reminds

Jimmy Fallon once grabbed a cigarette out of Greg Gutfeld’s mouth, crinkled it up and tossed it to the ground, hollering at the Fox News personality, “Those things will kill you!” But it sounds like the place where they were hanging out had a shot at killing them too.

The two late-night hosts were both “wasted” about 15 years ago when he and Fallon met for the first time at an illegal Hell’s Kitchen bar run by a mutual friend — one who looked like “a cross between a Viking and a larger Viking,” the “Gutfeld!” host said Thursday night on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

The bar looked “like a place where special-ops forces waterboard terrorists,” he added. “There was no bar … it was a cooler, like the kind you take to a beach.”

“Dude, you’re not making this up,” Fallon said. “I totally know what you’re talking about. … I think I remember bringing beer into the bar and then him charging me for my own beer.”

The men’s magazine editor-turned-satirist recalled that their mutual friend operated that way. “He is very cheap, but if you want someone dead, he’ll do it.”

So he walks into the illegal bar with his buddy Andy Levy after the two had just finished taping something — perhaps “Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld” — and Fallon sees him and then tackles him, he said, “like a giant golden retriever.” Then the NBC host grabs Andy and the two fall to the ground wrestling. So Gutfeld decides it’s a good time to spark up a cigarette.

But Fallon leaps up, rips it out of his mouth and shouts the aforementioned you’re-gonna-die warning. “I go … ‘Dude, I’m not rich. You’re rich,’” Gutfeld said. “Cigarettes are expensive in New York City.”

He said Fallon’s face suddenly changed to one of sadness. “And then you left.”

Five minutes later, the “Saturday Night Live” alumnus came back toting a fresh pack of Parliaments, which he handed to the co-host of “The Five.”

“And I go, ‘That was really sweet. You want me to die.’”

Gutfeld, who was on “The Tonight Show” to promote a new game show he’s hosting, then remembered the group piling into Fallon’s car and tooling around to another bar that was, well, in the same building. “We literally drove from one door to another door … I think you wanted to impress that you had a driver.”

These are the things, apparently, that happen to the rich.

“Yeah!” Fallon said. “We had a nice ride, right?”

A nice ride indeed. Short, but nice. Meanwhile, over on “Gutfeld,” fill-in host Kat Timpf was talking about her erstwhile boss taking two full days off work to get a colonoscopy. Oh, how times have changed.

And the tables have indeed turned quite a bit in the last 15 years: “Gutfeld!,” which airs on Fox News at 7 p.m. local time and 10 p.m. Eastern and riffs on politics and the news of the day, is leading the nighttime chat show pack with — according to LateNighter — 3.289 million viewers in the second quarter and 238,000 in the advertiser-coveted demographic of those ages 18 to 49.

Fallon’s “Tonight Show” drew only 1.19 million viewers in the second quarter with 157,000 in the demo. That trails Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” which has a year to go before cancellation and leads the 11:35 p.m. broadcast pack with 2.42 million viewers and 219,000 in the demo in the second quarter, followed by “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” with 1.77 million viewers and 220,000 in the demo.

As a Christian who smuggled Bibles into my home country of Iran, I became a target of the country’s Islamist regime, which imprisons and sometimes kills those who invite Muslims to convert. After living under house arrest for two years, I fled as a refugee and was ultimately resettled to the United States.

I experienced true religious freedom for the first time in my life in this country, of which I am now a proud, grateful citizen — and that’s why I am shocked by the ways that my government is now treating my Iranian congregants, who have been detained by masked officers, separated from their families and threatened with deportation to a country that would kill them for their Christian faith. What I have witnessed gives me flashbacks to Tehran, and I believe that America must be better.

Two families who are a part of the Farsi-speaking evangelical congregation that I pastor in Los Angeles have been detained in recent weeks. First, a couple and their 3-year-old daughter, who are in the process of seeking asylum because they fear persecution if they were returned to Iran. They were detained at their court hearing in downtown Los Angeles on June 23. The entire family is now being held in South Texas.

The next day, I received a call from a woman in my church. Like me, she had been forced to flee Iran for Turkey when her involvement in Iran’s underground churches was exposed.

When the woman and her husband found themselves in a desperate situation in Turkey last year, they were not offered the option to fly to the U.S. as resettled refugees as I had been in 2010. Instead, they flew to South America, made a treacherous journey north and waited in Mexico for an appointment they reserved on a U.S. government app, CBP One, to be able to explain their situation to officers of the U.S. government.

Once lawfully allowed in with provisional humanitarian status, they found our church — where they could be baptized and publicly profess their faith in Jesus — and legal help to begin their asylum request. They received their work authorization documents and found jobs. Their first asylum hearing in immigration court was scheduled for this September.

When President Trump returned to office, however, his administration both suspended all refugee resettlement and canceled humanitarian parole for those who had been allowed to enter via the CBP One app. Many parolees received menacing letters instructing them to self-deport or face prosecution, fines or deportation. But these letters also noted that these instructions did not apply to those who had “otherwise obtained a lawful basis to remain,” such as a pending asylum application.

That’s why I was so shocked to receive a call from the woman in my congregation informing me that her husband had been detained by masked immigration officers on the street, just a few blocks from our church. I rushed over and began to film the shocking scene: First he was detained by masked officers, and then she was. I asked if they had a judicial warrant, but if they did, they would not show me. The woman experienced a panic attack and was taken to a hospital but discharged into ICE custody; she is now hours away in a detention center in California. Her husband is in a detention center in Texas.

It’s not just these two families who are affected. My community of Iranian Christians is terrified of being detained and deported back to Iran, where they fear being killed for their faith. Some have lost jobs because they fear leaving their homes. Others lost jobs because their work authorization, tied to humanitarian parole, was abruptly terminated.

I believe that America is better than this. This behavior reminds me disturbingly of what I fled in Iran. But I know that most Americans do not support this, nor do most fellow evangelical Christians: Many evangelicals voted for Trump because he pledged to protect persecuted Christians — not to deport them. While most evangelicals want those convicted of violent crimes detained, one-quarter or less of us say that about other immigrants, and 7 in 10 believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to receive refugees. I have been overwhelmed by the support of English- and Spanish-speaking sister congregations of our church, by the outreach of Christians from across the country and by a recent biblically rooted statement of many California evangelical leaders.

Now, Congress has passed legislation to exponentially increase the funding for detaining and deporting immigrants. Trump’s administration has been clear that anyone in the country unlawfully — including more than a million who were here lawfully until his administration abruptly canceled their status — is at risk of deportation. According to a recent study by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 80% of those vulnerable to deportation are Christians; some, like those in my church, would likely face death if deported to their home countries.

I hope and pray Trump will reverse course on these policies, going after those who genuinely present a public safety threat but having mercy on others, especially those who fled persecution on account of their faith. And until he does make that policy shift, I plead with Congress to pass real immigration reforms that would halt these horrifying detentions and deportations.

Ara Torosian is a pastor at Cornerstone West Los Angeles.