Richard Gere went to Germany to attack the United States’ crackdown on illegal immigration. “Did you ever imagine that someone as crazy as this would become President of the United States?” the actor asked an audience of foreigners on Thursday.
“I think the term I was actually given today — apparently the U.S. government is calling aliens,” Gere said at the launch of a joint migration initiative by the Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights and The Gere Foundation in Berlin, Germany, according to a report by The Hill.
“Aliens, that’s the latest. It had been vermin, now it’s aliens,” the Pretty Woman star added, spreading false information about the United States on foreign soil.
Notably, the U.S. government has used the word “alien” as a legal designation for non-citizens for the vast majority of its existence. It first appeared in the Naturalization Act of 1790, and became an officially established term in 1798.
During his speech on Thursday, Gere went on to admit he is “deeply ashamed” of the “alien” language used by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers — falsely implying that this is the first time it has ever been used.
“Somehow, in today’s debates, we often speak about migrants, about refugees, as if they were different from us,” the Chicago star said.
“I’m deeply ashamed of this, I want you to know,” Gere added. “They belong to another category of human beings, as if their hopes and fears and aspirations were somehow less legitimate than our own.”
Gere — who fled the U.S. for Madrid, Spain, in late 2024 — then bizarrely compared the issue of illegal immigration to his family’s own migration story, which occurred before the United States even existed.
The actor reportedly said his own family history involves “four of five people on the Mayflower” — the British ship carrying Pilgrims who arrived in Massachusetts in the 1600s, more than a century before the United States was founded.
“So, we all left and our parents left, our grandparents, to make a journey in search of safety, of opportunity, dignity, or simply to look for a better future,” the Jackal star said. “Human history is in many ways the history of migration, of movement.”
“Did you ever imagine that someone as crazy as this would become President of the United States and work to destroy it?” Gere asked his audience.
The American Gigolo star has been attacking Trump for years. Earlier this week, Gere called the president a “maniac” while delivering a speech at an event in Norway, according to a report by the Washington Times.
While speaking at a human rights forum in Oslo, the 76-year-old actor mentioned a recent visit he took to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, Germany, to draw a bizarre historical parallel.
“We have to see the cues — this dictatorship of the monsters — how quickly it happens,” Gere said.
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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