On Wednesday morning, Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade confronted Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) about legislation he’s introduced that would abolish U.S. Customs and Immigration (ICE). It did not go well for Kilmeade.

Pocan recently made a trip to the southern border. Upon his return, he released a statement saying, “it was clear that ICE, and its actions of hunting down and tearing apart families, has wreaked havoc on far too many people.”

Pocan began the interview by explaining why he thinks ICE should be shut down.

“Unfortunately, the president has created this situation where ICE is not doing what it was created to do. It is being used as his own personal police force, and in those actions it is actually making it less safe because the critical functions of ICE can no longer happen when the president has them going after people in church and workplaces,” Pocan said.


Kilmeade pushed back, suggesting ICE is necessary to stop criminals from entering the country. But Pocan countered him with facts.

“That’s the misinformation that’s out there,” Pocan said. “The president keeps saying, ‘we’re doing this to to go stop all of the crime, all of the MS-13.’ I think it was 228 people at the end of last fiscal year out over 300,000 that were MS-13. So again, he’s taking a group of people and branding them as criminals, which is just false.” (According to the Border Patrol, only 56 unaccompanied minors out of the hundreds of thousands who have crossed the border since 2012 were suspected of having MS-13 ties.)

Despite being presented with the facts, an agitated Kilmeade told Pocan that what he was saying about ICE was “all your opinion. You have no stats.” He then suggested Pocan would be better off using his time to personally try and apprehend undocumented immigrants.

“How many illegals have you captured?” Kilmeade said. “How many people have you cracked down on?… You seem more concerned about illegals than you are about the men and women who decided to go through the academy and qualify for ICE.”


But Pocan brought the interview full circle, noting that ICE “is not going after the average criminal — what you’re supposed to do is go after people who pose a real threat.”

“It was created after 9/11 with main focus being around people who might have terrorist activity,” Pocan said. “Now we are going after people with traffic violations at a church or at a workplace. That doesn’t make any sense. So the president is using this as own police force. That is something that is completely wrong.”

Before he abruptly ended the interivew, Kilmeade advised Pocan that he “should look [ICE agents] in the face and tell them that they should be fired. Tell them they’re fired and see the response you get.”

As the show went to commercial break, Pocan noted that his bill wouldn’t actually result in the firing of agents. Instead, they would be reassigned to other law enforcement agencies that would take over tasks currently performed by ICE.

Pocan is one of four House Democrats who publicly has come out in support of legislation to abolish ICE.