MSNBC Contributor Says America Should Be Punished for Deporting Illegal Aliens [WATCH]

MSNBC contributor and author Elie Mystal called on the international community to impose sanctions against the United States over its enforcement of immigration law during a recent appearance on former MSNBC host Joy Reid’s podcast.

The conversation centered on Florida’s establishment of a detention facility for illegal aliens, which has drawn national attention following a visit from President Donald Trump and senior administration officials on Tuesday.

The facility, located on a defunct airstrip in the Florida Everglades and surrounded by swampland and wildlife, has been referred to as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

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“Every governor of a red state, if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in YOUR state so we can get the illegals and… pic.twitter.com/cO7LbdFGhh

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 1, 2025

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Joy Reid opened the segment by claiming that both the Trump administration and Florida’s state government had constructed the facility to “round up brown people.”

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Reid said, “He took the comfy couch hosts on a tour of the concentration camp that he’s building in Florida in order to round up people—brown people—and throw them in a camp because he doesn’t want them in Florida.”

Reid also said, “Anybody who is perceived or looks Latino is afraid to go to work.”

She did not mention that the facility is designated solely for housing individuals in the country illegally who are awaiting deportation proceedings.

Elie Mystal joined the discussion and echoed Reid’s criticism.

During his remarks, Mystal argued that the U.S. should be subject to international sanctions.

“I don’t say this lightly, but our country needs to be sanctioned,” Mystal said.

“We are the bad guys on the world stage. We are a menace to not only free people everywhere, but we are a menace to peaceful people everywhere at this point.”

Mystal continued, “And I’m not even going to say that we’ve only been a menace for the past three or four months, right? Like, when does the international community decide that enough is enough? I know we’re rich. I know we’ve got a lot of money. I know that people want to buy things from our country because we’re rich, or want to sell things to our country because we’re rich.”

“But at some point, the international community has to stand up to us because we are a bad guy on the world stage, right? And so we should be sanctioned. We should be sanctioned and rebuked,” he said.

Mystal, who is a frequent guest on MSNBC, has previously made similar comments in appearances and in his published work.

In his book Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, Mystal argues that all laws enacted prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 should be repealed.

He claims such laws are grounded in “white supremacy” and “racism” and should be considered unconstitutional.

During a promotional appearance on The View, Mystal stated that, “One of my premises for the book is that every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional. Because before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we were functionally an apartheid country.”

He continued, “Not everybody who lived here, could vote here. So, why should I give a [expletive] about some law that some old white man passed in 1920s like, the Immigration and Nationality Act?”

President Trump’s visit to the Florida facility comes as part of the administration’s broader enforcement push on illegal immigration.

The facility was established to detain illegal immigrants in compliance with federal immigration laws during the deportation process.

The Biden-era policies that previously allowed large-scale release of illegal immigrants into the interior of the country have been reversed under the Trump administration, which has emphasized detention and expedited removal for those found in violation of immigration law.