Late-night hosts on Wednesday discussed Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the national guard to the south-west border.

“The president was very busy today,” Jimmy Kimmel began. “He issued a proclamation ordering the national guard to go to the border to fight against illegal immigration.”

Kimmel noted that the memorandum Trump signed Wednesday, which did not specify the number of troops or for how long they’ll be deployed, “comes at a very interesting time”. Less than two months ago, Kimmel explained, Trump boasted in a tweet of a “45 year low on illegal border crossings this year”, adding that “Ice and border patrol agents are doing a great job for our country.

“So even though border crossings are the lowest they’ve been since 1971, and everyone’s doing a great job, he’s sending in the national guard,” the host said, noting that in the last week Trump has been particularly fixated on what he believes to be “caravans” of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border into the US.



“And I’m sure the members of the national guard are thrilled they will be now spending their weekends in Nogales standing next to a cactus,” Kimmel quipped.



NBC’s Seth Meyers also addressed the Wednesday memorandum and Trump’s desire to militarize the border.

“This has been a week of Trump indulging his various obsessions, and one of those obsessions remains our border with Mexico,” Meyers said, referencing the president’s stream of tweets regarding the southern border and Amazon. “He’s been fuming about a caravan of immigrants headed here through Mexico and claiming that the border is essentially a lawless territory.”

Meyers then cut to a clip of Trump discussing his plan to deploy troops to the border; the president blames the Obama administration’s “catch and release” policy, in those caught in unlawful immigration status are released while they wait for a hearing with an immigration judge, for what he sees as lax enforcement on the southern border.

“That’s right, it’s called catch and release,” Meyers said. “Or as Trump used to call it: marriage.”

Meyers went on: “In reality, under Trump, immigration and customs enforcement has massively ramped up the tensions of undocumented immigrants, in many cases tearing apart families and deporting people who have lived here for decades. But this week Trump called for yet another aggressive step: he wants the military to guard the border.”

In a speech given on the subject, which Meyers showed clips from, Trump states that “until we can have a wall and proper security, we’re going to be guarding our border with the military”.

“Today, the Trump administration announced a plan to send national guard troops to the border,” Meyers continued. “And lately Trump has been obsessed with this idea of militarizing the border, an idea he floated last week when he said the US-Mexico border should be just as fortified as the border between North and South Korea.”



The host then showed a video of Trump, in late March, touting the border between North and South Korea and its “wall of soldiers”.

“We don’t get paid very much for this, do we?” Trump said. “But our own border, we don’t take care of it.”