“The View” got heated on Wednesday when guest host and former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham dared to disagree with her liberal co-hosts on the issues stemming from unchecked illegal immigration.
Grisham, who served in several roles in former President Donald Trump’s White House, has filled the ABC midday talk show’s lone conservative seat on several occasions since former co-host Meghan McCain departed, and on Wednesday, the topic turned to immigration.
PRES. BIDEN ENDING TRUMP-ERA BORDER POLICY: The CDC announced it is officially ending Title 42, the controversial policy restricting migrants from coming into the country under the rationale of a public health risk due to COVID — #TheView panel reacts. https://t.co/PmnXqIGc64 pic.twitter.com/f77cCWhQTQ
— The View (@TheView) April 6, 2022
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg opened the segment with a comment about Title 42 — the federal regulation that allows agents to turn would-be asylum seekers away at the border due to concerns about the continued spread of COVID-19 — and Republican objections to the Biden administration’s plan to end its use.
Goldberg noted that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested Republicans might not support the president’s next planned COVID-19-relief effort if the administration lifts Title 42, adding, “I’m not really sure what’s happening here. Should Republicans be using this to hold up this other bill? Or are they listening to – are they listening to Republican voters who want to keep the policy in place? I’m still not sure what – I thought it was a medical policy also, but –”
Grisham cut in then, saying that because she was from Arizona, she had seen firsthand what happened when illegal immigrants were allowed to flow across the border unchecked.
“I come from a border state so I can speak to it pretty well. Arizona — 20 years I lived there, and I’ve seen what open border policies can do to the country and to the people who are trying to get into this country,” Grisham said.
“What do you mean by open border?” co-host Sunny Hostin asked.
“People who are – well, like this. If they lift this, people are going to go from 7,000 people getting into the country every day to 18,000,” Grisham continued.
Hostin asked, “So you’ve seen open border policies. What do you mean by that?”
“I mean by letting people just come in and not enforcing and sending them back. In the previous administration, I’ll just say it that way, we had a zero tolerance – you need to go back, and you need to come into this country legally, which I agree with,” Grisham added, noting that she believed in creating a path to citizenship for those who had been brought across the border as young children.
“People are welcome here with open arms as long as they come here legally, but when people are able to just cross the borders willy-nilly, there’s also a criminal element, and I’ve seen the human trafficking that is done. There’s people that are called coyotes. They bring women and children across the border and leave them in the desert and do unspeakable things to them, and so to go from 7,000 to 18,000 people daily crossing into our border illegally, I don’t know how we would pay for it. I don’t know where we would put them, and it puts a lot of those people in danger,” Grisham explained.
Hostin later pushed back, saying that anyone who crossed the border and claimed asylum couldn’t be called “illegal,” firing back when asked whether or not it mattered how they crossed the border.
“It does not. When you say they’re coming in illegally, I take umbrage to that, especially because 14,000 Haitians were expelled under the Biden Administration,” she said.
Hostin went on to suggest that racism was at the root of the immigration problem, noting that no one seemed to be upset about the refugees coming in from Afghanistan and Ukraine and adding, “So it seems to me that the law is okay for some people, but not okay for people that look like me. I don’t like that.”
“There are bad people who are also coming into this country,” Grisham pushed back, saying that an open border was like an advertisement to China that fentanyl could be easily trafficked into the country.
“Why does this sound like Fox News?” Joy Behar asked then.
“Because I’m a Republican,” Grisham reminded her.
“Are you spewing talking points here? What are your numbers? I don’t see stats,” Behar continued.
“I lived in Arizona. I saw these things,” Grisham continued.
“How much could you see? You’re one person,” Behar dismissed Grisham’s claim.
Co-host Sara Haines jumped in then to say that she loved the idea of being able to let everyone in, but she wasn’t certain the system was capable of handling the influx.
“The problem right now is our boat is not at its strongest. The lifeboat is not at its strongest,” she continued, pointing to the record inflation and other issues. “If you say, ‘I want to save everybody,’ and the boat flips, you save no one. If you can’t put your own mask on first, you can’t help other people. We’re floundering.”
“So should we not follow the asylum law?” Hostin objected.
“You’re jumping straight across to a zero sum explanation,” Haines protested, saying again that her concern was whether or not the system was set up to handle the likely influx.
“I don’t know if we can handle it right now,” she said.