Former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on Tuesday condemned Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportations, calling it a “horror” that would “damage our country’s reputation.”
On MSNBC’s “The Beat,” host Ari Melber questioned Rivera about Trump’s proposed immigration crackdown, which Rivera had repeatedly warned about before the election. The president-elect has said he is prepared to declare a national emergency and use military assets to enforce a program of mass deportations once he takes office.
“What would you say tonight to Donald Trump, whom you’ve known for a long time?” Melber asked.
“Well, I’m not sure he’ll take my advice, Ari, but let me be clear about it.” Rivera said.
Describing plans to send immigrants to concentration camps, he said: “It will be so unpleasant that people will be dying to get out, dying to go home.”
He continued, “I think that’s the idea. That’s obscene and everything I said before the election. Now I say it in bold. “It’s terrible what they have planned,” he said.
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“Can you imagine a large catchment area?” He continued. “Think of the Japanese internment camps during World War II. “This is going to happen on a much faster scale, and the more people that come here, the more horrific it will become and it will weigh on the conscience of every American.”
He told the host, “You see people who look just like you through the barbed wire, and many of them have been in the countryside for a long time, people from multicultural families…” “He said.
Then he added: “This is going to be a horror, it’s going to be a horror! And I think that would actually damage the honor and actual reputation of the country. Is there a problem with undocumented immigration? “Of course, there must be a more humane solution than what has been proposed.”
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Rivera has been friends with Trump for years, but antagonized the Republican Party after he refused to concede the 2020 election.
Last October, he called Trump a “severe loser” while endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and said they last spoke to Trump on November 13, 2020, when he called his home to seek advice about the election.
But Rivera has spoken positively about some of Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks, telling Fox News on Monday that he was “delighted” that some of his former colleagues had been selected.
