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Talk show host and outspoken Republican Geraldo Rivera has claimed he feels "ashamed" about how asylum seekers are being treated at the US-Mexico border, on a recent Fox News segment discussing the migrant caravan.
On Monday, Rivera, who is friends with Donald Trump, gave an impassioned plea to a panel of four Fox News commentators, saying:
I refuse to deal with this as a media issue because it is far too important. This goes to my soul. Fulfilling my role as the designated piñata on Fox News, I am ashamed
He continued, speaking on behalf of the migrants, by stating:
"We treat these refugees as if they are zombies from The Walking Dead. We arrested 42 people, eight of them were women with children. We have to deal with this problem humanely and with compassion. These are not invaders. Stop using these military analogies. This is absolutely painful to watch.
We are a nation of immigrants. These are desperate people. They walked 2,000 miles. Why? Because they want to rape your daughter or steal your lunch? No. Because they want a job. They want to fill the millions of unfilled jobs we have in the agriculture sector, they want to wash dishes, the want to deliver the pizzas. For goodness sake.
The New York native, whose father was born in Puerto Rico and whose mother is of Russian Jewish decent, has previously said, that despite being acquainted, he would not vote for Trump because of the president's comments regarding Mexicans.
Despite Rivera's effort, the other Fox News hosts didn't seem convinced by his argument.
Jesse Walters stated his opinion on the matter, by saying:
With all due respect, if you're going to be a good neighbour on one side of the border, you need to be a good neighbour on the other side of the border
"You have people throwing rocks that border patrol agents and there's about 100 of them climbing the wall, taunting, trying to breach and you have three or four border patrol agents on the other side. De-escalation tactics call for you to disperse a little tear gas to de-escalate the situation," he also said.
Lisa Kennedy agreed with him, stating:
The people throwing rocks and bottles and putting children's lives at risk, as individuals, they should be ashamed of themselves.
"What's going to happen, it's going to justify the hard-line immigration tactics that members of this administration would like to impose. That's a very, unintended consequence of that behaviour."
Recent pictures depicting migrant women and children being tear-gassed at the border have been criticised widely.
Towards the end of the Fox News segment, comments about Obama were made again, with the hosts saying that the previous president was also in charge of deporting migrants.
Many online, however, fired back claiming that Obama never ordered patrol agents to fire tear gas at women and children.
HT DailyMail
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