Geraldo Rivera charged Republicans with turning illegal immigrants into a “boogeyman” as he locked horns in a tense interview on NewsNation.
Rivera’s stance on the issue was repeatedly challenged Monday by NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert who began the interview with a bang, asking the veteran journalist, “Can we finally agree that illegal aliens who commit crimes should then be deported?”
“Yes, I have no problem with the deportation of criminal aliens,” Rivera responded. “I think that the problem with saying it that way is that you ignore the fact and the data, 140 years of data that illegal aliens so-called, undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than legal residents.”
“I’m gonna stop you right there. I’m gonna stop you right there,” the host of “On Balance with Leland Vittert” interjected.
“No, no, no, no! Because we did an entire segment on this and the so-called data on Friday. It comes back to one study out of Texas about illegal immigrants who commit homicide,” he continued, prompting Rivera to argue, “That’s not true.”
“It is true!” Vittert shot back. “We don’t have 140 years of data about this, it’s just not true.”
“Yes, we do. Stanford University, I’ve read the study myself,” Rivera argued. “We absolutely do, and why are you questioning my recitation of the data? I am absolutely confident that illegal immigrants, according to the data, including the Policing Institute, commit fewer crimes proportionally than citizens do.”
“The fact of the matter is that illegal immigrants have become the boogeyman of the current era! We can’t join that hysteria,” Rivera claimed.
Vittert shifted to ask about President Joe Biden’s silence on the murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley, a nursing student at Augusta University who was allegedly killed by an illegal migrant from Venezuela.
“We both know that if Laken Riley had been a little black girl killed by a couple of white guys, Kamala Harris would have been at the funeral and Joe Biden would have been giving statements about it,” the NewsNation host said. “Why isn’t he talking about this?”
Rivera responded by complaining about politicizing crimes.
“Mollie Tibbetts’ father said it was despicable and heartless to use her name in a political way,” he said, referring to the 20-year-old University of Iowa student who was killed in 2018 by a Mexican national.
“I believe that it is despicable and heartless in this case also,” Rivera said.
“We have to work together to find solutions rather than try to politicize a specific crime, or try to politicize an issue, scare people in the way they scared them about the Irish, scared them about the Italians, and they scared them about the Chinese,” Rivera declared.
“No, no, no! This is very different,” Vittert argued.
“This is not scaring about a group of people coming here for a better life. This is talking about unvetted entrance into the United States illegally. Those are two very different things,” he pointed out.
