violated the law so many times, created multiple lawsuits and then, of course, killing two people.
Two out of the three fatalities - shooting-related fatalities in Minneapolis in January were committed by federal agents.
MARTIN: So let's move on to the person that President Trump has tapped to replace her, your colleague, Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma. Look, this is a huge agency. A quarter of a million people work there, responsible for everything from aviation security to protecting the president. Senator Markwayne Mullin has a very interesting background. He doesn't have any law enforcement experience, however. Is he qualified for this job?
KLOBUCHAR: We'll let the hearings decide that. I do not plan to vote for him because of the present policies and things that Markwayne Mullin has said about these ICE agents in my state. On the other hand, at this point, anything is an improvement. He's someone that has worked with other members of the Senate, he's someone who has run a business. And I think these hearings and my individual meeting with him, which I plan to have, will be important because I'm going to be able to say to him, this is what happened in my state.
There - these people did not follow any modicum of the conduct that you expect from police officers in, really, in any police department.
MARTIN: But you're saying it's a definite no. You're saying at this juncture, you're a definite no. That's what you're saying.
KLOBUCHAR: At this point, I do not plan to vote for him because of this administration's policies, but that doesn't mean that you can't sit down, talk to someone, tell them the changes you think need to be made, and then also hear from him and what does he think need to happen? He has been a go-between with the White House on immigration discussions in the past. He clearly has the president's trust.
So this will be someone important to talk to about the changes that need to be made. So regardless of whether or not you vote for people, if you're able to have some kind of working relationship, as I did with Director Homan over the last month after he came to Minnesota, as did other leaders - mayor, police chiefs, governor - if you are able to have those kinds of relationships, you can still make a difference.
MARTIN: So let's get back to the concerns that you and other Democrats have about the way ICE has been conducting its operations. The Democrats have a list of some specific things that they want to see before they'll vote to restore funding to that agency to reopen that agency or - the agency is operating but some parts of it are not being funded at the moment.
The administration says it's been removing the worst of the worst, but it does not seem that the administration can achieve the numbers that the president seems to want of deportations without these tactics. Can you separate the tactics from the policy? And if you can, what confidence do you have that you and other Democrats will achieve what you want to achieve?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, policies that need to be changed are obvious, right? That includes what you are mentioning here, that they appear to have bounties and quotas and things like that, which I'm sure will be a major issue in his confirmation hearings. That has to change. They should be looking at, in their own words, the worst of the worst, the people who are violent offenders, and there's widespread support for detaining them, going through due process, removing them from the country.
But the people that they have been targeting are not the worst of the worst. The majority of them are not the worst of the worst. So that has to change. What's happening right now, and there was a major development yesterday, is that we are trying to say to them, hey, why don't we fund Homeland Security, the bulk of the agency? That means FEMA, that means the TSA officers, that means the cybersecurity group called CISA, especially after the president has unilaterally gone to war with Iran, and that also means the Coast Guard...
MARTIN: OK.
KLOBUCHAR: ...And some other agencies. Then we will continue the negotiations on the reforms we must see to ICE and border control. This makes sense because - first of all, they know very well. They gave $75 billion to ICE. They are now bigger than the FBI, tripled their budget. They have money, which I did not support that money, but they have the money. So this would be one way to continue, and I hope they will accept the offer they objected to it on the floor when Senator Murray...
MARTIN: OK. We have to leave it there now, Senator. That's Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Thank you for joining us. And let me also note we've reached out to Republican lawmakers as well. Those invitations always remain open.
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