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Former first lady Michelle Obama voiced deep concerns about what’s happening to migrants under President Trump’s aggressive deportation policy, railing against its impact on her home city of Chicago.
During a conversation about race and fear, the former first lady acknowledged that she has a pretty protected lifestyle, while fretting that everyday people living outside her bubble might be suffering.
“In this current climate, for me it’s what’s happening to immigrants,” Obama, 61, told “On Purpose with Jay Shetty” during a podcast episode that dropped Monday when asked her most “recent test of fear.”
“It’s not the fear for myself anymore,” she continued. “I drive around in a four-car motorcade with a police escort. I’m Michelle Obama. I do still worry about my daughters in the world, even though they are somewhat recognizable.”
She stressed that “my fears are for what I know is happening out there in streets all over the city.”
Obama was joined during the interview by her brother, Craig Robinson, who recounted trauma from when a black police officer accused him of stealing a fancy new bike when he was a kid. She drew parallels to his experience and what she believes migrants are enduring in today’s environment.
“There’s so much bias and so much racism and so much ignorance that fuels those kind of choices,” she bemoaned. “I worry for people of color all over this country, and I don’t know that we will have the advocates to protect everybody.”
And that … frightens me, it keeps me up at night,” she added. “How do you how do you feel comfortable going to work, going to school, when you know that there could be people out here judging you and who could upend your life in a second — that’s who I worry for right now.”
Obama declined to mention Trump by name or delve deep into her concerns about migrants’ well-being in the US while taking thinly veiled swipes against his administration’s policies.
However, she vaguely lamented that “now that we have leadership that is, sort of, indiscriminately determining who belongs and who doesn’t,” while “we know that those decisions aren’t being made with courts and with due process.”
Democrats have accused Trump of skirting due process by taking steps such as invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged gangbangers — who illegally entered the country — outside of traditional deportation channels.
Trump has scrambled to secure to US-Mexico border and his administration has aggressively targeted illegal immigrants for deportation.
Ironically, the Obama administration deported over 3 million people, drawing ire from the liberal base.
During the 2024 campaign cycle, the former first lady aggressively stumped for former Vice President Kamala Harris and frequently lambasted Trump’s politics.
She later skipped his inauguration in January, which her husband attend alone.
Recently, she shed light on why she skipped Trump’s inauguration — clothing.
“It started with not having anything to wear,” Obama admitted last week on an episode of her podcast “IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson.”
“I walk around with the right dress, I travel with clothes just in case something pops off. So I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it’s so easy to just say, let me do the right thing.”
She also seethed at the speculation about her marriage in light of her skipping both the inauguration and the late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, which her husband also attended by himself.
“My decision to skip the inauguration, what people don’t realize, or my decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me were met with such ridicule and criticism,” she said.
“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, that they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart, you know?”
English (US)