Prompted on Patrick Bet-David's podcast about targeting gang members for deportation, Michael Knowles replies you “have to go after the gardener”
Published
Citation
From the June 12, 2025, edition of PBD Podcast streamed on YouTube
ADAM SOSNICK (PANELIST): I understand that there's the welfare state in the UK and, obviously, in California, but there's a big difference of people who just came in caravans two years ago, three years ago than people who've been here 10, 15, 20 years, or the children of illegal immigrants that came here 20 years ago--
MICHAEL KNOWLES (GUEST): Well they get to be citizens.
SOSNICK: --now they're 14, now they're 16. But there's a very nuanced discussion here. And I think what gets lost here is go after the gang members, not the gardeners. Okay? Go after the criminals not the construction workers.
KNOWLES: But most of them are economic migrants.
SOSNICK: But they all get kind of lumped in together and that's where we need to have a little nuance here.
MICHAEL KNOWLES: You actually have to go after the gardener I'm sorry to say. I like the gardener I'm sorry that Joe Biden opened the gates to them and and Democrats and some squish Republicans. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that they put them in that bad situation. But most of the people who are coming over are not face tattooed Satan worshiping criminals, though they work with them to get over here. Most of them are not refugees, very few of them are political refugees. Most of them are economic migrants. And so the question is, okay, if we're just gonna say, hey, the economic migrants get to stay and they get a path to citizenship and everyone else has to go, then you are effectively ramping up, not even just continuing, you're ramping up the incentive for that mass migration and you're going get millions and millions more.