MSNBC’s Morning Joe opened the week with a gut punch, and Joe Scarborough made sure viewers felt every bit of it. Holding up the front page of The New York Times, Scarborough zeroed in on a story that has shaken even some of Donald Trump’s supporters: a two-year-old child, Jorge, photographed alone after his mother was mistakenly detained and deported by ICE.
You could hear the frustration in Scarborough’s voice as he laid out what the Times had reported—children left behind because of an aggressive deportation push led by Trump adviser Stephen Miller. No euphemisms, no sugarcoating. Just the brutal consequences of policy carried out in the name of “meeting numbers.”
“What is serious, though, is this New York Times, you actually have children, children being left alone without their parents,” he said, lifting the paper as if to prove the moment wasn’t hypothetical or political theater. It was real—painfully so.
“Because you have the administration so obsessed on reaching their numbers,” he continued. “And Stephen Miller thinks this is a good idea. This is Stephen Miller, thinks this is a good idea and Donald Trump lets it happen. Can we zoom in on this picture, please? Donald Trump lets this happen. Where children, here’s a two-year-old who are left without their parents because they’re trying to meet quotas that we said from the beginning, and we’ll say it again, quotas that will never, ever be met.”
Scarborough then tossed the paper aside and said flatly, “This is America in 2025.”
Jonathan Lemire jumped in, clearly just as appalled. “It’s that image and that headline why Donald Trump’s numbers on immigration are so underwater,” he said. “This was supposed to be a signature issue. Americans are saying that’s too much. Outside, maybe that thrills the hardest core faction of his base, but we know that the numbers they set out, the millions they want deported are not going to happen. And that though Americans, you know, in 2024 showed this, they want the southern border to be managed better.”
The moment landed because it wasn’t punditry—it was outrage rooted in something undeniable. A toddler left behind is not a talking point. It’s a snapshot of what Scarborough called out as a moral and political failure, one now dragging down Trump’s standing even among voters who once supported his immigration agenda.
Watch the full segment below from MSNBC:
