During an appearance Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Geraldo Rivera claimed if President-elect Donald Trump does mass deportations, it will be so “horrifying” the reputation of the nation will be damaged.
Host Ari Melber said, “You were right about the mass deportation. We now have the headlines from the transition, as he wants to declare a national emergency, use the military, and do mass deportation of the undocumented. What do you say to Donald Trump? someone that you knew for so many years tonight? what do you say to him about what they’re planning?
Rivera said, “I’m not sure if they would take my advice on it, Ari, but let me be unequivocal about it. The part you have not yet gotten to it is the fact the confirmation came about the vast holding areas. And so to convince people that they should not appeal their cases and drag out their stay, even if they’re here, they have a right to due process two years down the line to get them to leave now. They will make the vast holding areas so unpleasant that people will be dying to get out of home. That’s the thinking.”
He continued, “I’ll say it to you, everything I say now in bold letters. This is horrifying what they have planned. Can you imagine, just think of the Japanese Internment in World War II. It will be that and a much faster scale and the more people than they crowd into these places, the more horrifying that it will be, and it will weigh on every American. You know, there will be no distortion about it and no explaining about it. When you could look through the barbwire fence, you’ll see people that look just like you and many of them in the country for a long time and to people with mixed families, where one is a citizen and the husband and then the other, the wife, they are not.”
Rivera added, “This is going to be a horror, a horror, where it is really going to, I think, tarnish the reputation of the nation, and that it should affect the conscience of everybody who will see it. Is there a problem with undocumented immigration? obvious ole. there might be a more humane solution than the one proposed. what was he doing down on the border any way? he’s not in office yet. he doesn’t have a job yet. he’s not, you know, working for any administration now.”
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