6 days ago
John Oliver says Trump has given him 'anxiety' about being an immigrant even though he's now a US citizen
John Oliver told Monica Lewinsky Tuesday that Donald Trump 's immigration policies have him worried for his own safety, despite the fact that he's a US citizen and has been for nearly six years.
The British-born host of HBO 's Last Week Tonight made the claim on Lewinsky's podcast.
The two had been discussing the recent ICE raids and how they have caused hysteria throughout much of the country.
Oliver, 48, insisted the stress he felt prior to getting his citizenship has now resurfaced in spades.
'I finally got my citizenship in 2019 - at the end of 2019,' the late night host recalled. 'But I realized - I thought about it every day.
'Somewhere at the back of my head, was my immigration status,' he continued. 'At no point was it not somewhere in my mind.'
'And I have to remind myself now, with all these stories going on… it brings something out of you.
'Like it's there – that anxiety that I thought I'd moved past that day that I got my citizenship. I thought it would be gone then [with the] citizenship.'
'I didn't feel that,' he declared. 'Like the relief, didn't feel enough.'
Lewinsky, a former White House intern, said she also empathized with immigrants' experiences.
'Just of feeling hunted, of feeling unsafe, of something can happen any moment,' she said, before comparing the fears immigrants face to those of women.
'Whether it's being recognized or a paparazzi or there's, there's something, a feeling of unsafety wherever you are - and probably a lot of women feel that in general.'
Oliver agreed, telling the part-time motivational speaker: 'It feels like there's a lot of crossover there.'
The two spoke for more than an hour.
At one point, Lewinsky - whose affair with then-president Bill Clinton in the late 1990s became a national scandal - asked whether Oliver's immigrant status made him 'feel differently about what's happening.'
'I don't know,' Oliver replied, before providing an anecdote about him 'talking to the parents of a little kid that [he] know[s] yesterday.'
'We very quickly ended up like talking about forms, experiences, [and] interviews,' he claimed
'It's really hard - and so I can get sent back to the anxiety that I felt for a long time very quick.'
He added how scrutiny into immigrants' backgrounds 'does feel personal.
'It's one of the things I get really mad about, and therefore want to use on 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.'
ICE raids and arrests have seen roughly 185,000 immigrants deported from the US just this year.
ICE has faced widespread backlash as a result. Advocates - many of them US citizens - have been swept up and at times arrested while documenting the raids.
In LA, nurse Amanda Trebach was arrested Friday morning while recording ICE operations in the city. She was released the following day without ever being hit with charges.
Other incidents of profiling from federal agents have also spawned criticism - and tension - across the country.
ICE raids and arrests have seen roughly 185,000 deported just this year. The Trump administration recently asked to halt a court order that would limit ICE agents' ability to arrest suspected illegal immigrants based on the language they speak or where they work
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel touched on this last week, telling Sarah Silverman on her podcast how he had obtained Italian citizenship amid such fears.
Days before, the president panned Kimmel on Truth Social, predicting his and Jimmy Fallon's show 'were next' - after the decision to cancel the Late Show with Stephen Colbert for what was billed as financial reasons.
The Trump administration recently asked the Supreme Court to halt a court order that would limit ICE agents' ability to arrest suspected illegal immigrants based on the language they speak or where they work, as claims of profiling continue.
