Fox panel defends Trump's mass deportation: It is “a legitimate function of ICE and the federal government”

From the June 18 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered:

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LISA KENNEDY MONTGOMERY (CO-HOST): This is a Fox News alert on a possible illegal immigration crackdown. President Trump announcing that immigration authorities will remove millions of people who are in the country illegally. The president tweeting, “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in. Mexico, using their strong immigration laws, is doing a very good job of stopping people.” An administration official telling AP the new effort would focus on people who have ignored final deportation orders. All this as the Trump administration says it won't provide new assistance to the Central American nations of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala until they do more to reduce the number of migrants coming to the U.S.

Meanwhile, new pressure on Democrats in Congress as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he plans to hold a vote on a bill to allocate $4.5 billion toward the humanitarian crisis at the border. It's a bill that progressive Democrats have resisted, as you can imagine. Meantime, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez equating the administration's handling of the crisis to, you guessed it, Nazi Germany. Watch.

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A top official with the border agents' union says the congresswoman still has a lot to learn. Really?

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So, Charlie, this is offensive as it trivializes what actually happened in concentration camps. And it's a risk that many younger lawmakers are willing to take, and it just shows how shortsighted they are in terms of history and how they lose the argument the second that they compare the president to a murderous dictator.

CHARLES HURT (FOX CONTRIBUTOR): They lose the argument as soon as they open their mouth. Not only is it shortsighted, but it also reveals -- ask yourself, has this woman ever read like a page of history? Did she ever take like a single class of history? Because making that comparison is -- it's not only offensive to Holocaust survivors and Jews, it's offensive to humanity to make that comparison. All countries have borders, all countries are allowed to enforce their borders. All countries have immigration policies. And to somehow suggest that that is something like plucking Jews out of their homes and loading them on train cars like cattle and gassing them to death is reckless and appalling. But on the other side of it, as someone who wants to see President Trump succeed in this effort to fix the humanitarian crisis on the border, I kind of wand to write a check to AOC. Just keep talking. Because you are really helping the president's cause by opening your mouth.

MELISSA FRANCIS (CO-HOST): Dana Perino, her golden rule -- sorry -- is never bring up the Holocaust. To just never -- it never --

KENNEDY: It's Godwin's Law. The first person who does that loses the argument.

FRANCIS: It's a nightmare. This was not a good idea on her part. Beyond that, if you take a look at the numbers of legal immigrants who have come in this country from Honduras -- most recent year is 2017 -- 11,147; Nicaragua more than 3,000. It goes on through all the countries that we are talking about now. It's not that we don't want and need these people in our country. It's that we need a way to do it safely and knowing who is coming. We don't want to incent people to risk their lives for economic reasons. I understand you want to come here for economic reasons. And if you are truly in jeopardy, you're going to leave. If you're really under threat. But if you're coming here for a better life like so many other people, we don't want to create a system where you have people agreeing to sell their children and agreeing to be raped to get here for a better economic life. That's just, it's horrifying.

KATIE PAVLICH (CO-HOST): If you look at the cost of what they are paying smugglers -- $15,000, $20,000 to get them from Central America and the Northern Triangle to the United States -- if they would put that money and effort towards becoming an American citizen it would be less than the cost of them paying the smuggler.

FRANCIS: [INAUDIBLE] has a clear way to do that.

KENNEDY: You're talking about some of the poorest people in our hemisphere --

PAVLICH: But they're still paying it.

KENNEDY: KENNEDY: And that's what's so sad is they are really being subjected to a horrific system.

But there are three things happening here, because you have other countries, including Mexico, that aren't doing a lot to dissuade people from just traveling through their country in order to get to the United States.

But there are three things happening here. You have other countries, including Mexico, that aren't doing a lot to dissuade people from just traveling through their country in order to get to the United States.

You also have congressional inaction, and I think that's the biggest problem because when you don't have systems in place to safely process people and you don't have more judges to humanely make sure that good people can come and stay and work, you create that logjam, which is a problem.

I think that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is mischaracterizing it. But then you also have the idea that ICE is going to start rounding people up, and I think that could be the worst-case scenario.

JULIE BANDERAS (CO-HOST): There is so much to say here. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's comments are just despicable. I mean it really makes me sick. It just makes me sick that she would compare Hitler to the president. And also it makes me sick that the Democrats don't want to acknowledge the fact that what's happening right now in Mexico is actually a step forward. The fact that Mexico is finally sending troops to the southern border with Honduras, I mean that is a huge step. Is it Guatemala or Honduras? I meant Guatemala, sorry. But, no, the fact that they are actually stepping up and the fact that the president had thrown and dangled tariffs in their heads, and that they went ahead and are doing something about it, there's something that's being done. What are the Democrats doing right now? What is their reform, their immigration reform plan of action? Because at this point I haven't seen it. They're complaining about kids in cages, it's not quite like that. And the fact that AOC hasn't even gone to the border to see it with her own eyes?

FRANCIS: But you don't even want to pick up that argument of what the conditions are like because that shouldn't be how it is. And right now, Congress is sitting --

BANDERAS: No, children should not be locked up anywhere.

KENNEDY: And also, I want to point to this poll. Because we have a Fox News poll, 50% of people say the Trump enforcement policy laws have gone too far. 24% say it hasn't gone far enough, 21%, Goldilocks. Very few of them say it's about right. And I think that's the problem because when you have this critical mass of people saying it's too much already, and then you throw the ICE round-up on top of it, that can be problematic for the president. Yes, it makes his base very happy, but you are not necessarily appealing to the base.

PAVLICH: The way that the media has portrayed how the administration is handling this issue has been grossly dishonest. AOC isn't only just making a horrible comparison, she is lying by saying that there are concentration camps that are being run by federal agents on the border when they have given up their mission as Border Patrol agents to be on the border, to stop cartels, to stop drugs, to stop bad people, to literally be taking care of 60,000, 70,000 children in these detention centers, and they are doing the best job that they can.

But when it comes to what the president is doing with ICE and saying we're going to have you go in and get people who already have deportation orders, who are again breaking the law because they came here illegally. They have now been told to leave and they are not going, that is a legitimate function of ICE and the federal government and the law, and it's on top of asking Mexico to do more as a whole approach to solving this problem.

FRANCIS: But it's not even about that. It's about the president doing a million different things to try and get Congress to act, and they keep falling for responding by criticizing what he is doing as opposed to doing anything themselves.

KENNEDY: Do something. Yes, you're absolutely right. Please do something. We can all see that something wrong is happening, so make it right, fix it. But they're not going to get off their heinies anytime soon.

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