CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview with Mazie Hirono
Interview
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SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): Thank you.
TAPPER: You're on the Senate Judiciary. You support this bill.
Are you confident you can get Senate Republicans on board? I mean, all House Republicans voted against it.
HIRONO: That gives you a pretty good answer of where the Senate Republicans may be, although, considering that they did have their own version of the Justice in Policing Act, with Tim Scott, perhaps we can come to some kind of a meeting of the minds.
But I do not know. On the other hand, the Democrats are very much in support of this way to address systemic racism and disparate policing that is going on in our country.
TAPPER: Let's talk about that.
Tim Scott's bill, Democrats voted against it in force. He serves with you on the Judiciary Committee. He has floated a compromise to get this bill passed. He says, if the burden of responsibility in court is shifted from individual officers to the police departments, instead of getting rid of qualified immunity altogether, is that a path forward?
Is that something you would consider, if it's the only way to get legislation passed?
HIRONO: The last time I looked at Tim's bill -- by the way, he doesn't serve on the Judiciary Committee.
TAPPER: Oh, I'm sorry.
HIRONO: It just didn't go -- it just didn't go for it far enough. And it didn't address the kinds of abuses and concerns that we have all seen.
And so, unless the bill matches the realities of the disparate policing, I don't know that it's going to get us very far.
TAPPER: This country has been grappling with issues of race and politics. Also, we have been talking quite a bit since COVID began about this rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.
You have a separate piece of legislation addressing hate crimes against Asian Americans. You worked on it with Republican Senator Susan Collins. It's up for a vote likely this week. Will it pass? Do you have the votes?
HIRONO: I have high hope that it will, because the first procedural vote that it had to overcome got 92 votes and only six no's.
So I have worked very hard with Susan Collins and other Republicans to put some of their concerns into the bill, to broaden the support for the bill, while maintaining the purpose. And the purpose is really quite simple, I would say, that, one, it recognizes the rise in hate crimes against Asians.
This is a community that feels very much under attack and, in many cases, feels invisible. And this is an opportunity for the House and the Senate to stand up with this community and say, this kind of targeted, racist attacks has no place in America. So, that's one thing. I call this a pretty simple bill because what it does is ask the
Department of Justice to appoint a person to expedite review of these crimes and to work with local and state law enforcement to get online reporting of these kinds of crimes and make sure that people in this committed know that they should report these crimes.
TAPPER: Let's talk about your book.
You write about the fact that your brother was separated from your family for three years in the midst of -- when you and your mother immigrated from Japan to Hawaii. And you write about this giving you a deep personal connection to a lot of these immigration issues.
Tell us more about that. How has that experience and the difficulties there impacted your role as a senator?
HIRONO: When my mother brought me and my older brother to Hawaii, it was because we could go to school. My younger brother was left with my loving grandparents, who also raised me for a time.
And we did not know that the trauma of the separation would be with my younger brother for his life. And that is why, when Trump began to separate thousands of children from their parents, I knew the kind of trauma, the lasting impact, negative impact, these kind of actions would impose.
So, there are a lot of my immigrant experience that informs who I fight for and why.
TAPPER: And, obviously, it's very different, forced separation, from the migration, with all these kids coming to the United States, this crisis at the border right now.
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But how does it inform this new crisis with all these kids who have willingly been separated from their parents to come here to escape violence or worse?
HIRONO: There's no question that we need to have a humane immigration policy. What Biden got was a shredded immigration policy where being humane was the least of the considerations. So, to build a humane immigration policy is going to take time.
And one of the ways that we can approach it is that all of these children who are coming, they need to be placed with relatives or with adults who can take care of them after they have been vetted. They should not be kept in facilities and isolated in that way.
TAPPER: Yeah.
HIRONO: But we obviously have to do more. This is a multifaceted problem. We need to provide much more assistance to the countries from which these people are fleeing.
TAPPER: Yeah. Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, thanks so much. Congratulations again on your book.
HIRONO: Thank you.
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