Trump’s Immigration Policies Are So Cruel, They Defy Understanding (Video)

In the latest episode of his new Netflix show, “Patriot Act,” comedian Hasan Minhaj explains the different branches of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and tries to make sense of Stephen Miller, the mastermind behind the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Beginning with an explanation of how immigration was once handled by the Department of Labor, Minhaj explores how the U.S. “went from ‘Immigrants are coming to work’ to ‘Immigrants are coming to kill you’ ” in the post 9/11 years, an approach that has been consistent (and consistently heinous) throughout the George W. Bush and Barack Obama tenures.

Under Donald Trump, however, one of ICE’s three distinct branches has gotten so out of control that “even ICE doesn’t want anything to do with ICE.” By this Minhaj means that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is actually trying to secede from ICE to avoid being associated with the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) branch. which has been carrying out some of the administration’s most inhumane policies.

And then there’s Miller, the White House senior adviser who has been pedaling Islamophobic and xenophobic ideas since long before he joined the current administration. In an effort to understand the “origin story” of Miller’s villainy, Minhaj uncovers his now-extinct website on which he did little more than write “Jihad” over images.

Minhaj, the son of Muslim immigrants, concludes his humorous and informative segment on the Trump administration’s immigration policies with a simple statement: “We are a nation of immigrants … but when you see ICE going after undocumented immigrants no holds barred and you see how little attention is paid to the growing threat of right-wing terrorism, it’s hard not to feel like we are turning our backs on our own history.”

Watch the full video in the player above.

— Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata