Below is the rush transcript of "This Week" on July 27th, 2014. It may contain errors.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: On ABC's This Week. Breaking news, the U.S. embassy in Libya evacuated, fighter jets escorting American convoys, including the ambassador, to safety. A last ditch effort to avoid another Benghazi? Brand new details this morning on the daring rescue operation.

Threat in the sky: three passenger planes go down in a week. And now new calls for U.S. airlines to add missile defenses. Why don't we have them already?

And, Mideast crisis: with Gaza on edge. Martha Raddatz with those caught on both sides then and now.

MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Do you think you'll see peace in your lifetime?

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulos begins now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONATHAN KARL, HOST: Good morning, I'm Jonathan Karl. George is off and Martha will be along in a bit.

It's an extraordinary move the president rarely makes completely shutting down a U.S. embassy and rushing the Americans inside to safety. That call was made in South Vietnam at the end of the war, in Somalia nearly two years before Blackhawk Down and just hours ago President Obama did it again ordering the evacuation of our embassy in Libya with a daring and dangerous military operation to evacuate the Americans there on the ground.

ABC's chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran is tracking all the breaking details. Good morning, Terry.

TERRY MORAN, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jon.

What an extraordinary episode this was. And it's another sign of the turmoil that right now is raging out of control right across the Middle East. Libya is now a nation riven by rival gangs. And the fighting becoming so fierce in recent days and weeks that the decision was made to evacuate the embassy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MORAN: As fighting increased in Tripoli, Ambassador Deborah Jones and her staffers were spirited out of the heavily fortified compound about 150 people, nearly half of them marines.

A convoy of armored SUVs, a surveillance drone flying above, two F-16 fighter jets patrolling nearby and at sea a destroyer ready to react.

Photos released by the Pentagon show U.S. marines on board Osprey aircraft ready to land if the convoy came under attack.

Months ago, it was a different journey. You could have mistaken Ambassador Jones for a tourist walking around the streets of Libya looking at the sights and talking to the citizens. But the violence in Tripoli has escalated in the last two weeks, the deadliest since strongman Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown in 2011.

A few days ago, Ambassador Jones tweeted our neighborhood a bit too close to the action, adding diplomatic missions to be avoided please.

In May, the ambassador spoke of the tenuous situation.

DEBORAH JONES, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO LIBYA: You know, we're somewhat similar to a Medieval fortress in some ways. We're well protected. Benghazi will not happen again, I can assure you of that. But something else will, because it always does.

MORAN: The shadow of Benghazi looms large over U.S. operations in this country. Less than two years ago, Islamic militants overran the compound there, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others, unleashing a firestorm of criticism that not enough was done to protect the staff.

But yesterday, the convoy sped through high-risk streets filled with insurgents on a 250-mile race to safety in neighboring Tunisia.

 

The State Department issued an advisory warning Americans to leave Libya. But Secretary Kerry hopes this is just a temporary situation.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We will return the moment the security situation permits us to do so, but given the situation, as with Turkey, I think they moved some 700 people or so out, we want to take every precaution to protect our folks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MORAN: Security, the crucial issue in Libya right now. Secretary Kerry saying that American diplomacy will continue in that war torn nation, but right now there is no sign that the fighting among those rival gangs will abate any time soon and so the U.S. embassy in Tripoli stands empty and unguarded -- Jon.

KARL: Thanks, Terry.

More on this now from General James Cartwright, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the NATO airstrikes that helped oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, and Frederic Wehrey who not long ago served as the U.S. military attache at that embassy in Tripoli and he has been back five times to their since the revolution.

General Cartwright, this is an extraordinary measure as we heard. How bad does the security situation have to be to get that order to shut the embassy down?

GEN. JAMES CARTWRIGHT, FRM. JOINT CHIEFS VICE CHAIRMAN: Generally, there are two criteria here -- it is a direct threat to the embassy, which there may be but we haven't heard that side of the equation, or the embassy is located in an area where the threat has gotten too great and collateral damage, which would happen here -- a shell going over, a mortar, ends up in the embassy compound and potentially kill someone.

And so clearly this has been a measured approach. We've drawn down the embassy over the past few months down to a level where now it's I think 80 marines and about 60 or 70 civilians. And clearly the embassy has done the right thing, the State Department. They've gone out, they put a travel alert out so no more people are coming into the country.

KARL: They say get out Libya basically...

CARTWRIGHT: And if you're there, leave.

KARL: And I should point out, you were the vice chairman not the chairman, I promoted you there at the end.

But this -- to do this, to move that out, and as you heard kind of hauntingly from Terry at the end, our embassy is now not only empty, but unguarded.

CARTWRIGHT: Right. The job of the marines that were there and the staff is to take out any sensitive material or equipment, which they did, and leave, and that's where the term shuttering comes from -- shutter the embassy with the intent to return. But it is unguarded.

KARL: But you don't know who is going to go in there. And we saw the -- that memorable scene in the movie Argo, you know, as they were preparing in Tehran burning all the classified documents, trying to get everything that could be taken that would be sensitive and destroy it. Is that what was going on in the final hours before this evacuation?

FREDERIC WEHREY, FRM. U.S. MILITARY ATTACHE TO LIBYAN EMBASSY: Presumably. I mean, that's the standard procedure for doing these things.

But again, I think they had some warning, so perhaps they transferred that material with them. You know, every embassy has an evacuation plan. They've shut the embassy down there in Tripoli two times before.

 

KARL: So walk us through what happens, because you were there right before it was shut down the last time. So what happens? How do you prepare for this, for getting out and not knowing when you're going to return?

WEHREY: Well, again, these embassies have plans, they have evacuation routes, they can do it on the turn of a dime. They're going to destroy that material.

In the case of the embassy in Tripoli, it was already drawn down. I mean staff had been evacuated in previous weeks, so it was really a skeleton crew. So there weren't that many people to evacuate in the first place.

KARL: And the extraordinary thing about this is you were evacuating your ambassador and the others who remain, but because there's so much fighting at the airport you can't fly them out. There's none of that that we did in Vietnam flying them out from the embassy, they had to go out on a convoy through this area that has seen all this militia fighting. How dangerous was that operation?

CARTWRIGHT: Well, remember the conflict here, the rebels are coming from the east side of Tripoli, about 200 miles away is where they're based. The airport is well to the south. And the evacuation route was to the northwest. And so it was thought out.

I mean there are other venues they could have used. They could have tried to extract them with helicopters, et cetera. But this looked like the safest route to go. And they were moving away from the threat.

KARL: And they got them out.

I want to ask you about the larger threat, we heard some extraordinary words last night from the top intelligence official at the Pentagon, General Flynn, about the broader threat from al Qaeda and what the administration likes to call core al Qaeda.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN, U.S. ARMY: The core is the core belief that these individuals...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that's not on the run.

FLYNN: It's not on the run. And that ideology is sadly it feels like it's exponentially growing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: That is quite a different message. The White House still continues to say core al Qaeda is on the run. General Flynn also said that we are less safe now than we were two or five years ago. Do you agree with him?

CARTWRIGHT: I would tend to agree with him. The national intelligence council in its unclassified predictions indicated that this type of what he's referring to, terrorism, is on the growth. It's in the phase of which we would call franchising, moving out across the globe. And because it is so diffused, it is far more dangerous than it's been in the past.

KARL: All right, General Cartwright, Mr. Wehrey, thank you very much for joining us.

This new scare in Libya is putting a focus back on diplomatic security. How does the U.S. prepare to keep our personnel safe on the ground despite all the threats that they face?

Earlier this year, my colleague, Martha Raddatz, got a rare inside look at the intense training.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right, we've got a hallway down here.

MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: In the fictional country of Erehwon (ph), that's nowhere spelled backwards.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All vehicles down, all vehicles down.

RADDATZ: ...these diplomatic security agents are in their tense and final week of hostile environment training. Even though this is an exercise, the memory of Benghazi hangs over it all.

 

The training is challenging physically and mentally. Agents must prove themselves in 160 essential tasks from the hard skills like shooting and driving to the soft skills -- communications...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go for coppertop (ph)

RADDATZ: ...planning and preparing for every possible threat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hesitation kills in an attack. And so their actions need to be crisp and this training brings it all together.

RADDATZ: Agents much work through stress and fatigue, solving complex problems with limited resources.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America demands that we cannot retreat behind bricks and barbed wire, we have to be out there.

RADDATZ: Back at the consulate a car bomb. The fake country of Erehwon suddenly feels very real.

Attackers reach the gate and storm the compound.

(on camera): While the Marines claim the enemy outside continues to attack the complex, the students inside have no idea what's happening next.

(voice-over): Wounded agents are in need of medical care.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are taking increased IDF fire. They're zeroing us in. Hal, copy.

RADDATZ: Enemy mortar fire is getting closer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay down. Stay away from your window (INAUDIBLE).

RADDATZ: Deteriorating security conditions reach a tipping point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Permission to evac.

RADDATZ: The decision is made to abandon the compound. The agents whisk the counsel general, his staff and the injured agents to a helicopter landing zone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So ladies and gentlemen, you just completed the capstones (ph).

RADDATZ: Ten weeks of training finally come to an end.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This may be a training environment. It may be pretend, per se, but this -- this happens and this is what we proper for. And we have to prepare for the worst.

RADDATZ (on camera): When we were in the consulate, you grabbed those flags.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we leave, we take it with us. It's very important to us.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

KARL: Thank you, Martha.

Now, from the threats to our embassies to recent scares in the sky, airplanes may still be the safest way to travel. But consider this stunning fact -- July isn't over yet, but it's already the fifth deadliest month in aviation history.

That has lawmakers calling for changes, even putting missile defense systems on U.S. airliners.

ABC's David Kerley has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID KERLEY, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The latest aviation incident captured on cell phone video Friday -- a heavily armed Canadian SWAT team storming a plane after an emergency landing in Toronto, all sparked by a passenger's bomb threat. Another air scare after a week of tragedy.

From Ukraine to Taiwan to Mali, it all has the flying public on edge, prompting this sobering headline, "One Week: 462 Lost in Crashes."

It's left many asking, Is it safe to fly today?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got a long way to go before we've got any sort of a trend. And yet I understand why people get scared. But the reality is, it is incredibly safe.

KERLEY: But a world in turmoil has created new havoc for the aviation industry, with rocket fire from Gaza shutting down Tel Aviv's main airport for U.S. carriers for two days this week. That prompted new calls to equip U.S. planes with missile defense systems, as some of Israel's El Al airliners carry, using lasers or flares to divert the threat from heat-seeking, shoulder-fired missiles.

 

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are thousands of shoulder-fired missiles in the hands of terrorists around the world, but no commercial plane in the United States fleet is defended. And that's just wrong.

KERLEY: Scores of those missiles, called MANPADS, were looted from Libya in 2011 after the fall of Moammar Qaddafi and many of them are still untraced.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They don't have to hit the plane, just the firing of it against the plane will ground U.S. civil aviation to a halt.

KERLEY: But these weapons only pose a threat to planes at low altitudes, near take-off and landing, unlike the missile that struck MH17 over Ukraine at 33,000 feet. And the defensive systems against shoulder-fired missiles come at a steep cost -- a million dollars per plane.

In 2008, American Airlines tested one system at the request of Homeland Security, but it was not put into wide use, and the FAA said this week it is not considering requiring such systems.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It makes no sense for the world's fleet, because the remedy is very simple. You simply keep commercial airliners out of threat areas. You don't need the missile systems.

KERLEY: Those threat areas are spreading, with airlines instructed to steer clear of the world's hot spots.

But is that enough in a world that seems to be growing more dangerous?

For THIS WEEK, David Kerley, ABC News, Washington.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

KARL: Thanks, David.

Here now, former White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser, Fran Townsend, and our aviation expert, Steve Ganyard -- so let me ask you, Steve, do you think that we are doing enough when it comes to air safety?

STEVE GANYARD, ABC NEWS AVIATION CONSULTANT: I think we are, John.

You go back and you look at, yes, this has been a terrible July. But in terms of the whole year up to now, it's one of the best years ever on record. You would have to fly once a day every day for four million years to be killed in a plane crash.

That said, I think there are some things we can look at. One of them is what happened in the Ukraine. General Breedlove, on the 30th of June, the NATO commander, said we are seeing the Russians train rebels on mobile surface-to-air missile systems, not MANPADS. He was very concerned.

Why didn't that word get out to (INAUDIBLE)...

KARL: That should have gone out to aviation everywhere.

GANYARD: Right.

So who's doing the risk assessment?

I think there's -- there are ways to do better global risk assessment that we need to address.

KARL: And, in fact, Fran, it's very important to point out that even if that MH17 had a missile defense system, that works against the shoulder-fired missiles, not against the kind of system that brought that plane down.

FRAN TOWNSEND, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY AND COUNTERTERRORISM ADVISER: That -- that's right. And it goes back to the idea of the sharing of intelligence, very specific intelligence about the threat. If we understood, it was intelligence that these systems -- this sort of system -- was being transferred from the Russians to the rebels, then you understand that -- that the height, you know, that -- which you have to fly to avoid such a system and -- and avoid the area altogether should have been more widely known.

KARL: But one -- one thing that's extraordinary about the -- the flight that we saw go down, the Air Algeria flight that went down over Mali, we still don't have a way to track a missing plane, even after what we saw with the first Malaysian Airlines flight.

 

So if that -- if that plane had gone down over water, would we even know where it is now?

GANYARD: No, this is another thing I think that we need to address that's come out in the past couple of months. MH370 is still missing. We didn't have the Algerian flight for hours.

What if that airplane had gone down and there were people injured on the ground that needed help?

In this day and age, we should not lose airplanes.

But we've got to get the international aviation community together and we've got to get nations together to agree on what's the protocol.

There are some very inexpensive fixes, but nothing has been done since we've lost MH370.

KARL: Talk about that MANPAD threat, because certainly the headline is frightening. You see all these MANPADS, hundreds of them, go missing in Libya. And you have this image of terrorists out kind of taking target practice.

Are you worried about that threat?

TOWNSEND: Well, and -- and we've seen terrorist groups actually successfully use MANPADS, right?

They were -- it happened against the civilian aviation...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been a while.

TOWNSEND: It's been a while -- in Africa. And you -- you do worry about it.

You know, I mean I will tell you, having just spent a lot of time on airplanes flying back and forth across the continent of Africa, it's where I worry about it the most, right?

There were the Libyan stockpiles that have gone missing. And it's a very serious threat.

But again, it comes back to -- as opposed to deploying these systems on airplanes at a million dollars a plane, the answer is if you've got the intelligence and you've got the protocols for sharing it appropriately, you can better understand the threat and avoid it, as opposed to spending all of this money on an -- anti-MANPAD systems.

KARL: And let me ask you both of you, because you -- you pay attention to this issue as much as absolutely anybody. You're knowledgeable on this.

When that airport was shut down in Tel Aviv -- not shut down, but American airlines advised not to fly into Ben-Gurion Airport, you thought that was the wrong move, even though we see rockets coming out, you know, all the time out of Gaza.

You thought it was a bad move to stop flying there?

TOWNSEND: I did think it was a bad move. I mean, look, when you understand the threat and you understand all of the screening that goes along with it, you look at the perimeter security around Ben-Gurion Airport and the intelligence environment there, these -- and by the way, obviously, the FAA thought it was a bad move, because they withdrew that guidance...

(CROSSTALK)

TOWNSEND: Right. Like 36 hours later. It was sort of ridiculous. And it sent a very bad signal, when you're talking about the bad guys, they think they actually have some control over the environment and they've got you scared. I mean I -- I did think it was a bad signal.

KARL: I mean we kept the airport open in Baghdad.

GANYARD: We did. And it -- so if we -- if Baghdad can stay open...

TOWNSEND: Right.

GANYARD: -- with rockets landing every two minutes, we should be able to keep Tel Aviv. I think it's an overreaction by the FAA and I think it was sort of a political knee-jerk. Everything you do in aviation safety is risk assessment. And the same thing with intelligence, mitigating risk.

So I think in this case, it was -- it was a little bit too much too far and not well thought out.

 

KARL: And in terms of the overall threat, you heard the words from General Flynn, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, saying that he thinks that we are less safe now than we were just a couple of years ago.

TOWNSEND: Oh, I think that's right.

But look, this -- this threat is diverse. It's metastasized. You've seen this -- the bomb maker, al-Asiri, in Yemen, and the big concern now is the sharing of that information, that his training of others, like those in ISIS, where you've got foreign fighters, now you talk about -- about 700 Western passports, maybe as many as 100, with American passports and battle-hardened, coming back to Western Europe and the United States, yes, we ought to be concerned.

KARL: It's frightening, although it's very important, before we go, Colonel Ganyard, to point out that two of the crashes that we saw in this past week were weather-related.

GANYARD: You bet.

KARL: I mean are we more worried about bad weather when we're on a plane or a terrorist with a -- with a missile?

GANYARD: Weather is still far more dangerous to airplanes than terrorists are. So...

(CROSSTALK)

GANYARD: -- it's a safe place...

KARL: All right, thank you very much...

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: -- Colonel Ganyard, Fran Townsend.

TOWNSEND: Thank you.

KARL: Thanks to both of you.

Coming up, the president's new plan to stop the flood of children crossing the border.

Will it work?

Then, the growing uproar over this video -- an NFL star accused of domestic violence.

His penalty -- was it too light?

And Martha Raddatz on the Mideast crisis and those caught in the middle.

Back in just two minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KARL: Back now with our closer look at the crisis on the southern border, the surge of unaccompanied children crossing into the country illegally continues. And this week we saw firsthand the dangers they face. Here's Jim Avila.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM AVILA, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: This week, we learned that thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border illegally are younger and more female. Pew Research Center reporting the number of children crossing alone younger than 12 more than doubled over 2013 and the number of girls is up 77 percent.

And this week, there were new ideas on how to stop them.

From Texas, the National Guard, 1,000 to the border within a month in what Governor Rick Perry is calling Operation Strong Safety.

GOV. RICK PERRY, (R) TEXAS: What we're asking the National Guard to do is to be a force multiplier.

AVILA: But critics call the 12 million a month deployment Operation Symbolic Act, since by law, most agree, guardsman can't actually arrest immigrants.

The White House announced that the number of unaccompanied children dropped by half from June to July. And the president met with his counterparts from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador unveiling a new pilot program to offer some desperate family legal refugee status in the U.S. without breaking immigration laws.

BARAK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It would be better for them to be able to apply in country rather than take a very dangerous journey.

AVILA: An alternative for a limited number of Central Americans who today often ride atop the dangerous freight train called The Beast through Mexico, a trek chronicled in our sister network Fusion special report that included anchor Jorge Ramos swim on the Rio Grande.

JORGE RAMOS, FUSION TV ANCHOR: Oh, the current is strong, eh? I feel (inaudible) right now.

 

AVILA: And his crawl through the tunnels under the border.

RAMOS: If they can make it, they'll be here safely, at least for awhile.

AVILA: A humanitarian crisis congress is now being asked to help end before August vacation.

For This Week, Jim Avila, ABC News, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARL: Thanks, Jim.

Here now two lawmakers who know the border intimately -- Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn and Texas Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar.

Congressman Cuellar, I want to start with you because your district actually has 200 miles of that border with Mexico. We hear this week from the White House saying that the flow of children crossing the border illegally dropped dramatically, cut about in half over the last couple of weeks. Has the worst of this crisis passed?

REP. HENRY CUELLAR, (D) TEXAS: We don't know.

We do know that it has slowed down, but we don't know if it's because of all the work that we've been doing with Mexico and Central America, or is that it's seasonal, that is right now you hit in the very 100 plus degree weather. And if you look at the history of people coming across there are peaks and there are lows.

KARL: And, you know, we have this situation regardless even if the flow has cut down they're still coming over. We still have nowhere to really put all the tens of thousands of kids who have crossed over and their families.

So Senator Cornyn, congress got five days until you're about to go on a five week recess, can you really leave town without addressing this issue?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN, (R) TEXAS: Well, fortunately it sounds like the House of Representatives is going to move a piece of legislation this week, which would actually offer a solution. And it will include something along the lines Henry and I have proposed.

But what I'm worried about is...

KARL: But the Democrats still oppose, right?

CORNYN: Well, in the Senate, Senator Reid is -- still opposes our proposed solution.

But, John, my view is a solution beats no solution every day. And nobody has offered an alternative, so I hope we will act.

KARL: And including money to help deal with these kids while they're here.

CORNYN: Sure, I think the House will come with skinnied down bill in terms of money, but look, couple it with a policy which will actually solve the problem. And that sounds like what the House is going to pass what they hope the Senate will take up and pass as well.

KARL: And yet, Congressman Cuellar, so you've joined with Senator Cornyn here, the only kind of bipartisan approach to this, which includes changing that 2008 law that puts a different between the kids coming from Central America and those going to Mexico. The folks coming from Mexico can go back immediately, those from Central America get to go through -- have to go through a whole different process.

And yet you're virtually alone among Democrats up there.

CUELLAR: Well, actually the American public wants us to have an orderly border. Right now they're not seeing -- they're seeing chaos at the border, number one.

Number two, keep in mind that President Obama on June 30 sent a letter asking for money and a policy change.

Secretary Johnson has done a real good job. He's been steady among all this political pressure and he's stayed on. So there are other Democrats that do support this.

KARL: No, but Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, the Democratic leaders, most of the rank and file, I mean they're not running and joining you on this on The Hill.

 

CUELLAR: Well, again President Obama requested this at the beginning. Secretary Johnson has been good, but again I represent the district, I don't just go down there once in awhile and see what's going on, I live there.

42,000 of the unaccompanied kids out of the 42,000 out of the 58,000 have come through that small area. So we're at the epicenter. And we've been working with the men and women at the border patrol, the folks in the community have been dealing with this on a day to day basis. We need the resources and we also need a policy change.

KARL: OK, we heard on Friday the White House talking, we heard in Jim's piece talking about this idea of screening some of these children and presumably their family as well in Central America to see if they would be eligible for refugee status and then bringing them into the United States legally.

Hillary Clinton in an interview with Jorge Ramos on Fusion seemed to endorse this idea as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We should be setting up a system in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador to screen kids.

If we don't have a procedure it's not going to stop. More kids are going to come...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: So, Senator Cornyn, what do you think of this idea?

CORNYN: Well, this is a standard procedure now that if you want to seek refugee status you can show up at an American consulate in country, but that's not going to stop the magnet and really the business model that the cartels have created to exploit this vulnerability in the 2008 law.

This is making them a lot of money. And it's subjecting these children and other immigrants to horrific conditions as they travel from Central America to south Texas. And they know the president has said the vast majority of them will not be able to stay, but we simply have now no consequences associated with coming into the country outside of our legal system. And we need to return that. That's why this bipartisan bicameral legislation that Henry and I have offered offers the only real solution.

KARL: Well, we'll see if you guys can actually get something done in the next five days before heading out on recess. We'll -- you're optimistic. We'll see if that comes true.

Senator Cornyn, thank you very much. Congressman Cuellar, thank you.

Coming up, outrage over the punishment of an NFL star accused of domestic violence. First, the powerhouse roundtable's big winners of the week back in just two minutes.

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