Brow Beat

John Oliver on Trump’s Immigration Crackdown: There’s a “Non-Zero” Chance I’ll Be Deported

Ahead of the long-awaited return of Last Week Tonight this Sunday, host John Oliver popped by The Late Show to catch up with fellow Daily Show alum Stephen Colbert. The two comedians talked about new education secretary Betsy DeVos and commiserated over the exhaustion of covering the Trump administration, with Oliver comparing the experience to being run over by a train. “Until inauguration day, nothing was really happening,” said Oliver. “It was just being tied to a train track watching the train coming. And then of course inauguration day is the train hitting you and you think, Yep, that felt pretty much how I thought it would feel.”

When asked about Trump’s recent crackdown on immigration, Oliver, a longtime Trump critic and current green card-holder, admitted to Colbert that while it’s very unlikely, he’s still a little bit worried about being “tossed out like tea” in the wake of Trump’s immigration crackdown. “The crazy thing is, it’s probably not going to happen, right? But there is a non-zero chance of it happening now,” Oliver said. “So yeah, I am slightly concerned. I have an American wife and an American son now, but who knows what’s enough? Having a green card used to be enough.”

Oliver reserved his harshest criticism for Trump’s controversial “Muslim ban” executive order, which prevented foreign military interpreters from entering the U.S., blasting Trump for not having personally served or sacrificed for his country while blocking those who have. “We held up translators, Afghan and Iraqi translators, at the border, who have bled for a country they’ve never visited, have sacrificed family members for this country,” said Oliver. “This president has done neither of those things, so it’s a little hard to swallow him telling people whether they should be a benefit to America or not.”

Oliver’s wife, Kate Norley, is a veteran of the Iraq war.