Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke claimed on Saturday that immigrants in the United States were being “kept in modern-day bondage.”

O’Rourke, speaking in Las Vegas to members of the Service Employees International Union, argued that immigration law kept immigrants “living in the shadows” and kept them down, unable to share in America’s success. (RELATED: A Couple Dozen People Go To Beto Rally In Las Vegas)

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“Millions [are] living in the shadows, working some of the toughest jobs, lucky to make a minimum wage. Some not even making that,” O’Rourke explained. “Kept in modern-day bondage, their immigration status used as leverage to keep them down from fully participating in this country’s success.”

But as the hosts of “Fox & Friends” noted Sunday morning, there was one word noticeably absent from O’Rourke’s comments: “illegal.”

“Missing a word. He’s missing a word!” Pete Hegseth responded.

“Yeah, you, this is what they do,” Jedediah Bila added. “They conflate legal and illegal immigration because they need be able to paint President Trump and those who support Trump as anti-immigrant. And no matter how many times you say this country was founded on immigrants, so many of us have people that came before us that were immigrants, we support the legal process. That does not resonate because it’s not a good sound bite. And what’s a good sound bite is ‘Trump doesn’t like immigrants.'”

Co-host Griff Jenkins pointed out that O’Rourke’s former district — which includes his hometown of El Paso, Texas — is facing the illegal immigration crisis in a very real way while he minimizes the issue for political gain.

“Beto O’Rourke with comments like this are really just shamelessly politicizing it further while he’s not even acknowledging the problem in his backyard,” Jenkins said.

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