We’re only one week into President Donald Trump‘s second term, and Sunny Hostin is already plenty fired up. The View co-host was incensed on this morning’s show while discussing Trump’s deportation plans, which are already off to an aggressive start under the supervision of border czar Tom Homan.
In an interview with ABC News yesterday (Jan. 26), Homan defended his mass deportation program, saying, “If we don’t show there’s consequences, you’re never going to fix the border problem.” Under Trump, that’s meant a (since blocked) attempt to overturn birthright citizenship, declaration of a national emergency at the southern border and the arrest of nearly 1,000 people in just one day who were accused of being in the country illegally.
After watching a clip of Homan’s ABC News interview, the panel launched into their debate, with Hostin claiming that consequences have only been faced so far by “a certain group or type of immigrant” in the U.S.
Hostin noted that while the largest group of migrants in the U.S. comes from Mexico, she said the next largest group is Asian immigrants. She remarked, “I don’t think they walk across the southern border. I think they come by plane.”
Noting that some European and Asian immigrants come to the U.S. and illegally overstay their visas — but don’t enter through the southern border — Hostin accused the Trump administration of sending a “very clear message as to what this president wants the look of a ‘criminal migrant’ to look like.”
She proclaimed, “I think that’s racist,” earning a round of applause from the audience.
Hostin also came after Trump for “weaponizing the U.S. military” by declaring a national emergency at the U.S./Mexico border, which allowed the military to be deployed by the Department of Defense “at a 60% increase” to deport migrants who are in the country illegally.
“I just think our military members, many of them did not join the military to do that job,” she said.
She ended her remarks by sharing the story of a Puerto Rican military veteran who was detained and questioned by immigration officials during a raid on a business in Newark, New Jersey last Thursday (Jan. 23).
“They are racially profiling in doing this…For the fifty-millionth, thousandth time: Puerto Ricans are Americans!” she exclaimed. “I am disappointed, disgusted and saddened by what I’m seeing.”
The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.
