This is a script from a July 19 episode of Velshi. You can watch the full segment here.

A few days ago, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller asked himself aloud a question on Fox News.

MILLER: “What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens? Here’s what it would look like: You would be able to see a doctor in the emergency room right away, no wait time, no problems. Your kids would go to a public school that had more money than they know what to do with. Classrooms would be half the size. Students who have special needs would get all the attention that they needed. /// There would be no transnational gangs /// There would be no fentanyl, there would be no drug deaths.”

Where. To. Begin.

For one, studies suggest emergency room wait times – while lengthy across the country – aren’t inflated by undocumented people, for fear that they may be asked for documentation.

But it’s pretty sneaky to blame healthcare crises on undocumented people the same month you cut Medicaid funding.

Another blind spot in his argument: the workers. According to the Center for Migration Studies, 42 percent of LA County’s healthcare workers are foreign-born, many of whom are undocumented.

Think they’re taking Americans’ jobs? Think again:

LA county launched an initiative earlier this year to increase the number of nurses in the area, because they expect 6,500 nurse job openings available each year for the next decade.

It’s also worth noting that a vast majority of migrants being arrested in Los Angeles right now have no criminal convictions whatsoever.

In the month of June, 68% of the people detained in Southern California had no criminal convictions, and 57% had never even been charged with a crime, according to the Deportation Data Project.

And fentanyl trafficking – which this administration has used to justify everything from ICE raids to tariffs on Canada – while widespread and dangerous, is mostly done by Americans.

According to a 2024 analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 86.4% of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking are U.S. citizens.

Bu to be clear: it’s not just that immigrants aren’t hurting us. It’s that they’re helping us.

It’s simple economics: immigrants increase the labor force and boost tax revenue. 

But the data and the facts aren’t really what matter here.

Stephen Miller is, in a way, speaking from the heart when he speaks about Los Angeles.

Miller is from Santa Monica, California – a jewel in Los Angeles County’s crown of pristine beaches. It’s beautiful, but it can get a bit crowded; traffic can get clogged up. The promenade on Third Street has seen better days with busier stores. The city is struggling with homelessness and affordability.

Maybe his memory of L.A. as a child contrasts starkly with what the city is today. Maybe he’s surmised immigrants are why.

But there are millions of Angelenos – immigrants, children of immigrants, friends of immigrants – whose lives are colored and perspectives widened by the patchwork of cultural communities within the city.

To them, a Los Angeles without immigrants is hardly Los Angeles at all.