Samantha Bee explains how America created the border crisis now ensnaring child migrants

This past week has shone a spotlight on the deplorable conditions at facilities where the U.S. is holding children seeking asylum in the U.S. "Most of the kids in those overcrowded facilities come from Central America's Northern Triangle countries: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador," Samatha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal. President "Trump and his supporters claim it's fine warehouse them like pallets of generic peanut butter because it's their fault for coming to America. But the truth is, the U.S. is a huge reason they were forced to flee here in the first place."

Bee's history lesson began in Ronald Reagan's 1980s and America's Cold War in Central America, and she focused on El Salvador. "When we stomped out communism, we also stomped out pretty much every thing else. For many civilians, getting the hell out of El Salvador became a matter of life or death," she said. "Many of the migrants ended up in Los Angeles, where some younger Salvadorans would wind up in street gangs," which over time became MS-13. "That's right, President Trump's favorite foreign threat was made in the U.S.A. — unlike his ties and two-thirds of his wives," she said.

And MS-13 didn't didn't turn into today's machete-wielding killers until "the American prison system helped transform them from the juvenile delinquents of the '80s to the violent gang we know today," Bee said. Then, starting in the '90s, the U.S. deported tens of thousands of gang members, "brutalized by American prisons," back to Central America, where they took root and made the Northern Triangle one of the most violent regions in the world, sending civilians feeling north for safety, she said. "It's the circle of life, except death."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"All refugees deserve basic compassion, but we owe a special debt to Central American refugees," Bee said. "At the very least, we own their kids some f---ing toothpaste." There is some NSFW language. Peter Weber

YouTube

Watch On