Lawyer, member of the Boston 2024 Executive Committee, and Former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security sat down with Boston Public Radio's Jim Braude and Margery Eagan to discuss Cruz' candidacy, the new ballot question, and an inquiry at Homeland Security:
On her law school years with Ted Cruz:
There are people that were just known to the entire class. He was very conservative, by any standards, even then. Very conservative, very smart-- a well known person on campus. Do NOT underestimate him. [...] I know I'm supposed to say 'I know him and he's actually a nice guy,' but I wouldn't say that. I think he is actually a very divisive, if not somewhat scary figure in American politics. [...] It's not surprising that it's come to this. His career-- the way it unfolded was entirely predictable, even twenty years ago.
On the Boston 2024 Ballot Question:
The process issues, and how we're running it, are being handled by Rich Davie and John Fish. [...] I don't know what the exact language is but it's a good announcement, and-- I'll be totally blunt with you-- an obvious announcement at this stage. It's not simply because it's the right thing to do because we clearly haven't engaged the public, but it's also the obvious thing to do. The IOC is not going to let us go forward with the kind of rejection we're trying to plan going on. [...] Moving forward, it's the language that is now going to be debated. [...] It's sot of complicated, what we have to vote on, but it will cover a yes/no vote around the process issues about how we go forward. We're committed to not using any public funds.
On allegations that a Homeland Security official intervened in visa cases on behalf of now governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia:
I will say, this is rare. I was the governors liaison at the department of homeland security. They would be angry, they would be annoyed, but they would always be about some public issue. i remember after the earthquake in Haiti, [...] I was in charge of where we were going to place Haitians who had to come here for medical services, and remember there was an adoption issue. There were poor Haitian children who were at the very ends of their adoption processes, and then all of a sudden the whole country is destroyed. I remember getting an 11:30 PM phone call from the governor of Pennsylvania who has ten families with kids literally a week away. That's when a governor calls, and that's when an assistant secretary like me gets on the phone and says "what can we do?"
>>To listen to our conversation with Juliette Kayyem in it's entirety, click on the audio above.
