Lord Sugar has addressed the mass deportations being carried out in the US at the order of his former Apprentice peer Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, President Trump’s new immigration policy was implemented, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids leading to the arrest of 1,179 people across major cities in the US.
It has been reported by The Washington Post that senior ICE officials have been told by Trump’s team to aggressively ramp up the number of arrests they carry out, with the figure reportedly raised from a hundred every day to at least 1,200 to 1,500.
Lord Sugar has been in the US since Trump’s inauguration, and recently visited the president’s Mar-a-Lago residence. In a new interview, ahead of the return of BBC series The Apprentice, Sugar addressed the immigration policy.
The tycoon, who recently mocked tech billionaire Elon Musk’s working relationship with Trump, told PA: “There is a kind of nervous atmosphere amongst people here about being deported, because there’s a lot of non-US citizens here that have got jobs and help to boost the economy.
“I don’t know where you draw the line to leave them here, but get rid of the criminals.”
Asked whether he would consider going into business with the president, Lord Sugar said: “I don’t think that opportunity will ever arise, because he’s too busy at the moment being president.
“He’s just taken over and started to implement some of his promises and plans.”
Trump, who is now in his second term as president, hosted the first 14 series of the show’s American edition between 2003 and 2015, when he was replaced by former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. The show was cancelled in the US in 2017.
Sugar has fronted The Apprentice in the UK since it started in 2005 – and the show’s 18th series starts on BBC One on Thursday (30 January).
Sugar will be joined by aides Baroness Karren Brady and series one winner Tim Campbell, who will help him decide which contestant is worthy of winning the top prize. This year’s candidates include a celebrity dentist, a former tennis pro and the owner of a salon chai in Knightsbridge.
The new series will see contestants challenged on their skills with new technology, including AI and holograms.
The former Amstrad boss said the show had to include it as it was what the younger element of its audience wanted to see, even if he had to learn the technology himself.
Lord Sugar said: “The production crew are a very, very clever bunch of people, they come up with these tasks that include technology, and the first person they have to explain it to is me.
“So I have to understand it, and I have to make out I understand it deeply, and I do spend quite a bit of time going through it.
“We have to have some up-to-date stuff, people are talking about AI, they’re talking about online stuff, we have to include it, because that’s what the younger audience wants to see.”
Additional reporting by Agencies
