Univision anchor Jorge Ramos said Saturday that if Barack Obama was the “deporter in chief,” then President Donald Trump “wants to be the deportation czar.”
Trump is “criminalizing the immigrant population,” Ramos told CNN’s Michael Smerconish.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted multiple raids this week, its first concerted effort under the new administration to arrest targeted undocumented immigrants for deportation proceedings.
“I can’t believe a President, who is the son of an immigrant, suddenly wants to close the door after those who came after him,” Ramos said, referring to Trump’s late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born in Scotland.
In particular, the case of Jeanette Vizguerra, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who has been in the country 20 years, has received widespread attention. The mother of four children found out this week that a stay on her deportation order would not be extended. Worried she’d be arrested, she sought refuge at a church in Denver.
Asked about her by Smerconish, Ramos insisted, “She’s just a mom.”
“Let’s not be naive, yes. They have been using fake IDs, fake Social Security numbers, fake drivers’ licenses,” Ramos continued, “but we are complicit in this.”
Trump tweeted earlier this week that “(t)he crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!”
But Ramos said the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States come “because of us.”
“They don’t come to go to Disneyland! They don’t come here to kill American citizens; they come here simply to make their life better,” Ramos said.
“They’re harvesting the food that we eat, they’re building homes where we live, baby-sitting our kids. That’s why they are here, Michael.”
The solution, Ramos insisted, is for the President to find “a legal way” for undocumented immigrants to stay in the country, “but he doesn’t want to do that.”
“Barack Obama was the deporter in chief; he deported more than 2.5 million immigrants in this country,” the TV anchor said. “But now it seems that then Donald Trump wants to be the deportation czar.”