After President Trump announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be rounding up illegal aliens convicted of crimes last week, Campus Reform‘s Cabot Phillips wanted to see how students at Georgetown University would respond to the crackdown on criminal illegal immigrants. But instead of presenting students an announcement from Trump for their reactions, Phillips used a statement delivered by then-President Obama back in 2014 touting his administration’s enforcement of the same policy.
“We are a nation of laws,” said Obama in a statement Phillips presented to the students as coming from Trump. “Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable, especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why over the past six years deportations of criminals are up 80 percent, and that’s why we’re going to keep focusing on threats to our security.”
“I think that policy comes from a place of white American nationalism,” says one student when Phillips asks for her response to the quote and the policy. “Donald Trump has kind of like embraced this rhetoric of racism and xenophobia — that is not beneficial to our country at all,” says another.
“I don’t think that that quote really stands true,” says another student. “This administration has totally not done anything moral,” adds another.
“This was really awful,” says one incensed student. “Amnesty does not necessarily mean we’re losing border security,” explains another, “and I think Trump feels that way.”
“I think that’s a bad decision because like the United States should be open to immigrants,” says yet another student.
One female student cites Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as an example of the kind of political leader we should look to for promoting immigrants’ rights.
“Crimes do not nullify your humanity,” a male student suggests, “and people are coming here in search of opportunity.”
After denouncing the “Trump” policy as “com[ing] from a place of white American nationalism” and yet another example of his “rhetoric of racism and xenophobia,” the students were “surprised” to learn that the defense of enforcing immigration laws actually came from Obama.
“It just shows the hypocrisy in politics,” one student admits. Another student says it is “quite surprising” because she “thought it was the Trump administration that said something like that.”
“I didn’t expect it to be Obama,” one student states. “I don’t know a ton about Obama’s deportation policies,” another admits, then adds, “but I imagine that they were a lot more humane than the ones currently going on.”
Video below via Campus Reform (h/t The Blaze):
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