“Gunny” Bob Newman suggested that arrested illegal immigrants be put to work “on our state chain gang,” claiming: “It sounds extreme, but it could be a lot more extreme, now couldn't it?” He raised the idea of making entering the country illegally a “capital offense” punishable by hanging but said that would be “barbaric,” adding, "[a]nd I'm not for that."
“Gunny” Bob proposed putting illegal immigrants “on our state chain gang”; opposed “hang[ing] them” because it would be “barbaric”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
On the August 1 broadcast of Newradio 850 KOA's The Gunny Bob Show, host “Gunny” Bob Newman proposed that in response to illegal immigration, "[w]e can do things like announcing to other nations that if you come to Colorado and our police catch you here illegally, we're going to put you on a chain gang. And you're going to work for five years on our state chain gang, doing public work projects, and you're not going to like it there." He then stated: “It sounds extreme, but it could be a lot more extreme, now couldn't it?”
Later in the broadcast, Newman noted: “There are going to be a lot of people who don't like my idea of a chain gang for illegal aliens. They're going to say it's mean or it's cruel or it's barbaric or it's against human rights.” Newman added, however, that “in reality, it's none of that stuff because if you wanted to be barbaric about it, what you do is you make it a capital offense for them to come here illegally, and you hang them. And I'm not for that.”
From the August 1 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Gunny Bob Show:
NEWMAN: I wanna go back to the phones here because, you know, this topic, it's an evergreen topic on talk radio, but it's especially important here in Colorado, when it comes to immigration reform and border security, because our jails and our prisons here in this state are packed with illegal aliens who commit all sorts of crimes from stealing something, to rape, to kidnapping, to murder. And it doesn't have to be this way. Listen, we can make the federal government do their job. But while we're making -- coming up with plots to make them do their job, we can do things right here in our own state. We can do things like announcing to other nations that if you come to Colorado and our police catch you here illegally, we're going to put you on a chain gang. And you're going to work for five years on our state chain gang, doing public work projects, and you're not going to like it there. It sounds extreme, but it could be a lot more extreme, now couldn't it? And this will reduce the magnet effect.
[...]
NEWMAN: There are going to be a lot of people who don't like my idea of a chain gang for illegal aliens. They're going to say it's mean or it's cruel or it's barbaric or it's against human rights. And in reality, it's none of that stuff because if you wanted to be barbaric about it, what you do is you make it a capital offense for them to come here illegally, and you hang them. And I'm not for that.