Jimmy Kimmel brought people on both sides of the immigration debate face to face for what he likely hoped would be an enlightening discussion.
But as the comedian himself admitted toward the end of the segment on Tuesday’s broadcast of “Jimmy Kimmel Live”: “We made almost no progress.”
Of the six opponents of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program that President Donald Trump has moved to end in March, only one appeared semi-willing to allow DACA recipient Esmeralda to remain in the U.S.
The others believed the young mother should be sent back alone to Mexico, from where her parents brought her when she was 2 years old. They said she should be made to apply for legal status in America from there.
(They had similar feelings on the other 700,000 young undocumented immigrants, or Dreamers, who are nervously waiting for Congress to negotiate deportation relief.)
The opponents remained resolute, even after learning that Esmeralda works, pays taxes, attends nursing college and now has a child of her own ― and that her Kansas-born fiancé Michael is a prison staffer who will soon be deployed overseas with his part-time job as a soldier in the U.S. Army National Guard.
Kimmel summed up his feelings when one of the opponents claimed “we live in a most-loving, compassionate, exceptional country.”
“I think that this country has become cruel,” Kimmel said.
Check out the full clip above.
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