Mexican actor and director Diego Luna attacked President Donald Trump’s policies on illegal immigration in a rant that conflated illegal migration with legal immigrants, claiming, “Far too many people live in fear.”
“I have never been able to full understand how it is that someone like Donald Trump is able to acquire this level of power,” Luna declared during his opening monologue on Monday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, while guest hosting the show for Jimmy Kimmel.
“I always struggle to understand how his hate speech can take root in a country whose nature has always been a welcoming one,” the Narcos: Mexico star continued.
Luna then took some time out of his monologue to attack Trump’s immigration policies — which the president heavily campaigned on, and in return, was handed a mandate by the American people via a landslide election victory that resulted in Trump winning not only the Electoral College, but the popular vote and every swing state in the nation as well.
“Today, many people are feeling persecuted,” Luna claimed, adding, “Far too many people live in fear, fear of taking their kids to school or going to places where they earn an honest living. These people, they’re your neighbors, your friends, immigrants.”
“The multiple times that this country has had to rebuild itself, immigrants were always there to pick up the slack,” the Andor star said, citing illegals working in construction and hospitality, and as “technicians, merchants, athletes, drivers, farmers,” as well as running kitchens.
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The Open Range star went on to inaccurately suggest that President Trump’s immigration policies somehow affect legal immigrants, too, by bizarrely bringing them into the picture, proclaiming, “They pay a lot of taxes, a lot of them, with their jobs — papers or no papers.”
“In 2022, undocumented immigrants contributed around $96.7 billion worth of taxes, but that is something that the Trump administration doesn’t want you to know,” Luna said.
While illegal immigrants may pay taxes, the overall economic impact is negative when additional costs are taken into account, such as education, healthcare, and welfare, among other public services.
These costs outweigh illegal alien tax contributions, as noted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which estimated the total cost of illegal immigration — at the federal, state, and local levels — in 2017 having resulted in a net fiscal burden of $116 billion.
The estimation was calculated by subtracting the tax revenue paid by illegal aliens — merely $19 billion — from the total economic impact of illegal migration, $134.9 billion, FAIR revealed.
“Today, they [illegal immigrants] need to know that they’re not alone,” Luna asserted in his Jimmy Kimmel Live! rant, before fearmongering, “These have been a dark few weeks. It is not acceptable, nor it’s normal to separate families. Violence and terror are not okay.”
As Breitbart News reported, however, border czar Tom Homan has clarified that the Trump administration is not in the business of separating families.
“If [illegal aliens] chose, after they come to the country illegally, to have a U.S. citizen child, and think, ‘Okay, the court order doesn’t mean anything anymore, the removal order doesn’t mean anything anymore,’ then what kind of message are we sending to the whole world?” Homan said.
“If we do that, then shut down the immigration court, because the orders don’t mean anything anymore, and take the border patrol off the border,” the border czar continued. “We can’t send a message to the whole world that you can violate the laws of this country and not leave, as required by a judge, and have a U.S. citizen child you’re okay.”
“That child can stay. They can stay with a relative. They can stay with the other parent, or they can take them with them,” Homan added. “We don’t deport U.S. citizens, but they put themselves in a position we didn’t.”
Luna, meanwhile, argued it is “unfair” that illegal aliens “have to live in hiding,” claiming “the only solution” is to “give them a path to legal certainty,” insisting that those who cross the border into the U.S. “deserve to be fully welcome in this country” and “belong” in the United States.
The Y tu mamá también star then closed out his anti-Trump rant by encouraging viewers to call their representatives and “tell them what you think.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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