Newsmax host: “Illegal aliens are effectively three-fifths of a person”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Media Matters has documented right-wing misinformation about the humanitarian parole program that Newsmax host Chris Plante discusses in this clip:

Last year the Biden administration expanded a humanitarian parole program allowing up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to stay in the U.S. for a two-year period with the potential for extension pending sponsorship and background checks.

The program — which requires the recipients to “arrange and fund” their own travel to the U.S. — is based on parole powers used by every president except Donald Trump since 1952, and President Joe Biden's administration was transparent about its expansion, which was widely reported.

But right-wing media have erupted over a recent report about the program from xenophobic hate group Center for Immigration Studies, claiming that the president has “secretly flown in 320,000 migrants” and accusing him of treason.

From the May 1, 2024, edition of Newsmax's The Right Squad with Chris Plante

CHRIS PLANTE (HOST): Campus riots that the media are assuring us are mostly peaceful are in the spotlight right now, but the top issue for us, for Americans continues to be illegal aliens and illegal immigration. A new Gallup poll finding 27% of Americans — that's us — say that Biden's open border is the most important problem facing the United States of America right now. Illegal immigration has been the top problem for the third consecutive month in the Gallup polls. The poll comes as a new Department of Homeland Security data shows hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens flew into the United States thanks to Joe Biden sending planes to fly them in to the United States under his mass parole program from January through August of 2023, and landed in more than 45 cities across the country. Illegals from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti — where cannibalism is popular these days. You know — to they flying them mostly to swing states across the country. No electoral politics going on here. With more than 160,000 of the illegal aliens arriving in four different Florida cities — Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, and Tampa.

Now, this is pretty obviously Joe Biden and the Democrats sticking it to Ron DeSantis, right? And sticking it to Florida and trying to move the demographic needle -- the demographic needle in Florida. And of course, you know, you put all the people in there, it's like the Democrats during slavery times when they -- like the three-fifths of a person a slave because it gave them more seats in the House of Representatives, and they're doing the same thing. The illegal aliens are effectively three-fifths of a person and they're flooding them by the, you know, what? 160,000 into the state of Florida. Much more than any other state, and it's because they've got a problem with Ron DeSantis.