This is a rush transcript from "Your World," July 29, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BEN SASSE, D-NEBRASKA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: Mr. President, you're not a passive actor here. You're not primarily a partisan fund-raiser. You're not just an observer along for a ride. You're the leader of the free world. Get on a plane and go solve this problem.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Nebraska Republican candidate Ben Sasse has a message for the president. Instead of flying to fund-raisers, how about flying to Central America and stopping this conga line of illegals once and for all?
By the way, we have -- we have reached out to his independent and Democratic opponents. We have yet to hear back. Hope does spring eternal, though.
All right, Ben, what reaction have you gotten to this?
SASSE: You know, Neil, I spent the morning with Nebraska farmers.
And everywhere you go in this state, people don't understand why Washington doesn't work. And they want to get basic things done. And the crisis at the border is a human tragedy. And they want to know why the president isn't solving this problem.
We need to stop the next wave of folks coming. They are coming on based on a misconception. That's what Nebraskans think, and they want the president to fix it.
CAVUTO: I always think images count for a lot as well. And this image of illegals protesting outside the White House and no one from INS and agents were there, I'm told, didn't pick a one of them up, and they are illegal, and they are demanding rights.
What do you think of that?
SASSE: You know, I think there are so many different issues that fall under the immigration heading right now.
But the one that the people in my state are talking about is 50,000 to 60,000 kids. That's what they are scared about and they're worried for these people. I'm a parent. I got three little kids. Nebraskans that have kids, they want this problem to be solved. They are scared for those kids, but they also are worried. Are there hundreds, thousands or millions more that are going to be coming?
And we have data that shows they are coming based on a misconception. The U.S. Intelligence Center at El Paso has a report out that shows 94 percent of kids at the border when they are interviewed by U.S. government officials say that the reason they are coming is because they believe if you arrive at the U.S. southern border right now, you get automatic amnesty and automatic citizenship.
That isn't true. And it's a problem the president could fix, and Nebraskans don't know why he's not fixing it.
CAVUTO: Those countries involved, particularly when you talk about Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, they're saying it's our fault, Honduras' president it's a lack of clarity of our policies coming out of the U.S.
So, they are turning around and saying, hey, it's not our fault foisting people on your country. It's your country essentially screwing up its immigration laws, right?
SASSE: Yes.
I mean, the Honduras -- Honduran president was really clear on that this weekend. And it conforms exactly with the data that the U.S. Intelligence Center has out of El Paso, which is that even though so many of the national media continue to report that this is about a new uptick in violence, there's a lot of violence in Central America that's genuinely a tragedy, but there's not an increase in that violence recently.
What's new and what is driving all of this migration is a perception that President Obama intends to give amnesty and immediate citizenship -- immediate citizenship to anybody that arrives. And when the Honduran president is saying the people in our region have this misconception, I don't know why President Obama wouldn't get on a plane, fly to Central America, and make speeches in El Salvador, in Guatemala, in Honduras.
CAVUTO: But what good would it do?
SASSE: He could solve this problem immediately?
CAVUTO: What good would -- what good would a speech do?
(CROSSTALK)
SASSE: Well, I mean, right now, there are 50,000 to 60,000 kids at the border. And that's a tragedy. But we could solve that problem. We can expedite the processing of the 50,000 to 60,000.
What we need to have happen is stopping the bleeding because we don't know whether hundreds of thousand or millions more are going to be loaded onto the roofs of trains over the next couple of months because this misperception continues.
President Obama could fix this problem.
CAVUTO: I understand that, sir. I understand.
But, if the president spoke, let's say, and -- and went to Honduras or any one of these countries, what would he say? Don't get on those trains? You better not do this? You better not go there? We're not going to accept them anymore? Is that what you want to hear?
SASSE: He -- he should speak as -- he should speak as a dad and he should say, there's a misperception. There's a confusion about this 2008 law, and the Congress probably needs to revisit it.
But the more urgent matter is, even that 2008 law that says folks that come south of Mexico, what it says is that they get a hearing to determine whether or not they are really a refugee fleeing some sort of particular persecution. It doesn't say anything about automatic citizenship. And that's the belief in Central America.
CAVUTO: All right.
SASSE: The president could dispel that confusion. And -- and the people in my state, we wonder why he's not it. Why isn't he doing his job?
CAVUTO: All right. Ben Sasse, thank you very, very much. We will watch closely, as I say.
SASSE: Thanks, Neil.
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