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Homan: Minnesota Surge Operation Concluding; Search for Nancy Guthrie Continues; House Passes Trump-Backed Bill Requiring Voter ID for Federal Elections. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired February 12, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

REP. LOU CORREA (D-CA), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: But right now, they've turned on American citizens, residents, all of the above. And that's not their job, and that is not supposed to be their job.

You know, a couple of days ago, I asked acting director of ICE, Mr. Lyons, about him stopping American citizens, arresting them, taking them in. He said, we don't do that. Well, ACLU just sued them for exactly doing that. So, Mr. Lyons either doesn't know the facts, or we're going to have to have a conversation, because he said that to me under oath.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: And we have seen evidence of U.S. citizens who have been detained and released. But just to follow up with you, so CBP typically operates at the border. They have been doing internal enforcement with ICE. ICE typically does those targeted enforcements. And I just am wondering, would you like to see ICE continue targeted enforcements of those who are here illegally with criminal records? Do you support that?

CORREA: Look, what I support is what the president promised the American public. He was supposed to go after the worst of the worst, criminals. That is not what he's doing. Seventy percent of the people they've deported don't even have a traffic ticket. Most of the individuals out there that are picking them up are essentially hardworking, undocumented taxpayers.

And what's worse is American citizens are getting caught up in this. I'll give you an example. Back home, a young man was filming one of the ICE activities on the street. They arrested him, took him in. When they let him go hours later, his wallet was empty. There was no money there. And number two, a lot of the video on his phone had been erased. So, ICE is going into American citizens, into our electronics, into our phones, without a judicial warrant, and doing all of these things. That is not what they're supposed to be doing. That is not what the president promised us.

BROWN: We'll have to look further into that case. I hadn't heard that. If your party does not fund DHS, the TSA and FEMA will be impacted in the event of a shutdown far more than ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Are you comfortable with that?

CORREA: Look, the big beautiful bill last year, $170 billion to Department of Homeland, 70 to ICE. They have more money than they know what to do with. We've got to look at fraud, waste, and abuse. But the bottom line is what we're asking for essentially is ICE is going to be on our streets, in our streets, to behave like police officers do that we have today. No masks, have body cameras, and you need warrants, judicial warrants to go into homes.

American citizens today, ICE breaking into their home saying, oh, never mind, we were mistaken, but no warrant. This is not the America we signed up for. America is a country of freedom, constitutional, Fourth Amendment, and ICE is violating all of our constitutional rights. We will not tolerate that.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Congressman, I know you're the son of Mexican immigrants here in the United States, and I think this question would have been outrageous just a little while ago, but I'll ask it in any case. Do you now regularly have to carry your passport to prove you're an American citizen as so many other children of Mexican immigrants are being told to do now?

CORREA: Well, you know, the Supreme Court said it's OK to stop people based on their, you know, color of their skin. And I will tell you back home, I tell people, carry your passport. I tell my children, carry your passport. The challenge is, though, even if you have your passport, many times when an ICE agent stops you, they'll throw their passport to the side. They'll take you in anyway because they'll claim, well, what if it's fake?

We are not in a good place right now in this country. We need to get back to, if I save an American citizen, accept it and move on. But even an American passport, they don't accept them.

BROWN: Do you have evidence of that, where they've not accepted an American passport and thrown it to the side?

CORREA: I have statements from individuals who this has happened to, and right now we're compiling a list of individuals who have had this situation happen to them.

BLITZER: Yes, it's really outrageous. You participated in yesterday's very dramatic, powerful hearing up on Capitol Hill with the attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, and I was watching you and your colleagues. You pressed her pretty dramatically on the Epstein files. Bondi repeatedly argued that Democrats had not questioned the Justice Department about Epstein when President Biden was in office. Does she have a point?

CORREA: She absolutely has a point. We should have done this during Biden. The Biden administration should have done it. But Biden is no longer the president. This is President Trump. And remember, President Trump promised to release the Biden files. We have to pass legislation to compel him to release those files.

[10:35:00]

And even now, after that law was passed and signed by President Trump, he is still not complying with the law of releasing those files. And, Wolf, even worse, they've released the names of the victims, of the survivors, but they haven't released the names of the perpetrators. Come on, Wolf. These are pedophiles. These are people that have raped young ladies, underage children, and they won't let us see who the names are? That's totally unacceptable.

BLITZER: Totally. Congressman Lou Correa, thanks very much for joining us, and we'll be right back.

CORREA: Thank you very much, Wolf.

BROWN: Thank you.

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[10:40:00]

BLITZER: Happening now, we're learning new details in the search for Nancy Guthrie. Police are now asking neighbors to check their surveillance cameras for video on two specific dates and specific times, in fact. January 11th between 9:00 p.m. and midnight and January 31st between 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. A suspicious car was seen on the 31st, the day when she was last seen.

Joining us now is CNN law enforcement analyst Jonathan Wackrow. He's a former Secret Service agent. Jonathan, how potentially significant is this new development?

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST AND CORPORATE SECURITY CONSULTANT: Well, good morning, Wolf, and this can be a real break in the case. And the reason being is that, you know, by law enforcement making this outreach with two specific dates, it signals that they have reason to believe that something relevant happened on that day, and I'm specifically talking about January 11th.

And what are they looking for? What they're really looking for is any indication that there was any type of pre-operational surveillance, and that consists of multiple sightings of someone driving by the home, somebody that's walking or casing the neighborhood, any indication that the home was being watched back on that day. They're also looking for was anybody trying to engage what we refer to as boundary probing, and that's really looking at any type of restrictions to getting on the property or identifying security systems or cameras.

At the end of the day, what law enforcement is really trying to do, Wolf, is they're trying to see was there a person there before the attack? And if there was, can they tie some sort of digital or geolocation data that could be used as evidence to potentially identify the suspect? And if all of this is true, Wolf, this could be a significantly, you know, important break that narrows the investigative pathway, you know, in ultimately trying to find the suspect.

BLITZER: We know Guthrie's neighborhood is very, very dark, with lots of vegetation, not many streetlights at all. There's one problem -- that's a huge problem for surveillance cameras, I suspect. That's also -- there's also the passage of time. One request is for a video from, what, 13 days ago. The other, just over a month ago. Are people, especially homeowners there, likely to still have access to those videos?

WACKROW: Wolf, if they may, and what investigators are hoping for is that the theory of multiple sightings over time and distance will be relevant here, where we may see a sliver of a vehicle in one video that they can then tie to another video. Again, this is not, you know, going to be a smoking gun. This is going to be a patchwork of video evidence put together to try to see if there was this operation, this preoperational surveillance, and two, whether or not they can tie that back to a specific individual that may be a person of interest or ultimately a suspect in this case.

BLITZER: Yes, good point. In the last few minutes alone, a white tent was put in place directly outside the front door of Nancy Guthrie's home. It's unclear which agency put it up or why, for that matter. But what could this be for? What do you think?

WACKROW: Well, this may be another round of evidence collection. They may be doing some sort of, you know, forensic work that needs to be blocked out from either the press, who are maintaining a constant presence at the property, or it may be to block out other environmental concerns, especially if they're using any type of UV light or any type of photographic equipment that may be altered with natural sunlight. They may be trying to replicate conditions of the camera at the time, bringing in items to see, you know, from that night vision viewpoint that we saw from the video, are there items that they can, you know, replicate to see if that matches the known video?

So, there's a lot of things within the world of the possible from an investigative standpoint, but I think what I would take away and deduct from all of this is that the investigation is moving forward and, you know, it's becoming more precise, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, my suspicion is they're making progress, but there's still a while to go. All right. Jonathan Wackerow, thank you very, very much.

And to our viewers, if you have any information at all that potentially could help investigators, please call the numbers on your screen. The FBI tip line is 1-800-CALL-FBI, and the Pima County Sheriff's Department is at 520-351-4900.

BROWN: All right. Coming up here in the Situation Room, new CNN reporting on what led to the seizure of ballots in Georgia, what court documents reveal about who was behind the search warrant.

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[10:45:00]

BROWN: Happening now, a big step forward for a bill that drastically changes the way Americans vote. In a mostly party-line vote yesterday, House Republicans and one Democrat passed a sweeping overhaul of the country's elections. The Save America Act would impose strict new proof-of-citizenship rules, requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration.

Here with us now to discuss and better understand this legislation, the executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, David Becker. David, thanks for being here. So, the Democrats argue this legislation is designed to disenfranchise Americans voting. I wonder what your assessment is on this.

DAVID BECKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND FOUNDER, CENTER FOR ELECTION INNOVATION AND RESEARCH: I mean, I can't speak to the intent behind the legislation, but it's clearly based on this myth that there's widespread fraud out there in American elections, and we know there isn't. And that's not just me saying that. That's Republican election officials, Republican secretaries of state, who've looked for this and found it.

BROWN: Widespread is the key in that.

BECKER: Exactly.

BROWN: Sometimes there's fraud here and there, not widespread.

[10:50:00]

BECKER: That's exactly right. I mean, there's a handful of cases of what they've found. They've found a handful of cases of people who've been registered who were not eligible. They've found a handful of cases of people voting when they're not eligible. But we're literally talking about single digits, sometimes dozens at the most, in an election in which 160 million people might be voting.

The Trump administration has looked at almost 50 million voter records from states that were allied with them and looked for non-citizens on the list. And the Trump administration itself has found that 99.98 percent of them had documented citizenship, provable citizenship, and the other 0.02 percent, some of them are citizens, some aren't, but they couldn't get that. States are doing actually a really good job of this.

And also, we already have voter ID to a large degree in the United States, thanks to the Help America Vote Act, which required that every single person who registers to vote has to give their driver's license when they register to vote, they have to give a social security number if they don't have a driver's license, or they have to show ID in those very rare cases where they don't have either. That's been around for almost 25 years.

So, our voter lists are as accurate and secure as they've ever been, and we are preventing fraud better than we ever have been. And so, unfortunately, if you talk to the professional election officials, this discussion that often happens in Washington on political grounds doesn't really get at the issues, and that's why the founders thought and the election officials think these determinations should be made in the states.

BROWN: Which is why it's in the Constitution, right?

BECKER: Exactly.

BROWN: And I just want to be clear for our viewers who may not understand the distinction. Polls show that most people like the idea of photo ID, and of course there are different ways of what that actually means. But what makes the SAVE Act different is proof of citizenship, right? So, you have to have a birth certificate or a passport, and Democrats, or those who are not in favor of this bill, argue this could disenfranchise, for example, women who may have gotten married and haven't changed their name.

BECKER: That's exactly right. I mean, it includes both documentary proof of citizenship and ID when you vote. And the documentary proof of citizenship requires that you physically present yourself, not just do this online or they have to check through their official records. You have to physically present yourself in the documentation.

And for so many millions of Americans, the documentation on their citizenship documents, like their birth certificate, is not going to match their ID now or their name now, for instance, particularly with married women. And so, this is a real challenge. And the idea that we're going to make people show their papers repeatedly, when government could just get its act together, they already have the documentation.

Most of us, when we go into the DMV and get a real ID in particular, most of us are presenting proof of citizenship. DMV already has that. Why isn't government using that to work better for us rather than forcing us to continually present ourselves physically and show our papers?

BROWN: That's a very fair question. I also want to talk about what's happening down in Georgia. This affidavit, this FBI affidavit that was unsealed at the Fulton County's office, where we saw that raid, they took 700 boxes or so. You look through that and you say it's a rehash, a lot of conspiracy theories. How was this signed off on?

BECKER: I have no idea how it was signed off on. When I heard they were unsealing the affidavit, I was actually expecting, even though we knew there'd be no actual reality of a crime there, those ballots had been counted multiple times. But I was wondering what the administration would use that was new that would justify these claims.

And there was nothing. There was no allegation of intent, which is a necessary element of the crime. In fact, they admit there's no intent that's evident at all. There's no allegation that there was an election theft even. In fact, they admit that those ballots themselves were counted multiple times and confirmed the results. There's no allegation of foreign interference or a foreign nexus of any kind, which again raises questions why the director of national intelligence was inside that facility during the execution of the search warrant.

And finally, there was this five-year statute of limitations. I really expected them to make some kind of claim about why that five-year statute of limitations was told or was continued for some reason because of some subsequent activity. And there was no mention of the statute of limitations at all in there. And it really raises the question, given that these were conspiracy theories that had been resolved years and years ago, these were conspiracy theorists who were viewed as not credible by courts and others who reviewed the evidence prior, how did this not raise questions in the minds of the magistrate who signed off on the warrant?

We're going to find out soon because on February 27th, there's going to be an evidentiary hearing that a federal district court judge has called, and we're going to see Fulton County get a chance to probably solicit testimony from some of these individuals and find out what was actually going on.

BROWN: All right. We will wait and see for that. David Becker, thank you so much for your analysis.

BECKER: Thanks, Pamela.

BLITZER: One question, David, before you go. If you're a naturalized U.S. citizen, you were born outside the United States, became a U.S. citizen through the process, the legal process, and you eventually got citizenship papers. If you don't have a passport, do you have to walk around with your citizenship papers?

BECKER: You'll have to prove your citizenship papers whenever you wanted to make a registration transaction. Register to vote, update your information, for instance.

[10:55:00]

And there's an interesting gap in some of the naturalization processes that we've discovered recently, which is that the minor children of naturalized citizens automatically become naturalized at the point when their parents do, but often the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have as clear a record on that as perhaps others might and the documentation might not come out in quite the same way.

So, this creates this whole new bureaucracy for the states to have to manage it will cost a lot of money. It could disenfranchise people You know, this passed earlier -- a version of this passed in a previous Congress and it didn't have much luck getting through the Senate. I'm not sure if it's going to this time.

BLITZER: Thank you very much.

BECKER: Thanks.

BLITZER: And coming up, one-on-one with chef Jose Andres. The major milestone his organization, The World Central Kitchen, just reached in Gaza. We have details. You're in the Situation Room.

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