President Donald Trump defined a large part of his campaign with a pledge to increase border control and ramp up efforts to detain undocumented immigrants living in the US. To make good on the promise, the Trump administration outlined a plan in May to throw $4.6 billion towards an unprecedented immigration crackdown. But while the construction of a border wall has attracted much attention, a lesser known effort to add 5,000 border agents to the already 20,000 force has largely gone under the radar.
John Oliver on Sunday took a closer look at Trump’s proposal to beef up the number of agents patrolling the border, explaining why such a hurried recruitment effort is likely to backfire.
“Whatever your feelings about the laws that border patrol have been given to enforce—and I have plenty of feelings on that—you do want the best possible people enforcing them,” Oliver said. “Because if you don’t, as we have seen, bad things happen. This is the story of the danger of not learning from your mistakes.”
For a deeper dive, head over to our investigation, “I Went Undercover With a Border Militia. Here’s What I Saw.”
