Fox News host Charles Payne responded to the heart-breaking story of a Guatemalan woman whose husband was deported three years ago by suggesting that she and her children should be rounded up and sent to join him. “Maybe it sounds cold-hearted,” Payne concluded, “but this might be the only solution.”
If you missed the Democratic debate moment last night with Lucia Quiej and Univision reporter Enrique Acevedo, Huffington Post recaps it for you:
Quiej’s husband, an undocumented immigrant whose petition for political asylum was denied, was pulled over in 2011 while driving with an expired license and deported, according to the Miami Herald. Quiej has raised their five children on her own since then.
Quiej, who also is undocumented, attended the debate with her children and made history when she asked both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in Spanish about their plan to reunite families like hers that have been separated because of deportation. As both candidates answered in English, Acevedo stood next to her and whispered a translation in her ear.
Even Fox News Latino seemed to have some sympathy for her:
“I was one month pregnant and they deported him only because he didn’t have a driver’s license,” Quiej told Progreso Weekly in 2014. “There’s a lot of people here with ankle monitors, many children whose parents were taken away by Immigration. In Homestead, there’s nothing; only despair.”
Speaking before the debate, Quiej and her family said that they live in a constant state of fear that they or somebody they know will be picked up by immigration officials and deported. The morning of the debate, Quiej said that she received a text from a friend that immigration agents were in her town.
“Homestead is becoming a ghost town,” she told Univision. “We all struggle with fear.”
But there was no sympathy from Payne! He hosted the immigrant-hating, Arizona sheriff, Paul Babeu, to help fear monger and demonize immigrants.
Babeu, you may recall, got into a spot of legal and political hot water when, as a Congressional candidate, he got caught up in a gay scandal in which he allegedly threatened his ex-lover, a Mexican national, with deportation after Babeu was caught cheating. Now, Phoenix New Times reports that after no legal wrongdoing was found, Babeu is running again.
So Babeu was back on Fox like it’s old times and once again acting like he’s a border expert even though his county, Pinal, is 70 miles north of the border.
Payne set up the fear mongering for the segment. He played clips of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders promising not to deport children or adult immigrants who have not broken the law. “Sheriff, I gotta tell you, if I’m watching this or if I hear about it, and I’m trying to get in the United States, I’m thinking, all I gotta do is cross that border and I’m home free,” Payne said.
Not surprisingly, Babeu agreed and expanded on the theme.
BABEU: That’s exactly what the message they just sent to tens and tens of millions of future illegals, not just in Mexico, Central America and anywhere else. And that’s the wrong message to send, obviously, because we have laws here. Hello!
…They have undermined the rule of law in our country. …This message being sent, you can expect these next 10 months, there’s gonna be a rapid increase. We’ve already seen it… and it’s gonna get worse.
While Babeu spoke, B-roll footage of sketchy-looking immigrants appeared on the screen – just to scare you into thinking they’re headed to your living room soon.
Then Payne brought up Quiej’s question. “What do you make of that?” he asked Babeu.
Babeu insisted “we are the most compassionate nation in the world” and then suggested that we should continue to break families apart because, “What about the millions of legals that come here, following our process to become citizens, and the fact that we now have 12 to 20 million illegals?”
So Payne came up with his own “compassion.”
PAYNE: Well, I know that you prefer Donald Trump for president and, you know, he’s talked about maybe curing this situation by just sending the whole family back, so that we don’t have these things. And for a lot of people, maybe it sounds cold-hearted, but if you see this woman and her child, and they don’t have the dad there, this might be the only solution, because they have broken the law.
Even Bill O’Reilly knows that is no solution at all. But on Fox News, politics trumps facts and just about everything else.
Watch it below, from the March 10 Your World.
America’s reputation as a generous country ended several decades ago, more or less as from the Nixon administration. To be fair, seems that the dems and the reps have pursued very similar policies further damaging the country’s reputation as a land willing to welcome the poor and the downtrodden, etc. etc..