The most pro-open borders anchor in television got shut down on his own Sunday show on borders and immigration, and it wasn’t even close. Time and time again, Jorge Ramos was forcefully rebutted on the narratives he’s served his viewership for decades.
Watch as Ramos gets absolutely handled by San Antonio-area talk show host and old friend of MRC Latino George Rodriguez:
JORGE RAMOS: Trump has called some immigrants “animals”. He says that certain immigrants poison the blood of the United States. Do you agree with Trump?
GEORGE RODRIGUEZ: No, I don’t agree with many of the things Mr. Trump says because, well, sometimes he gets out of control. I don't know how to describe it. But I support what he wants to do. He wants to defend the nation. He puts... Look, we have to understand that there are many Latinos like me, who are third or fourth-generation Americans of Latino descent and the thing is that we are Americans first and we want to defend, we want to take care of our nation. THIS is our nation.
RAMOS: But your family is immigrant just like mine, George. And to call immigrants- to say that they poison the blood of the United States, that is absolutely false. This country was made thanks to immigrants.
RODRIGUEZ: Well, not all immigrants. We have to... Again, we have to be careful that when we talk about immigrants- are we talking about legal immigration or are we talking about out-of-control immigration, illegal immigration? There is a difference. We cannot say that all immigrants are simply immigrants. There are immigrants who have followed the immigration laws and there are those who have not.
Ramos first tried running the “animals” hoax past Rodriguez, that is, that hoax which alleges that Trump refers to all immigrants as “animals” on the occasions he has made such utterances, as opposed to criminals and gangsters. This media hoax originally ran in 2019 when Trump referred to MS-13 as “animals”. Most recently, in reference to criminal aliens such as Laken Riley’s killer.
The “animals” hoax is one example of how Spanish-language news media disseminates disinformation into the community. Per a 2022 Bienvenido/WPA Intel study, 69% of Spanish-language news consumers believe that Trump referred to all immigrants as “animals”.
Rodriguez moved off of the “animals” question and on to stating the case that Latinos are Americans, as opposed to some separate, alien other. And this prompted Ramos to go into a variant of “we are a nation of immigrants”, plus the appeal to immigrant origins despite Rodriguez having made clear his family has been here for generations and he is rooted in this country. Here again, Rodriguez shut Ramos down by shutting down the conflation between legal, vetted immigrants following the process versus unvetted, potentially criminal migrants streaming across the border.
There is a clear shift in the immigration debate that is playing out on Spanish-language TV. Advocates for open borders used to dominate the debate but, as we saw today, this is clearly no longer the case.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as aired on Univision’s Al Punto on Sunday, March 24th, 2024:
JORGE RAMOS: There are certainly many people in Texas who support SB-4. One of those people is George Rodriguez, a volunteer spokesman for the Texas Republican Party and conservative broadcaster. George, thank you for being here with us.
GEORGE RODRIGUEZ: Thank you very much for inviting me.
RAMOS: George, you believe in the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution clearly states that the issue of immigration is (the role) of the federal government, not of Texas. But you believe otherwise.
RODRÍGUEZ: No, I totally believe in the Constitution. I believe that a section of the Constitution allows the state to defend itself when there is an invasion, when there is a problem, and that is what we are seeing here in Texas. We have seen- look at what happened on Thursday in El Paso, the avalanche of people who crossed- who tried to forcefully cross the border. That's what we're seeing right now. Thousands of people are crossing every day and we have to do something to protect citizens and property, given that the federal government is not.
RAMOS: George, you just said that it is an invasion, but there is no invading country. You know perfectly well that Mexico does not want to conquer the United States and the perception that the majority of immigrants who cross are criminals is false. That is not true.
RODRIGUEZ: Yes, it's true. Not that we say the majority, but we don't know who they are. They have caught terrorists. They caught- this past week, they caught a Venezuelan who was fleeing the law in Colombia. We don't know who's coming. More than anything, it's out of control. The people who are entering. Migration. It’s out of control. There is no control. They are entering and after that, they are applying to emigrate, to stay in the United States. That's the opposite of what it should be. They must first apply, and then enter.
RAMOS: Well, a Stanford study, you know it perfectly well, establishes that immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens of the United States, they are imprisoned less. Even the Texas Department of Public Safety concludes that immigrants are less dangerous than United States citizens. So, again, the idea that criminals and terrorists are coming in, that's not the whole story.
RODRIGUEZ: Well, many people may say that it is not the whole story, but how many are we going to tolerate? How many criminals? How many terrorists are we going to tolerate? Just because they say, "Well, there aren't many." As long as one comes in, as long as two come in. That's enough for me. And that’s enough for us here in Texas. We must not have any criminals. We shouldn't have any terrorists coming in.
RAMOS: Trump has called some immigrants “animals”. He says that certain immigrants poison the blood of the United States. Do you agree with Trump?
Rodríguez: No, I don’t agree with many of the things Mr. Trump says, because well, sometimes he gets out of control. I don't know how to describe it. But I support what he wants to do. He wants to defend the nation. He puts... Look, we have to understand that there are many Latinos like me, who are third or fourth-generation Americans of Latino descent and the thing is that we are Americans first and we want to defend, we want to take care of our nation. THIS is our nation.
RAMOS: But your family is immigrant just like mine, George. And to call immigrants- say that they poison the blood of the United States, that is absolutely false. This country was made thanks to immigrants.
RODRIGUEZ: Well, not all immigrants. We have to... Again, we have to be careful that when we talk about immigrants- are we talking about legal immigration or are we talking about out-of-control immigration, illegal immigration? There is a difference. We cannot say that all immigrants are simply immigrants. There are immigrants who have followed the immigration laws and there are those who have not.
RAMOS: Let me finish with this, George. Texas police and law enforcement officials are neither trained nor prepared to detain undocumented immigrants or deport them. This would cost billions of dollars. Who is going to pay for this?
RODRIGUEZ: Look, the police are not going to stop just anyone. They are not going to stop someone just because they are Latino. They are going to stop, more than anything, people who are crossing, who are hunting for people who are crossing illegally, who are not crossing on the bridge, who are not introducing themselves to the Border Patrol, those are the people who are going to be caught. And those people- they’re going to have to see who they are, for what reason they come. Those are the people. People in big cities are very busy. The police are too busy to stop so-and-so just because they are Latino. That is a falsehood that Democrats and liberals are proposing.
RAMOS: George Rodríguez, thank you for being with us.
RODRIGUEZ: Thank you very much.
