'This Week' Transcript: Gov Rick Perry

ByABC News
July 6, 2014, 10:19 AM
Gov. Rick Perry (R) Texas on 'This Week'
Gov. Rick Perry (R) Texas on 'This Week'
ABC News

— -- Below is the rush transcript of "This Week" on July 6, 2014. It may contain errors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Starting right now on ABC's THIS WEEK, boiling point...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Turn around and go back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Children and mothers pouring across the southern border. We go straight to the front lines of this rapidly unfolding crisis with the head of the Border Patrol and the governor whose state has been most affected, Rick Perry of Texas.

Then, on the brink...

(VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four teens killed, threatening to set the Middle East tinderbox on fire. We're on the ground with the breaking details.

Plus, two hotly debated laws on marijuana and guns taking effect this week.

Will they put families at risk?

And could they be coming to your state next?

From ABC News, THIS WEEK WITH MARTHA RADDATZ begins now.

MARTHA RADDATZ, HOST: Good morning.

I'm Martha Raddatz.

As we come on the air this holiday weekend, we're tracking two big developing stories.

Overseas, where overnight, Israel launched air strikes against targets in Gaza amid fallout from a series of killings of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers. Many fears this morning that the region could be plunged into war.

We'll get to that in a moment.

But first to the southern border, where that immigration crisis is deepening. And this weekend, more arrests in Murrieta, California, where protesters from both sides of the debate continue to clash over buses carrying undocumented migrants to new detention facilities.

And this week, a special Congressional hearing held near the Texas-Mexico border on that surge of immigrants streaming in from Central America. We'll speak with two of the witnesses who testified there, including Texas Governor Rick Perry.

But first, here's ABC's Jim Avila.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Turn around and go back.

JIM AVILA, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The humanitarian crisis on the border now ripping at the fabric of American society. Flashpoint -- Murrieta, Southern California, where the demonstrators stopped Homeland Security buses trying to process Central American moms and kids who crossed into the U.S. illegally.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why can't we just transport them on the bus to Tijuana and send them back across the border?

AVILA: Because Mexico shares a border with the United States, Mexican citizens can be deported almost immediately. That's different from children from South America. They're treated as refugees and processed through immigration courts.

The Obama administration wants to give the Department of Homeland Security more discretion to fast track deportations for all Central Americans.

But residents of these border towns are angry that the migrants are crossing over at all.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is an invasion.

Why is the National Guard not out there stopping them from coming in?

(APPLAUSE)

AVILA: But in an exclusive interview with ABC News this week, his first since then crisis began, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske says these immigrants should not be feared.

GIL KERLIKOWSKE, COMMISSIONER, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION: These are family members. These are not gang members. These are not dangerous individuals.

AVILA: Kerlikowske says the young immigrants and mothers from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras often run toward his agents, wanting to be detained.