President Obama sparred with a reporter over immigration Tuesday in a testy interview in which the president denied that he could have halted deportations earlier.
During a lengthy one-on-one with Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos, Obama took issue with claims that he could have done more during his presidency to keep families intact.
Ramos had challenged Obama on past statements in which he said he didn’t have the legal authority to suspend deportations because he wasn’t a “king” or an “emperor.”
Ramos pointed out that Obama did “just that” last month when he issued an executive order allowing millions of immigrants to remain in the country without the threat of deportation.
Obama said he hadn’t flip-flopped on the issue and stressed that he requested a Department of Homeland Security review that wrapped up this year and provided the legal steps his administration could take on the issue.
“What I’ve said very clearly and consistently is that we have to enforce our immigration laws, but that we have prosecutorial discretion given the limited resources,” he said. “And we can’t deport 11 million people.”
Listening to Obama explain his executive action on immigration, Ramos asked, “you already had the legal authority to stop deportations, then why did you deport two million people?”
“For six years you did it,” he added. “You destroyed many families. They called you ‘deporter in chief.’ ”
Clearly angry, Obama immediately took issue with the label.
“You called me ‘deporter in chief,’ ” he remarked.
Ramos countered that he was repeating the phrase Janet Murguia of the national Council of La Raza, an activist group, had used earlier this year.
“That is not true,” Obama retorted. “Listen, here’s the fact of the matter, Jorge. … As president of the United States, I’m always responsible for problems that aren’t solved right away.
“I regret millions of people who didn’t get health insurance before I passed health insurance, and before I implemented it. I regret the fact that there are kids who should’ve been going to college during my presidency, but because we didn’t get to them fast enough, they gave up on college.
“The question is: Are we doing the right thing, and have we consistently tried to move this country in a better direction? And those — like you, sometimes, Jorge — who just suggest that there are simple, quick answers to these problems … when you present it in that way, it does a disservice, because it makes the assumption that the political process is one that can easily be moved around depending on the will of one person. And that’s not how things work.”
Ramos also asked Obama about the Senate report on extreme interrogation techniques the CIA used against terrorism suspects in the wake of the Sept. 11th attacks.
Obama pointedly declined to blame President Bush for the CIA’s harsh methods and didn’t repeat a previous phrase — “we tortured some folks” — that was roundly criticized in describing the practices.
“Unfortunately, as the Senate report shows, we engaged in some brutal activity after 9/11, and you know, this is an accounting of some of the problems that the CIA program engaged in.”
“I recognize that there’s controversies in terms of some of the details, but what’s not controversial is the fact that we did some things hat violated who we are as a people,” he added.
Acknowledging that there’s “never a perfect time to release a report like this,” Obama said that his administration has taken precautionary measures at U.S. facilities around the world to respond to any unrest or violence related to the report’s release.
The president also repeated the argument that harsh interrogation methods don’t produce great intelligence because people in pain will say “anything to alleviate the stress and pain.”
“So the information we get isn’t necessarily better than doing things the right way, and my goal is to make sure, having banned this practice as one of the first things I did when I came into office, that we don’t make that mistake again.”
On the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and race relations in general, Obama said the country is improving but still has a long way to go to end mistrust between police officers and “communities of color.”
“There are still instances in which a young black boy or brown boy is not being evaluated, in terms of risk, precisely in the same way as a white young person might be by the police,” he said. “That can be solved through better training, better accountability, better transparency.”
Pointing to a task force he created to address the issue, he said, “nobody’s going to be pushing harder than me because I’ve been subjected to these kinds of misperceptions in the past.”
