John Oliver opened the first Last Week Tonight since protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) erupted in Los Angeles, prompting Donald Trump to send in 4,000 national guard troops and 700 active-duty marines. The deployment “felt completely over the top, especially when you consider troops will apparently be there for 60 days at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $134m,” Oliver said on Sunday evening. “Usually when that much is spent on something completely pointless, we at least get to see one of the Avengers in it.”
Oliver also skewered Ice’s widespread armed raids across the city, arresting undocumented immigrants by the thousands. “When everyone was warning about a slippery slope to authoritarianism under Trump, this is it,” he said. “Because masked government agents grabbing people off the street and deporting them without due process is authoritarianism. Sending in the military to crack down on protests against those actions is authoritarianism.”
