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Russian Oil Tanker in Cuba After U.S. Allows Break in Blockade; Woman Spends 5 Months in Jail After AI Facial Recognition Mistake; Interview with Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-CA); Congress Takes Two-Week Recess Without Resolving Shutdown; UConn Stuns Duke to Advance to the Men's Final Four. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired March 30, 2026 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A critical lifeline for a U.S. adversary fewer than 100 miles from the mainland. A Russian oil tanker reportedly reaching Cuba today with much needed relief for a crippling energy crisis. Cuba has been dealing with blackouts for years due to gas shortages.

And now that's been made worse because of the U.S. cutting off shipments to the island after the U.S.' arrest of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. The power grid there has totally collapsed multiple times in just a matter of weeks. The Trump administration previously threatened tariffs on countries that ship oil to Cuba.

And moments ago, the White House suggested that is not a policy that is changing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is not a policy change. There has not been a formal change in sanction policy. As the president said last night, we allowed this ship to reach Cuba in order to provide humanitarian needs to the Cuban people. And these decisions are being made on a case-by-case basis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN's Patrick Ottmann is live for us in Havana. Busy texting sources, as you can see. Patrick, this obviously is a dire situation in Cuba.

How significant is this shipment of Russian oil for the people?

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN HAVANA BUREAU CHIEF: For a country that is on fumes, Boris, anything is significant. But, of course, once this fuel gets to Cuba, it's got to be refined. That takes a little while.

And it will only supply enough oil that this island needs for about two weeks, less than two weeks, energy analysts tell us. And we should point out that even though Russia is essentially defying Donald Trump here, defying U.S. sanctions, Cuba owes Russia about a billion dollars. So, we believe that this is just going to go on that already very large tab.

Moving forward, is Russia going to continue to send more oil? Are other countries going to continue to send more oil? That it would essentially just be a donation to the Cuban government because it does not appear the Cuban government has the money to pay for the oil at this point.

SANCHEZ: Yes, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, said the U.S. would allow more tankers potentially, but only on a case-by-case basis. So, this perhaps is the exception rather than the rule. You had an eye-opening exclusive recently with the grandson of Fidel Castro, Sandro Castro.

And some of what he said, as a Cuban-American, I did not expect. He says there are more capitalists in Cuba than communists right now.

OPPMANN: Well, you as a Cuban-American and me as an American in Cuba, you know, he called me up and said, come over right now. We've been in touch with him. And obviously, the economic situation in Cuba is hitting everyone very hard, but the people at the bottom more than the people at the top.

But here you have Sandro Castro. Anyone with the last name Castro in this country, of course, is living better than just about anyone else. And even he says at this point, in his own words, that he's suffering.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANDRO CASTRO, FEDEL CASTRO'S GRANDSON, SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER (through translated text): We have to fight as we say in Cuba. It's tough, so tough.

OPPMANN: Even for a Castro?

CASTRO (through translated text): Because you suffer through thousands of problems. In a day, there might not be electricity, no water. Goods don't arrive. It's so hard, really hard.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OPPMANN (on camera): Before anyone gets too concerned, Sandro Castro has an electric generator. He has a car. He says he has no gas in the car.

But he's doing much better than anyone else. But for someone like him, with the last name of Castro, to be complaining, to criticize the country's president, the leadership, and say that he thinks they're on the wrong path, and that he hopes this island reaches a deal with Donald Trump. He's been making jokes about Cuba being sold to Donald Trump, that Trump would open a Trump Tower in downtown Havana.

This is the kind of thing that for anybody, but a Castro would get you in trouble here. It may even get him in trouble here. I was surprised and really couldn't believe the comments as he was making them to me.

But as you said, Boris, he says that he's a capitalist, and that he thinks that more Cubans at this point are capitalists than communists. Of course, you know, don't need to tell you the history. His grandfather was the one who implemented a communist government here that's still in power to this day.

But clearly, Sandro Castro feels that times are changing.

[14:35:00]

SANCHEZ: Yes, criticism that, as you put it, Patrick, has gotten just about any other Cuban thrown in prison. Patrick Oppmann, live for us in Havana, thank you so much for that reporting.

You can watch more of that interview with Sandro Castro tonight on AC360. So thanks again to Patrick for that -- Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A Tennessee grandmother spent more than five months in jail for a crime she says she didn't commit in a state that she's never visited. And police are blaming AI. Fifty-year-old Angela Lipps says she'd never been to Fargo, North Dakota, but police there issued an arrest warrant for her last July for alleged bank fraud.

She says U.S. marshals arrested her at gunpoint, and she was extradited to North Dakota about a thousand miles away. Lipps was finally released months later when bank records prove she was in Tennessee at the time of the crime. Police in Fargo now say an AI facial recognition tool called Clearview AI, used by a neighboring police department, mistakenly identified Lipps as a potential suspect. The police chief says they've made changes to prevent this from happening again.

We're joined now by Andrew McCabe. He's a former FBI deputy director and CNN senior law enforcement analyst. And, Andy, I mean, this case is kind of mind-blowing here. Where was the failure?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, probably a couple of levels of failure here. But I think predominantly the actions by law enforcement in North Dakota to obtain an arrest warrant for someone based maybe entirely on a purported AI facial recognition match. I mean, that is just really questionable law enforcement tactics.

There's no question that AI has become a valuable tool to law enforcement entities in its ability to potentially identify people. But those identifications have to be confirmed by real world evidence, real world investigative and detective work. And it looks like that maybe didn't happen here.

KEILAR: So that over-reliance, this is, I think, a broad concern, especially when you look at a 2019 government study that looked at 200 facial recognition algorithms and found consistently racial minorities were far more likely than whites to be misidentified. Has that improved since then? Do we know?

MCCABE: Very hard to say because there is really no central kind of management or oversight in terms of what is getting baked into these AI algorithms. And that's essentially the level at which you get these sort of biases baked in. And since this is all being done by private corporations who then turn around and sell these tools to law enforcement entities, many of which are happy to have them because it's something that reduces their workload considerably, you can see it takes you down a very dangerous path.

KEILAR: So the neighboring police department that use the facial recognition AI here, that's the West Fargo police, they told CNN they use this Clearview AI, as I mentioned, and it's a startup with a database of billions of photos that have been scraped from the Internet, and that includes social media. Does that mean that all of our photos that we're putting on these social media apps are fair game to be used in facial recognition systems like this? And what concerns might that raise for you, not just maybe about privacy that some people have, but also about accuracy?

MCCABE: Yes, so I think the first kind of advice I could give you is any photographs that you put out there on social media or any place else on the Internet, that is gone. And what happens to it once you release it, you really cannot control. It's not fair game, as you stated, because in a lot of situations, even particular to Clearview, they've had problems.

So, for instance, in I think 2022, Clearview was sued by the ACLU in Illinois for violating state level privacy laws. And they ultimately settled that case. But as a part of the settlement, they had to agree not to sell that tool to any more law enforcement entities in Illinois for five years.

So clearly at the federal level, there's not much blocking companies like Clearview from going out and scraping images off the Internet, off of social media, because once you put those things out there, you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy in them. But they can still be violating the laws in some states that have gone beyond that to protect people's privacy in a more aggressive way. So, yes, there's a there could be a fundamental violation of your privacy here.

KEILAR: I do want to note CNN has reached out to Clearview AI for comment. It is unclear what other evidence was used in the investigation to tie Lipps to the crimes. But, I mean, we're hearing, obviously, from law enforcement that there does appear to be this overreliance on AI here.

[14:40:00]

I am curious. I think a lot of people are going to say, I mean, what kind of recourse does this woman have? And they should also know that aside from this and I don't know, you can tell me if this is normal. She also sat in jail in Tennessee for months before she was extradited to North Dakota. And this was ultimately cleared up.

So you also have that, right? She's sitting in jail in Tennessee. There's the AI piece of this. What kind of legal recourse does she have?

MCCABE: Yes, it's kind of mind boggling to me that she spent so much time in Tennessee before she was extradited to North Dakota. If you are arrested, let's say you're indicted by one state and then you're arrested in a different state where you're physically present. You have the right to either consent to extradition or to challenge your extradition in the state in which you've been arrested.

As a practical matter, many people will consent to the extradition because the process of challenging the extradition takes so long that you could end up spending a considerable amount of time in that state before you're even adjudicated guilty. That seems to be what happened here. But literally months of this old woman with no prior arrests that we're aware of, sitting in jail waiting for this thing to sort out is really pretty, pretty horrific.

It was only after she gets to North Dakota that she had a chance to actually put on a defense in front of a judge and prove that she's not the right person they were looking for. So really unfortunate situation. And it seems like a lot of a lot of blame to go around.

KEILAR: All right and raising questions maybe for other folks as well. Andrew McCabe, great to talk to you about this very bizarre case.

And coming up, the president wants lawmakers back in Washington to hash out a shutdown deal. But for now, many they're gone for their April break. We're going to speak to one congressman about the impasse.

[14:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Right now, Congress is on a two-week recess after talks to end the partial government shutdown broke down. Moments ago, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the President is pushing for lawmakers to return to the Hill to make a deal. Joining us to discuss is California Congressman Kevin Kiley.

Congressman had recently changed his party affiliation from Republican to Independent. Thanks so much for being with us this afternoon, Congressman. Was Speaker Johnson's rejection of that Senate deal last week the right move?

REP. KEVIN KILEY (I-CA): Well, he did put up a temporary funding bill that would have ended the shutdown. And I supported that. I've supported every measure that's come forward that would fund the Department of Homeland Security.

And I also would have supported the Senate bill if we had had an opportunity to vote on that. So right now, we have this impasse that's not just between the two parties. It's also between the two houses.

And that's why I've been saying that Congress needs to come back in session. We should not be out of session while this partial government shutdown continues.

SANCHEZ: Do you think that this could wind up backfiring on Republicans? Because the Speaker suggested that most Senate Republicans could not have read the bill because it doesn't directly fund ICE or CBP. That was the point, though.

Senator Thune wanted to vote for funding for those agencies separately. And also, we should note that immigration agents have not gone without pay. They've continuously been paid because of the BBB.

So I wonder, does all of that get lost in what appears to be at this point a messaging battle?

KILEY: Yes, I think that the big problem we have here, and frankly, it's the problem with a lot of what happens in Congress and in Washington, is that the focus is more on trying to blame the other side, trying to score points, rather than actually trying to come together to solve problems. And so this is a very clear example of that. Now, you know, we have two solutions here, both of which are quite imperfect.

So the Senate's measure is a partial funding bill, and it doesn't fund the folks who actually support staff in these immigration agencies. The House's version funds the full department, but only on a temporary basis for eight weeks. So I would be willing to support either of those, however imperfect they might be, because both are significantly better at doing nothing.

But even if we can get the two houses to agree on one of those two things, we have this larger question about how do we reach a compromise on the issue of immigration enforcement. And that's why we also should be in session. So we should be trying to find the common ground we need to focus the mission of our immigration authorities, to rebuild public trust, and to assure that we're putting those who have committed crimes and pose a risk to public safety at the top of the list.

SANCHEZ: I do want to ask you about the demands that Democrats put forth, many of whom the White House has rejected. But I also wonder if you think the White House, in unilaterally attempting to pay TSA agents, does that expedite an end to the shutdown, or do you think that it makes it less urgent? Because as far as the public goes, it's somewhat harder to see exactly where the pressure points are as a result of this partial shutdown.

KILEY: Well, look, I look at it from the perspective of if we can stop some of the harm from accruing, then that's a good thing. So I'm glad the President took that step. I think the fact that you have these TSA agents who have continued to miss paychecks and had to go through last year, the longest full government shutdown in U.S. history, and now are in the midst of the longest partial shutdown in government history, it is absolutely unacceptable.

So you can talk about the leverage, you can talk about the pressure points, but there are the real-world consequences for the folks who are missing paychecks, who are unable to provide for their families, who are having to drive an Uber after they get off work from their very important and stressful jobs, not to mention the millions of Americans who are caught up in all this. So beyond just ending this short-term crisis and fully funding the Department of Homeland Security, I think we need to address this question of these recurring government shutdowns and the gridlock that creates them and this kind of bizarre system where we have, where because Congress doesn't get its act together, you have all of these public servants who have to pay the price.

[14:50:00]

I'm supporting legislation to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

SANCHEZ: I also wanted to find out, from your perspective, which of the demands that Democrats have put forward are most likely to come about when the shutdown ends, whether it's body cameras rejecting masks on enforcement officers or requiring judicial warrants. Do you think some of those will actually be implemented?

KILEY: I do. I think that, well, first of all, the bill that we initially had for Homeland Security before the tragic events in Minneapolis included some of those measures. Now, I think there are more that we could incorporate into a final deal, and in fact, I've supported, I voted for requiring judicial warrants in order to enter a home.

I voted for stopping immigration enforcement near schools or childcare centers. On the issues you mentioned, I think absolutely body cams, additional training, some form of identification. All of these are pretty common-sense things, but I think on the other side of it, you need to do something about this detainer issue as well, where you have select jurisdictions that are making the job a lot harder for immigration enforcement by not honoring ICE detainers.

I think that's always been where the deal is, and we just need to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to bring that deal about so we can move on through this issue. The right thing is for the American people.

SANCHEZ: Before we go, Congressman, you've called for a suspension of the gas tax in California because prices are spiking as a result of the war with Iran. There's also been interruptions to fertilizer transports that is having an impact on your state's economy. I wonder if you think Iran's stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz has caused more economic pain than the White House anticipated, or do you see Tehran as now closer to accepting U.S. demands?

KILEY: Well, I think that it was understood that this is a card that they would play. The hope is that we will achieve our objectives there expeditiously, you know, in order to cause that pain to stop. On the issue of the gas prices, it is true, of course, that we've seen this nationwide increase resulting from the volatility there.

The hope is that that's a short-term phenomenon because people are really struggling as a result of it. I do have to add that in my state, the increase in gas prices is not a short-term phenomenon caused by any sort of national or international events. It is a result of state policies that have caused us to have gas prices in California that are almost $2 higher than the rest of the country, that are 50 cents higher than Hawaii, which is an island state. And we're now having to import most of our gasoline from overseas, including from the Bahamas, because we've just made it so difficult to actually produce and refine energy domestically in California. So I'm calling for the suspension of our state's gas tax. That would give our drivers 61 cents of relief immediately.

And I think that, you know, Californians are paying a higher price than anyone. So I hope that our state politicians will follow that advice and provide a little bit of relief.

SANCHEZ: Congressman Kevin Kiley, we have to leave the conversation there. Thanks so much for the time.

KILEY: Of course. Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Up next, every angle and reaction from a game-winning shot that left even basketball legend Bill Raftery speechless.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: It's the mere halfcourt heave that people cannot stop talking about. UConn becoming the last team to punch their ticket to the Final Four. And boy, was it dramatic. CNN Sports anchor Patrick Snell with us now.

All right, Patrick, what did you make of this stunning win?

PATRICK SNELL, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Oh, there's drama, isn't there? And then there's real drama. Brackets busted indeed.

You want excitement and drama, then you come, Brianna, to exactly the right place, not to mention a whole heap of emotion. What we just witnessed, one of the most incredible endings, no doubt about it, in tournament history. The number one overall seed, Duke, up two with the ball.

Just ten seconds to go. Look what unfolded. Just have to hold on to it.

Just get foul anything. Huskies needing a miracle. A miracle is what we would get.

UConn defense swarming, tipping the ball. Braylon Mullins grabbing it, launching it, and it's in. He hadn't made a three all game.

What a moment for the 19-year-old. One he'll never forget. Huskies pulling off the unthinkable.

Mullins, the freshman turned legend, I say. UConn overcoming a 19- point deficit, shocking Duke, 73-72, to reach the final four. They'll face Illinois next.

Let's hear now first from the young man of the moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAYLON MULLINS, UCONN GUARD: I had the ball, and I know AK had just hit one, so I threw him at four seconds left, and he just threw the ball back to me. I knew I had to put one up. I'm just happy that was the one that went down.

ALEX KARABAN, UCONN FORWARD: When I saw him release it, I was like, that really might go in. And you know, I went in, and the Indiana kid sent us to Indianapolis, so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNELL: Moments like these are pure gold, and so are the priceless reactions that so often follow. Oh, to be a professional lip reader, which I'm not, by the way, Dan Hurley is the head coach of UConn. There's his proud parents, Bob and Christine, caught on camera and just totally overcome with emotion, just the kind of raw emotion any sports fan can relate to.

Now, of course, the other side of the coin, all that elation for one team, then a whole plethora of deflation for the other Duke coach, John Shire, having to watch Braylon Mullins' last shot, one of the greatest moments, as I said, in the tournament history. One of Duke's worst, though, I will say, 19-point lead lost in the Elite Eight this year, and a 14-point lead lost against Houston in the Final Four last year, and that has to be absolutely devastating ...

END