Stephen Colbert on Thursday hit back at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for quoting the Bible to defend the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border.
Colbert quoted scripture back at Sessions on CBS’s “The Late Show” Thursday night, saying the U.S. was using “cruelty” as a deterrent to immigrants.
“If he just read a little bit further into Romans 13:10, it says, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law,’” Colbert said, prompting cheers from the audience.
Speaking in Indiana on Thursday, Sessions invoked the Bible to defend the administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy to prosecute more migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The policy includes separating parents from their children while they are being prosecuted.
The administration has defended the policy by saying they are only enforcing a law that was already on the books.
{mosads}“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”
Colbert said he wasn’t “surprised Sessions didn’t read the whole thing.”
“After all, Jesus said ‘suffer the children to come unto me,’” Colbert said. “But I’m pretty sure all Sessions saw was the words ‘children’ and ’suffer’ and said, ‘I’m on it!’”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the policy and Sessions’s remark at a news briefing on Thursday, saying it was “biblical to enforce the law.”
Trump has been harshly criticized over the “zero-tolerance” policy, criticism that has intensified as new details emerge about a Texas facility that is housing more than 1,400 migrant children.
An MSNBC reporter who toured the facility earlier this week said it reminded him of a prison, and that the children were effectively being “incarcerated.”