A conservative CNN guest stunned his fellow panelists with a story about how he told a close friend’s wife—an undocumented immigrant who is also the mother of the friend’s children—that her “love” and “kindness” did not erase the fact that she had “broken the law” when she entered the U.S.
During an appearance on CNN’s NewsNight With Abby Phillip, conservative pundit Ben Ferguson said he personally knew undocumented immigrants and still thought they should be deported.
To prove his point, he said one of his best friends had married an “illegal immigrant” and that they had children together.
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But when the topic of her immigration status came up during dinner, he told her: “I am sorry that you decided to break the law. There are a lot of Americans that break laws and they go to jail. And there’s a consequence for your actions.”
“And you said to her, ‘You need to be deported?’” Phillip asked.
“I said the same thing that my dad said to me if I ever got arrested: ‘Don’t expect me to bail you out. You’re accountable for your actions,’” Ferguson said.
He said he also told her, “I think you’re an incredible human being. I love that you have this love with your family and your friends. It doesn’t erase—your kindness or your love—the fact that you broke the law.”
When another panelist asked Ferguson if he had called Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the woman, he shot back, “I’m not going to call ICE on somebody,” prompting the others to demand why not.
“Because they were working through the process with lawyers while this was happening,” Ferguson said. “They already had an interaction with law. They were already going through the process.”
The others immediately exclaimed that many of the people being rounded up by ICE are in exactly the same position.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller demands that ICE agents arrest 3,000 people per day or risk losing their jobs, migrants who registered with the government and are working with lawyers to request asylum have been arrested without warning during routine check-ins and pre-scheduled court hearings.
“They’re in a courtroom because they are undocumented right now, but they‘re going through a legal process to normalize their status,” Phillip told Ferguson. “And what DHS is doing to those people—and might do to your friend’s wife—is say, ‘Actually, you know what we’re going to do? We’re just going to toss this case. And when you walk out of this door, we’re going to put you in an ICE detention facility.’”
To pump up its deportation numbers, the administration has stripped legal status from more than 1 million immigrants who entered the country legally, turning them into undocumented immigrants and making them eligible for deportation, The Independent reported Thursday.
