MSNBC host: Trump mass deportations now include legal immigrants and American citizens
Former Ambassador Susan Rice: “Can you imagine what that means for the fabric of this country when American citizens who are here lawfully, who are living their lives with their families can one day wake up and find themselves denaturalized and deported?”
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From the September 18, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe
FMR. AMB. SUSAN RICE (FMR. DIRECTOR OF THE DOMESTIC POLICY COUNCIL, BIDEN ADMIN.): This is really quite terrifying. We've heard for many, many months about his plans for mass deportations of undocumented persons here in the United States that would be hugely violent and disruptive, separating families, causing millions to be expelled through the use of force. But, what he's saying now is something quite different and even more scary. What he is saying is- you recall last week Donald Trump went out and said that he was going to expel the Haitians in this country starting in Springfield who are here in this country legally, legally, working with authorization and send them to Venezuela, of all places. He has said very clearly that he is going to deport immigrants who are here legally, but he said something else that's even more outrageous and that is what is reflected in Stephen Miller's social media post, and that is that he will expel and denaturalize American citizens -- American citizens who were not born here. Mika and Joe, there are over 25 million American citizens who are naturalized, who are law-abiding, who are taxpayers, who have families in this country. They are fathers. They are mothers. They are children. They are our neighbors. They are American citizens. And back in the Trump administration, they set up an office in the Justice Department to denaturalize American citizens, and not just those that were convicted of crimes, those are already subject to denaturalization if they have done some very violent crime or obtained their citizenship unlawfully. We're talking about a massive increase in the number of people that they try to ship out of the country on false pretenses because perhaps they don't like the countries from which they came. Can you imagine what that means for the fabric of this country when American citizens who are here lawfully, who are living their lives with their families can one day wake up and find themselves denaturalized and deported? And now that the Supreme Court has said that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, if god forbid it were to be him again, can do whatever he wants in the office of the presidency with immunity, this is a recipe for mass expulsions of American citizens.
WILLIE GEIST (CO-HOST): Ambassador Rice, good morning. We should underline the message you just highlighted, which was less than a year ago from Stephen Miller, not some random guy, not a random podcaster, this is a guy who creates immigration policy, famously, infamously for Donald Trump when he was president and would again in a new Trump administration saying again "we started a new denaturalization project under Trump. In 2025, expect it to be turbocharged." And as you say, we're talking about people here legally. In the case of these Haitian immigrants, they are here legally. So they have moved from talking about rounding up illegal immigrants, people here illegally, and expelling them from the country to expelling people who live here legally.