Stephen Colbert Fact-Checks Chris Wallace On Immigration

On Thursday, Donald Trump delivered a speech on immigration to excite his base prior to the midterms. However, The Daily Beast writes that the speech itself was filled with lies. Later that evening, The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert had Fox News host Chris Wallace on his program. And while on air, Wallace tried to “argue the good part” of the president’s immigration speech.

“Fear of the caravan is not good, but the idea that three, or five, or seven thousand people from another country can just walk up to our border, knock on the door, and say, ‘We want in! We want to take jobs here, we want to work here’—no!” Wallace said, according to The Daily Beast. “A country does need to have borders and there does need to be some kind of system that determines whether people are allowed in the country or not. Seriously, do you believe in open borders?”

But Colbert shot back immediately.

“No, we don’t have an open border!” Colbert said, reports The Daily Beast. “There is a system, and three to five thousand people will not make it here. This has happened many times before, and they never do, and you know that! And you know that there is a system in place, and there is a legal system, and we have laws that allow asylum. So I believe in the law. Do you believe in the law, Chris Wallace?”

Wallace said he agreed in the law and Colbert joked that he therefore accepted Wallace’s apology, but instead, Wallace continued: “No, because of the fact that under the asylum rules now, if somebody comes in and they say, ‘We have credible fear of persecution,’ what happens? They are put out into the country, we don’t have enough places to put them, so we do have a catch-and-release program, and about 10 percent of the people that are caught and released return for their hearings. And only about 10 percent get legitimate asylum.”

But Colbert didn’t believe Wallace, saying “those aren’t the facts that I’ve seen.” So he asked a researcher off-screen to fact-check Wallace’s stats, saying that by the end of the interview they’ll know the truth. The Daily Beast writes that then, Wallace started backpedaling.

Later on in the show, one of the Late Show researchers found the numbers from PolitiFact, and according to Justice Department data, 60 percent to 70 percent of non-detained immigrants attended immigration-court proceedings.