NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley delivered a scathing attack on President Donald Trump for his “disgraceful” crackdown on “amazing immigrants.”
“I want to be very careful with my words right now, because this is a really touchy subject for me,” the 63-year-old basketball legend, who is equally known for his off-the-cuff takedowns as a TV host, said live on CBS’s March Madness preview on Sunday.
“I love that kid and his family, but the way some of these other immigrants are getting treated in our country right now is a travesty and a disgrace,” the former Suns MVP said of UConn’s breakout star Alex Karaban, who is the son of Belarusian immigrants, before he laid into the MAGA president.
On Sunday, Karaban, 23, made the sensational game-winning assist to put his team in the NCAA Final Four ahead of Duke.
“I think there’s a difference between amazing immigrants and criminal immigrants, and I think what’s going on in our country,” Barkley continued. “What we’re doing to some of these amazing immigrants is really unfortunate and it’s really sad.”
In Trump’s second term, immigration reform has become a central focus—a promise he made during his 2024 campaign, when he vowed to carry out the largest mass deportation in history.
In just the first seven months of his presidency, Trump, 79, detained more than 11,000 parents of children who obtained birthright citizenship, separating families.
The president’s increased focus on and funding of ICE led to a crackdown on immigrants and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minneapolis.
Barkley called Karaban’s four-year career at UConn, in which he won the March Madness tournament twice, a “great immigrant story.”
“We have a lot of great immigrant stories out there whose stories need to be told. But some of the stuff that’s happening to immigrants in our country right now is really unfortunate and is really unfair,” Barkley said.
“But immigrants built this country, and we should admire them and respect them,” the former All-Star concluded.
Ahead of Trump’s first term, Barkley previously used the March Madness publicity to voice his political objections to the Republican notion that “illegal immigrants are ruining our country by taking jobs.”
“We’re shipping all our jobs out of the country. That’s, to me, worse than a few Hispanics who come here to work their behinds off,” Barkley said in 2016. “If you’re a poor white person and your life sucks, it’s easy for you to blame Hispanics because you don’t want to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m the reason my life sucks.’ The Republicans do a good job exploiting that.”
The former 76er and lifelong Democrat said that voters are too easily tricked into infighting.
“They spend all their time blaming each other because rich people throw words at them like ‘illegal immigration’ and ‘racism’ and things like that,” he noted.
Though Barkley is a staunch patriot, having dominated the 1992 Olympics as part of America’s iconic “Dream Team,” the NBA star is an equal advocate for the sport’s immigrant and international players.
Barkley helped recruit the NBA’s arguably best-ever international player: Dirk Nowitzki of Germany.
Nowitzki, 47, who chose his jersey number based on Barkley’s Team USA number 14, first met the “Round Mound of Rebound” during a Nike Hoops Summit in 1998, where he dominated America’s NBA stars as a teenager.
After the game, Barkley did his best to recruit the star to his alma mater, Auburn University.
“Can I get your information? I want you to go to Auburn,” Barkley told the young German star. “He looked at me with a straight face and said, ‘I’ve got to go to the army.’”
“Dude, you’re seven feet tall. You’re not going into the army. What are you going to hide behind?” Barkley joked.
Nowitzki then declared for the draft and became the greatest player in Dallas Mavericks history, winning a championship and an MVP award in his 21-year Hall of Fame career.
Karaban and his fellow UConn Huskies will face Illinois on Saturday for a spot in the finals.
