Filling in on Monday’s Last Word, MSNBC host and Canadian immigrant Ali Velshi lobbied viewers to watch the new far-left Netflix documentary, Immigration Nation, in an effort to slam President Trump and his "racist and inhumane immigration agenda." His interview with the filmmakers began with anguished lecturing:
ALI VELSHI: Time after time the Trump administration has tried to silence insider accounts that show how dangerous it is to have Donald Trump in the White House surrounded by enablers… Two daring filmmakers who were granted unbelievable access to follow I.C.E agents in early 2017. I'm fascinated by how they got this access. Donald Trump was just beginning to implement his racist and inhumane immigration agenda. Over three years, Shaul Schwartz and Cristina Clusiau captured the unconscionable and unbounded cruelty of Donald Trump's immigration policies.
Velshi clearly wanted to make Trump, I.C.E., and anyone who has backed policies enforcing borders as racist and evil. In doing so, Velshi demonized an entire federal agency and the President of the United States. In this softball review, Velshi continued to attack Trump and demean I.C.E., as a way of calling for its eradication:
This all exposes how the Trump administration seeks to inflict maximum pain on immigrants through a bureaucratic system filled with falsehoods. The documentary shows that the administration’s policy of deterrence is a political lie used to validate violence against immigrants.
Amusingly, Velshi was in shock when the filmmakers disclosed that the Obama-era Department of Homeland Security would not let them film:
CRISTINA CLUSIAU (FILMMAKER): And we asked I.C.E. If they wanted to do something under the Obama administration, and they said no. And so when Trump got elected, we decided to go back to them and ask them again if they'd be interested, and this time they said yes.
SHAUL SCHWARTZ (FILMMAKER): Yeah, it was a --
VELSHI: So they thought it was a better idea to do this after Trump was elected?
SCHWARTZ: Yeah, I think the agency was coming under a lot of heat.
Maybe, the Obama administration did not want to have their I.C.E. agents filmed, because they were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deportations a year. On average, Trump’s I.C.E. has deported less illegal immigrants per year than Obama’s I.C.E., something the left would rather forget.
The leftist host wanted the filmmakers to have no empathy for I.C.E. Agents, and to directly call them racists, but that’s not the answer he received:
VELSHI: Was there at any point empathy that you had for the job that they had to do, or did they come across as the instruments of a racist government policy?
CLUSIAU: You know, I have a lot of empathy for the I.C.E. Officers.
MSNBC’s agenda has been to demonize I.C.E. so that viewers believe that it’s a malicious and racist organization. While, the filmmakers were not that hostile towards I.C.E., it was left to Velshi to perpetrate the hostility.
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Read the full transcript below:
MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
08/03/2020
10:41 PM ET
ALI VELSHI (MSNBC HOST): Time after time the Trump administration has tried to silence insider accounts that show how dangerous it is to have Donald Trump in the White House surrounded by enablers. Donald Trump didn't want you to read the damning tell-all books by his niece Mary Trump or former National Security Adviser John Bolton, or by the renowned journalist Michael Wolfe, or by Pulitzer Prize winning Bob Woodward. And now the latest work that Donald Trump does not want you to see is here.
It is a documentary. “Immigration Nation” was released today on Netflix. The Week calls it, quote, “the moment damning inside portrait of the Trump administration yet.” We now have this important account of history thanks to our next guests. Two daring filmmakers who were granted unbelievable access to follow I.C.E agents in early 2017. I'm fascinated by how they got this access. Donald Trump was just beginning to implement his racist and inhumane immigration agenda. Over three years, Saul Schwartz and Cristina Clusiau captured the unconscionable and unbounded cruelty of Donald Trump's immigration policies. The New York Times reports quote, “as the documentary neared completion in recent months, the administration fought mightily to keep it released until after the 2020 election. The film makers said they were told that the administration's anger over the project came from all the way to the top,” end quote. Here’s some of the real stories Donald Trump does not want you to see, I.C.E officers lying to immigrants to gain access to their homes, mocking them after taking them into custody.
(…)10:45 PM ET
VELSHI: All right. This all exposes how the Trump administration seeks to inflict maximum pain on immigrants through a bureaucratic system filled with falsehoods. The documentary shows that the administration’s policy of deterrence is a political lie used to validate violence against immigrants. After the break, the two film makers who is captured all of this suffering will join us to talk about what has become one of the darkest chapters in American history.
(…)
10:50 PM ET
VELSHI: Joining us now, the directors of "Immigration Nation" released on Netflix today, Saul Schwartz and Cristina Clusiau. Thank you for being with us today. We appreciate this. I am fascinated by how you got the access you got. Did they not know that you were there with cameras and mics and recording what they were saying because in just the few clips we've played, Christina, I'm fascinated that they let you tape that.
CRISTINA CLUSIAU (FILMMAKER): Yeah. You know, we had about two and a half years of access within I.C.E., and it started back we previously from an acquaintance that we had. And we asked I.C.E. If they wanted to do something under the Obama administration, and they said no. And so when Trump got elected, we decided to go back to them and ask them again if they'd be interested, and this time they said yes.
SHAUL SCHWARTZ (FILMMAKER): Yeah, it was a --
VELSHI: So they thought it was a better idea to do this after Trump was elected?
SCHWARTZ: Yeah, I think the agency was coming under a lot of heat. They understood that the rhetoric from the campaign would bring heat to the agency. You know, keep in mind that I.C.E. is a very special law enforcement agency. It changes quite quickly under political shifts, and I thought they felt that they would come under pressure and wanted someone to come in and document and, you know, we were obviously thrilled to do the story.
VELSHI: Christina, talk to me about your impressions of the people who work for I.C.E. Was there at any point empathy that you had for the job that they had to do, or did they come across as the instruments of a racist government policy?
CLUSIAU: You know, I have a lot of empathy for the I.C.E. Officers. After you spend a lot of time with them through the couple of years, you start to -- you find common ground, and I think that was one thing to recognize. And so, the common ground also led to conversations and so on and so forth. But you understand that in a culture of policies that are enacted under immigration, when you see from the top down that they're meant to install fear, it sometimes trickles down into the culture.
(…)
10:57 PM ET
VELSHI: What about the degree to which the mission of I.C.E. has been expanded under this administration? We have heard of missions that I.C.E. Has undertaken, places that they are going to, things that they are doing that are not what Americans understood that I.C.E. was meant for. In fact, some people started calling for the abolition of I.C.E. as a result. How do the I.C.E. Officers feel about that?
SCHWARTZ: Again, I think they're in a very difficult position. I think that when, you know, they are very angered by the abolish I.C.E. movement, which obviously really took off after the zero tolerance policy. But this is some of this administration's goals. They as a tactic, political tactic, decided that they would install fear under this thought, under this idea that, you know, if we make your life hard enough, you're probably just going to leave.
Now, that's where it’s not been successful. What it has done is put people more in the shadows, and I think that's unfortunate. But I think the I.C.E. Agents -- again, it's a big agency. Some people are going to be tougher. Some people are going to be emboldened to kind of be more bullies. Others are just placed in a very hard position to do their jobs. They're not used to be hated daily. Some of the men and women of I.C.E. Do important stuff like I think most countries need an immigration police so when there is a criminal immigrant that needs to be removed, I think it's okay that there is a unit that does that. The question is under the rhetoric where it goes and what that does to us as a nation.
VELSHI: Is it going to be clear from your documentary, though, that maybe there are men and women in I.C.E. who are empathetic, good beings and that this is a government policy problem, or can you make that distinction when you're watching some of these people?
SCHWARTZ I think -- I think that's a little bit in the eye of the beholder. I think the viewer -- we -- you know, it breaks your heart to sometimes see the toll. It really does. And I think to some degree there is a toll on the I.C.E. Agents themselves. But mostly, of course, the toll is on the immigrants. I think we've seen not only undocumented immigrants, but people who try to follow the law get hurt and that’s when we’re really turning our back.
