Conservative rock musician Ted Nugent said he endorses the Trump administration’s early push to round up illegal immigrants and deport them.
“Everybody I know — all my ranching buddies, private landowners — we’ve got our borders secure,” Nugent, a Texas resident, said Tuesday on NewsNation’s “On Balance.”
“The least that we could expect is that our government would do what we the people do and what we the people demand: Secure my effing country,” he added.
So far, arrests have focused on what authorities say are the most dangerous migrants, but federal officials concede the end game is to deport anyone who is in the U.S. illegally. Nugent says the government can’t be concerned about otherwise law-abiding migrants who aren’t authorized to be here when agents face danger in the field.
“We don’t have the responsibility or the time or the effort to decide who might be dangerous or who might not be. Once you’ve invaded our country, you’re a bad guy,” he told host Leland Vittert.
He added: “This is war.”
Ted Nugent: From rocker to shocker
The 76-year-old Nugent enjoyed commercial success in the 1970s and 1980s as a solo recording artist and concert act and probably is best known for his 1977 album “Cat Scratch Fever,” with its hit single of the same name. He later joined the supergroup Damn Yankees.
In recent years, the Michigan native and hunting and gun-rights advocate has courted controversy for his outspoken views. In 2014, he wrote a column suggesting that illegal immigrants should become “indentured servants” until they earn citizenship.
He also drew the scrutiny of the U.S. Secret Service in 2012 after telling an NRA audience he would be “dead or in jail” if then-President Obama was reelected. The matter was dropped after Nugent met with agents. He later referred to Obama as a “subhuman mongrel,” for which he apologized.
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