Untitled Hasan Minhaj/Netflix Project (TV) (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 6 - Immigration Enforcement - full transcript

[theme music playing]

[sirens wailing]

[audience applauding]

[audience cheering]

Hello! Oh, my God!

Thank you! Thank you so much! Thank you!

Thank you so much! Welcome to Patriot Act!

I'm Hasan Minhaj. Thank you.

This is your home for news
and mid-'90s basketball references.

Everyone, settle in.
It's about to get depressing.

Remember the fun we had last week?



Talking about sneakers and hoodies?
That's over, because tonight

we are talking about one
of the most disturbing policies

in America right now,

our ruthless immigration enforcement.

Since the start of his campaign,

the president has been demonizing
and scapegoating immigrants and refugees.

But in the last year, that demonization
has morphed into outright persecution.

Migrant families crossing the border
have been broken up, detained,

and children still in diapers were thrown
in cages.

And much of this brutal crackdown
has been at the hands

of Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
or ICE.

ICE agents arrested a father of five

while he was taking his daughter
to school.

A Vietnamese man has died in ICE custody
here in Arizona.



He's the seventh detainee to die
in ICE custody since October.

[woman] After 15 years of marriage,

Cindy Garcia had to say goodbye
to her husband.

During the Obama administration,
ICE granted stays several times.

Then, President Trump came into office.

The phrase
"And then, Trump came into office"

is like the phrase "Is that Alec Baldwin?"

[audience laughs]

You know shit's about to get fucked up
right after that phrase.

ICE is one of the most hated
government agencies.

It makes people hear about the NSA and go,
"Wow. They seem like the good guys."

One of ICE's main functions is to detain
and deport illegal immigrants.

But under Trump,
it seems like ICE is doing it

in the cruelest ways imaginable.

There are two main types of deportations;
there's border and interior.

Border deportations are exactly
what they sound like.

Historically, these have made up
the bulk of deportations.

Anyone caught near the border just after
an illegal crossing is sent back.

Interior deportations happen
anywhere in the country.

They tend to involve people
who've established roots

and often have no criminal record.

We've all heard these tragic stories -
people torn from their communities.

But it wasn't always like this.
When Obama took office,

he continued Bush-era policies,

and his deportation numbers
were astronomical.

If you're shocked by that,

you obviously are forgetting
his campaign slogan:

"Yes, we can...
kick out more Guatemalans."

[audience laughing]

You guys never heard the whole thing!

You were cheering too loud.
You never let him finish.

But it's cool. He was good at basketball
and he could dance.

But eventually...

Obama prioritized only deporting people
with criminal records,

so his numbers started going way down.

Once Trump took office,
he immediately reversed course,

and in two years,
you see a massive jump in arrests.

[man] Under President Trump,
arrests are up 42%

compared to under president Obama.

And while criminal arrests

under both administrations were
about the same,

non-criminal arrests saw a 334% spike
under President Trump.

"Non-criminal arrest" is such an oxymoron.

It's like "chatty Clarence Thomas"
or "remorseful Louis CK."

I don't know, is he sorry? Who knows.

He's not really addressing it right now.

Now, as much as Trump loves to say
he's going after "bad hombres,"

that's not who he's targeting.

In fact, just one month
into Trump's presidency,

deportation officers were explicitly told

to take action
against all removable aliens,

which basically meant,
"Deport everyone, no matter what."

Let's be honest...

Trump treats all undocumented immigrants
like criminals.

And the way ICE is set up makes it easier
for him to do that.

ICE is part of
the Department of Homeland Security,

an agency that was created
in response to 9/11,

to protect us from terrorism.

Before that, immigration enforcement
was handled by the Department of Justice.

Before that, the Department of Labor.
That was so long ago, it sounds quaint.

Like when dick appointments
were called "dates."

[audience laughs]

It was a simpler time.

I didn't even know what the fuck
"dick appointments" were.

And then I had to ask the writers, like,
"Is this a thing?"

Like, "There's a Google Calendar?
You send an invite?" [chuckles]

And then I'm like,
"Do we send-- How does it...?"

I've been out of it so long, man!

People are out here scheduling them
like dentist appointments.

It's fucking crazy!

Immigration first fell to an agency
that oversees jobs,

then law enforcement,
then terrorism prevention.

We went
from immigrants are coming to work

to immigrants are going to kill you.

We inextricably linked immigration
with terrorism.

Combine that with ICE's broad mandate
to round up all undocumented immigrants,

and it has led
to some truly inhumane treatment,

which is part of why ICE
is facing so much backlash.

People are clamoring to abolish ICE.
They want nothing to do with it.

And it turns out, even ICE doesn't want
anything to do with ICE.

There are actually
three different divisions of ICE.

They're called HSI, OPLA, and ERO.
Think of them like the Franco brothers.

OPLA is
the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor.

It's like Tom Franco - he's irrelevant,

and you didn't know he existed
until I said his name.

Bye, Tom. Don't worry about him.

ERO is Enforcement and Removal Operations.

They do the aggressive shit:

immigration raids, detaining,
cuffing construction workers.

They're like James Franco.

They attract the most media attention,

they have to defend
against claims of harassment,

and they've subjected people to abuse
in dark rooms for long periods of time.

The third branch is HSI,
or Homeland Security Investigations.

HSI is like Dave Franco.

It puts out an uneven,
but at times respectable, body of work,

quietly and methodically.

Now, Dave isn't perfect,
but he does the important shit.

Like cracking down on transnational crime.

HSBC about to pay big time

after allegations of money laundering
linked to Iran and Mexican drug cartels.

The New York Times reports
a record settlement, $1.9 billion.

Do you know how hard it is to get a bank
to face consequences for its actions?

Seriously.

Wells Fargo has been forgiven more times
than Ted Kennedy.

HSI also takes down child pornographers,

fights cartels and drug dealers,
busts human traffickers,

and most importantly, they take down
those sick motherfuckers pirating DVDs.

Who is still illegally burning DVDs?

Like, if you see the blanket DVD man,

you'll just be like,
"Dude, I don't want Titanic."

But HSI is getting tired of ERO.

Let me put this back in Franco terms.

James is getting into
so much messed up shit,

Dave wants out of the family. [chuckles]

A bombshell request
by top federal officials

within
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

[woman] Senior agents
have written this letter

to the Homeland Security Secretary,
Kirstjen Nielsen,

asking for their part of ICE
to be divorced from the rest of ICE,

because being associated

with the administration's
hard-line immigration policies

is making it harder for them to do
their important national security work.

This is unprecedented.

Seasoned HSI agents,
the ones who run criminal investigations,

sent a letter to Homeland Security,
basically saying,

"Yo, we wanna bounce.
ERO is so bad, we can't do our jobs."

ERO is so radioactive,

people are distancing themselves
from them,

like it's a Woody Allen movie
they were starring in. [chuckles]

[audience laughs]

They'd be like, "Yo, you were amazing
in Midnight in Paris."

-"I wasn't in that movie."
-"Yeah, you were. IMDb said you were."

Even local police departments hate ICE!

In L.A.,
ICE officers routinely announce themselves

as police officers

when conducting immigration arrests.

And the LAPD hates that.

City officials publicly asked ICE officers

to stop identifying themselves as police.

ICE has made people afraid to cooperate
with the police or ask for help,

because they're afraid
they will be deported.

Okay,
let's just take that in for a second.

Do you know how messed up you have to be
for the LAPD to say,

"Hey, you're making us look bad."

[man] The Los Angeles Police Department
has a history of brutality and misconduct.

[man 2] One of the most famous
and revolting home movies ever made.

[man 3] An officer picking up
a small bag of cocaine

before allegedly putting the drugs
inside the defendant's wallet.

Today, we got to hear Mark Fuhrman using
the so-called N-word over and over again.

[chuckles]
I love how he's like, "so-called N-word."

Like it's fucking Narnia.
It's not, it's a real thing that exists.

The Trump administration's
immigration policies are so cruel

they sometimes defy understanding.

Here, children as young as three or four

are expected to try and tell their stories
to an immigration judge, alone.

About half of all immigrant children
go to court without an attorney.

Nine out of ten of those children
will be deported.

That's what we're doing to children
in America in 2018.

To make any sense of this,

you need to understand
the mastermind behind all of this,

Trump's anti-immigrant hype man
and senior advisor to the president,

Stephen Miller.

He was instrumental in blowing up
DACA negotiations,

he also pushed for the Muslim ban
and family separation.

And he's called birthright citizenship

an absolute perversion
of the 14th amendment.

If this human 4chan thread had his way,
I would not be an American citizen.

Brick by brick,
that wall is gonna get built.

I'd happen to know better than you, Jake,
how the travel ban was written.

I'm prepared to go on any show,
anywhere, anytime and repeat it,

and say that president
of the United States is correct 100%.

"I will go on any show, anytime, anywhere.

I'll do it on Fox & Friends,
Tucker Carlson,

Chicago Med, Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire,
any of the Chicagos,

and Wendy motherfucking Williams,

and let everyone know,
Donald Trump is 100% right."

What is his deal?

What the fuck is wrong with him?
Like, I've thought about this for a...

You know how every villain
has an origin story?

Like Voldemort being abandoned
by his muggle father.

Or Magneto being tortured
by Nazi scientists.

Or Ted Cruz being cursed by a racist toad.

Everyone has a beginning.

Now, we did some digging
and we unearthed some lost footage -

no one has really seen this -

that provides a window
into Stephen Miller's...

Well, not a soul,
he doesn't have a soul, but...

This is what Stephen Miller was like
in high school.

I always eat steak before I play tennis.

It's important to get... uh...
the dead meat in your body.

I haven't had sex yet. I'm going to wait
until I find that perfect woman.

So, if I have to wait until 40,

then I'll probably be dead
in a pool of blood.

Apparently, you're supposed
to go to bed at nighttime.

Usually, I sit in my room like this:

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ha!

That tennis incel
is now senior advisor to the president.

He can whisper sweet nothings
into DJT's ear.

One thing about Stephen Miller:
he's always been advanced for his age.

I was talking to my doctor the other day
and I said to him,

"Well, you know, I'm 17, I'm pretty sexy."

[friends laughing]

"Everything's going the way I want it to.

You know, I play good tennis.
But something's just not going right.

My hair's just receding.
I look like I'm 35.

And a balding 35-year-old at that."

Okay, did your hair leave you,
or did you just deport it for being brown?

[cheering, applauding]

You know what's sad?

I feel like, in an alternate universe,
all of this could've been avoided

if the doctor had just given him Propecia.

I'm serious. Bro, people, we know this.

Coconut oil, tel, and prayer
for Stephen's hairline

could've changed history
and brought families together again.

But Stephen has always known who he is.

In high school,
he ran for student government,

and this was his campaign promise.

Every candidate that's ever been elected
has failed to do one important thing.

I will say and I will do things

that no one else in their right mind
would say or do.

And he's been making good on that promise
ever since.

Here he is in college at Duke.

You know how in college
we all had that passion project,

like, "I'm gonna take an improv class.
And printmaking."

This was Stephen Miller's.

With us right now is Stephen Miller,
national campus coordinator

and co-founder
for the Terrorism Awareness Project.

I realized that there was
this tremendous lack of information

If you're a kid, we'll set you up
a chapter on your campus.

-[man] Well, you are smart. Yeah.
-[woman] You're smart.

I watch Fox & Friends every morning.
That probably has something to do with it.

Steve Doocy saying you are smart
is not a compliment.

He says that to a touch screen menu
at McDonald's.

Like, "Oh wow, you're smart.
The hash browns, I can push up a...

This is a smart screen."

I bet Christian Laettner saw this
and was like,

"Finally! Someone from Duke
more hateable than me!" [chuckles]

We actually found an old copy
of TerrorismAwareness on the internet.

["Carmina Burana" playing]

Somehow, that website
was made after 9/11, but before 1997.

[audience applauds]

Now, remember, kids:
the Internet is forever.

There are only two things in the world
that are forever:

the Internet and the United States
occupying Afghanistan.

But it wasn't all "Carmina Burana"
and GeoCities jihad for Stephen Miller.

He also found some time to let loose.

[Neil Diamond's "America" playing
over radio]

♪ Far
We've been traveling far ♪

♪ Without a home ♪

♪ But not without a star ♪

The song he's singing
is "Coming to America" by Neil Diamond.

It's one of the most pro-immigration songs
ever written.

It's a song I would sing
in elementary school

during music class. We'd all be like,

♪ Everywhere around the world ♪

[imitates guitar sounds]

♪ We're coming to America ♪

White kids, brown kids.

♪ Everywhere around the world ♪

[imitates guitar sounds]

♪ We're coming to America ♪

It's such an uplifting song,

but Stephen Miller was the only one
who grew up and was like, "Oh shit.

[audience laughs]

They're coming to America."

And that paranoia
is why Stephen Miller and Donald Trump

have been obsessed
with the migrant caravan.

[man] Several thousand individuals now
continuing to make their way north.

If we're not prepared
to stop this caravan,

how big will the next one be?

Some people call it an invasion.
It's like an invasion.

I love how when thousands of brown people
show up in a group, it's an invasion,

but when thousands of white people
do the same thing, it's a "Phish concert."

Can you imagine
if they saw this crowd here tonight?

They'd be like, "They've invaded
the Upper West Side of New York!

What's going on! It's spreading!"

[audience applauding]

No. It's dental students
and dick appointments, that's it.

This invasion

started as a small group of Hondurans
largely fleeing gang violence.

They're seeking safety,
because Honduras consistently has

one of the highest murder rates
in the world.

And the whole reason
they're traveling in a caravan

is because there's safety in numbers.

But that's not how Trump sees it.

Go into the middle and search.

You're gonna find MS-13,

you're gonna find Middle Eastern,
you're gonna find everything.

When you look at that caravan...
A big percentage of men. Young. Strong.

A lot of bad people.
A lot of bad people in there.

Bad people and big strong men?
I thought you liked big strong men.

And then...

Trump's white friend joined in.

It's inconceivable that there are not,
um...

uh, people of Middle Eastern descent
in a crowd of more than 7,000 people

advancing toward our border.

Okay, let me get this straight.

Mike Pence can't conceive
that ISIS isn't in the caravan,

but he can conceive
while calling his wife mother.

I don't know. Life...

Life is complicated.

[audience applauds]

I'm just hung up on how Pence thought
the terrorism geography would work out.

Like, a gang member in Honduras

is just going through his favs
and calls up his friend in ISIS:

"We're putting together a caravan.
We'll hit the border. You down?"

I'm gonna fly from Baghdad to Istanbul,
then to Oslo,

then Fort Lauderdale, 'cause you gotta go
through fucking Florida, then to Honduras,

then I'm gonna hop on a caravan
for 3,000 miles to a port of entry,

apply for asylum, get vetted,
wait months to plead my case,

then I get into America, hold out
for that perfect moment, and then...

Sharia law spreads
across the United States.

I convert every single US citizen
to Islam, willingly or unwillingly.

We replace every Dave & Buster's
with mosques.

The US becomes a Muslim country.
Thank you, jihad!"

That is never gonna happen, Stephen!

Make no mistake,

no matter what,

the Trump administration
will keep beating the drum

about the dangers of outsiders coming
into this country.

Whether it's immigrants or refugees.

They did it in the midterms,
and they're gonna do it again for 2020.

They don't care that there's a difference.
They're gonna keep telling you

melanin monsters are going to come here
and eat your children

Game of Thrones-style.

It fires up their base,
and it's just political theater.

I can't believe
that I have to use crazy screens

to explain all of this, but here we go.

Up first, refugees between 1975 and 2015 -

a total of three Americans
were killed by refugee terrorists.

That means more Americans have died
from swallowing laundry detergent,

Pokémon Go mishaps, eating bad cucumbers,

and selfies that totally weren't worth it.

You know what's weird?

That camel probably was like,
"Tastes like chicken!"

That woman survived,
but this is real. They're called killfies.

It sounds like an episode of Black Mirror,

but it's actually what happens

when you try to take a selfie
and accidentally die.

And when that happens,
it's the only time your body and photo

are both uploaded to the cloud.

Refugees have killed fewer Americans
than duckface.

This isn't just cherry-picked
liberal-snowflake data.

According to the Cato Institute,
a Libertarian think tank,

the chances of being killed
by a refugee terrorist

are one in 3.6 billion.

It's not gonna happen.

You have a better chance
of actually being a Franco brother.

And that is just refugees.

The odds of immigrants
committing violent crime are also low.

Since 1980, the immigrant share of
the U.S. population has more than doubled.

At the same time,

the violent crime rate has decreased
by more than a third.

You see that area right there,
that big gap?

That's immigrant dads yelling
at their kids,

"Don't fuck this up. They'll deport us.

We are darpoks, okay?
We're not gonna get in trouble."

Research has shown time and time again
that immigrants,

documented or undocumented,

do not contribute
to an increase in violent crime.

But try telling that to Donald Trump.

I always hear that, "Oh, no,

the population is safer than the people
that live in the country."

You've heard that, fellas, right?
You've heard that.

I hear that so much and I say,
"Is that possible?"

The answer is, it's not true.

You hear it's like they're better people
than what we have,

than our citizens, it's not true.

No, it is true!

Trump uses true
and untrue interchangeably.

Is that like aloha for him?

No, it's the same thing.

Using ICE to ramp up deportations

isn't the only way
that the Trump administration

is making it more difficult
for immigrants.

The Trump administration will slash
the number of refugee admissions

to record lows next year.

This year's cap of 45,000
will be lowered to 30,000 in 2019.

As a country,
we have always prided ourselves

on being a sanctuary for the world's
huddled masses fleeing persecution.

And Trump is like, "Yeah, nah."

Obviously, we need to have systems
in place to have a secure border.

But all that fearmongering
about violent immigrants

has been taking focus away
from very real violent threats.

The number of reported hate crimes
in the United States rose in 2016,

the year Donald Trump
was elected president.

The second consecutive year
the figures have increased.

[man] For two decades, domestic
counterterrorism strategy

has ignored the rising danger
of far-right extremism.

Incidents of right-wing terrorism
have spiked in the last few years,

and it doesn't seem
like the Trump administration cares.

And if you feel like Trump's
demonization of outsiders

doesn't have an effect
on the rise of right-wing terrorism,

then look no further than what happened
in Pittsburgh last month.

The accused gunman
behind the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre

appeared in court today.

Robert Bowers is facing
murder and hate crime charges.

[man] Like the president,
he referred to migrants as invaders.

He had particular hatred for HIAS,

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,

which helps resettle immigrants
of all backgrounds.

A deranged right-wing extremist

was so enraged over the threat of refugees
invading America in the caravan,

that he decided to take action.

Police say he walked into a synagogue
and murdered 11 people.

This was the deadliest terrorist attack
on Jews in American history.

So you would think

it would be a top priority
for the Department of Homeland Security -

but it wasn't.

DHS held a conference call
just days after the shooting

where they reportedly
only talked about the migrant caravan

instead of the synagogue shooting.

This hard-line approach to immigration
enforcement isn't just needlessly cruel.

It is completely misguided,
and it makes all of us less safe.

We are a country of immigrants.

But when you see Trump say
there are good people on both sides,

when you see ICE going after
undocumented immigrants, no-holds-barred,

and you see how little attention
is paid on the growing threat

of right-wing terrorism,

it's hard not to feel
like we are turning our backs

on our own history.

If these people
are willing to risk their lives

to travel 3,000 miles
and apply for asylum at our borders,

we owe it to them
to at least look over their application.

Because, at some point,
someone was willing to look over ours.

-[theme music playing]
-[audience cheering]

Thank you.