President Donald Trump’s anti-migrant raids have left late-night host John Oliver feeling anxious about his own immigration status, even though the British-born comedian has been a naturalized American for years.
Before he became a U.S. citizen in 2019, Oliver’s immigration status was always in the back of his mind, he told Monica Lewinsky during Tuesday’s episode of her podcast Reclaiming.
Now, as the Trump administration tries to hit deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller’s quota of 3,000 arrests per day, federal agents have raided job sites—including farms, hotels, and restaurants—and arrested gardeners, street vendors, and even American citizens just walking down the street.
“With all these stories going on, it brings something out of you,” the Last Week Tonight host said. “Like it’s there, that anxiety that I thought I’d moved past that day that I got my citizenship.”
Oliver has spoken in the past about the “utterly petrifying” process of becoming a U.S. citizen. After coming to the U.S. in 2006, he held a number of visas before obtaining a green card, which expired and which he renewed. He then applied for citizenship, he told fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert in 2020.
Lewinsky said she empathized with what many immigrants are experiencing, “just of feeling hunted, of feeling unsafe, of something can happen any moment,” though she acknowledged that immigrants are facing much worse consequences than what she suffered during the years when her notoriety made her a constant target.
Oliver agreed that for immigrants, it feels like attention is now being “weaponized,” and said he “can get sent back to the anxiety that I felt for a very long time very quick.”
“It’s not far from the surface, and it does feel personal,” he said.
He also admitted, “It’s one of the things I get really mad about, and therefore want to use our show to show Americans who may have heard things like, ‘Come in the right way,’ ‘Just do things the right way,’ and not fully understand just how antithetical that is to the process that actually exists.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
The administration has deported asylum seekers and even people who have been granted asylum who entered the country legally, targeted spouses of green card holders, and ended legal status for people who entered the country legally and have lived here for decades.
U.S. citizens are also being arrested and detained by immigration officials, and the president has even threatened to “take away” actor Rosie O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship—something the government has absolutely no power to do given she was born in New York.
As bad as things have become, though, Oliver said he wasn’t surprised. “Weirdly in the Trump administration’s defense, they said all of this out loud,” he said.
“I think it’s very convenient for people to not believe it because then it feels like you can vote for them and think, ‘Yeah, I didn’t—sure I voted for you, but I didn’t vote for that, for people being chased across fields,’” he said. “Well, no, you did though. Because they—again, I can’t believe I’m defending them—but they did say this. They said all of it, you just chose not to believe it.”
