‘No, No, No!’: Geraldo Rivera and Leland Vittert Get Heated in Debate Over Migrant Crime

A debate between NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert and correspondent Geraldo Rivera became heated on Monday as Rivera accused Republicans of creating a “boogeyman” from illegal immigrants.

The interview became tense straight out of the gate after Vittert opened by asking, “Can we finally agree that illegal aliens who commit crimes should then be deported?”

“Yes, I have no problem with the deportation of criminal aliens,” replied Rivera. “I think that the problem with saying it that way is that you ignore the fact and the data, 140 years of data that illegal aliens so-called, undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than legal residents.”

Vittert interrupted, “I’m gonna stop you right there. I’m gonna stop you right there. No, no, no, no! Because we did an entire segment on this and the so-called data on Friday. It comes back to one study out of Texas about illegal immigrants who commit homicide.”

“That’s not true,” Rivera insisted.

“It is true!” Vittert replied. “We don’t have 140 years of data about this, it’s just not true.”

Rivera argued, “Yes we do. Stanford University, I’ve read the study myself. We absolutely do, and why are you questioning my recitation of the data? I am absolutely confident that illegal immigrants, according to the data, including the Policing Institute, commit fewer crimes proportionally than citizens do.”

He continued, “The fact of the matter is that illegal immigrants have become the boogeyman of the current era! We can’t join that hysteria.”

Vittert went on to ask Rivera why President Joe Biden had not yet addressed the murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley, who was allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.

“We both know that if Laken Riley had been a little Black girl killed by a couple of White guys, Kamala Harris would have been at the funeral and Joe Biden would have been giving statements about it,” said Vittert. “Why isn’t he talking about this?”

Rivera responded by comparing the political reaction to Riley’s murder to the 2018 murder of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts, and argued that it was offensive to use such incidents for political purposes.

“Mollie Tibbetts’ father said it was despicable and heartless to use her name in a political way. I believe that it is despicable and heartless in this case also,” Rivera declared, to which Vittert pointed out that Riley’s mother had called her daughter’s murder “an avoidable tragedy” and had used the hashtag “#SayHerName.”

The interview became even more heated after Rivera compared the reaction to migrant crime to scaremongering about ethnic groups in the past.

“We have to work together to find solutions rather than try to politicize a specific crime, or try to politicize an issue, scare people in the way they scared them about the Irish, scared them about the Italians, and they scared them about the Chinese,” said Rivera.

“No, no, no! This is very different,” Vittert shot back. “This is not scaring about a group of people coming here for a better life. This is talking about unvetted entrance into the United States illegally. Those are two very different things.”

Watch above via NewsNation.