Late-night hosts on Monday discussed the Trump administration’s crackdown on prosecuting undocumented migrants, which has led to more than 2,000 children being separated from their parents at the border and held in federal detention facilities.
Trevor Noah
Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah weighed in.
“Immigration,” he began. “From the start of Trump’s time in office his administration has been working hard to shut that shit down.
“It’s a scary time to be an immigrant in America,” he added, showing news segments addressing the separation of children from their parents at the border and condemnations of the policy from Laura Bush and Pope Francis.
“I never thought I would hear a positive spin on detaining children. ‘After all, what is a chain-link fence, if not a wall made of silver linings?’”
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) June 19, 2018
Trevor unpacks Trump and Fox News’s defense for detaining immigrant children: https://t.co/mXdvKWogTl pic.twitter.com/3PLUIFLuLy
“Damn, if even the Catholic church is judging you for how you treat children, you done fucked up,” Noah said. “We’ve all heard the stories about traumatized children, the federal government deporting parents but keeping their kids, we’ve even seen images of how homeland security is holding some of these children in cages. There’s no way you can defend this, unless you work at Fox & Friends.”
In a clip from the morning show, host Steve Doocy disputed the characterization of the holding facilities as “cages”, saying they’re “great, big warehouse facility where they built walls out of chain-linked fences”.
“We’re not idiots,” he said. “A cage is a cage.
“That’s not really the point,” Noah continued. “The point is the federal government is effectively stealing kids away from their parents. If some guy in an unmarked van took your kids from the park, the last thing you’d be worried about as a parent is how nice the van was.”
Stephen Colbert
“The big story continues to be the Trump administration’s policy of forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents,” began Stephen Colbert. “And faced with almost universal condemnation from both sides of the political aisle, from religious leaders, from the UN human rights council, Donald Trump finally took full responsibility for the policy and promised a swift end to this humanitarian disaster.
“I’m just kidding,” the host said. “He blamed the Democrats.”
Trump, in tweets sent over the weekend and comments made to reporters, has falsely claimed that by separating children from their parents the administration is following a law passed by Democrats.
“There’s two things wrong with this,” Colbert said. “If it was a law, the Republicans are in control of everything – they can fix it. Second of all, it’s not a law. This is a policy. It’s just another scoop from your chum bucket of cruelty.”
In a speech made on Monday while announcing his “space force” Trump said: “The United States will not be a migrant camp” or a “refugee holding facility”.
“No, it’ll be the all-baby reboot of the Shawshank Redemption,” the host shot back. “Not everyone in the administration blames the policy on the Democrats. Some say the policy doesn’t even exist.”
Colbert was referring to the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, who said on Monday that “we have to do our job” and “will not apologize” while also tweeting that no such law mandating the separation of families exists.
“Then why are you locking up kids in an abandoned Walmart?” the host asked.
Seth Meyers
Finally, Seth Meyers called out the administration for its insistence the policy isn’t their own.
“If this policy strikes you as monstrous and inhumane and cruel, then you’re a decent person,” he said. “In other words, you are not attorney general Jeff Sessions.”
Meyers proceeded to show Sessions invoking the Bible to justify the policy of forcible separation, citing Romans 13. “Obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” Sessions said.
“White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked how the White House could possibly defend that comment and she immediately doubled down in a tense exchange with a reporter,” Meyers said, showing footage of Sanders declaring: “It is very biblical to enforce the law.”
Meyers replied: “It’s also very biblical to stone people to death, to sleep with 600 concubines, to have conversations with flaming bushes and to believe that a 500-year-old man built a giant boat and put giraffes on it.
“To be clear, this is not a law,” the host clarified, citing comments by the senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who is seen as one of the architects of the administration’s immigration policy. “It’s a policy announced by choice by the Trump administration. Trump is trying to gaslight the country into thinking it’s actually the Democrats’ fault that this policy exists.”
