Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed got into verbal fisticuffs with popular Fox News host Jesse Watters during his primetime program over the topic of immigration enforcement, the war effort in Iran, and several hot-button cultural issues. It all started when Watters pressed El-Sayed on his support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
El-Sayed responded to Watters by pointing to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which handled all federal immigration cases before the creation of ICE in 2003. “We were able to enforce our immigration policies without shooting people in the face and the back of the head,” El-Sayed told the Fox host. Watters fired back, saying that INS “did the same thing as ICE back then.”
He then asked the Michigan Democrat how many immigrants without legal status were living in the country. At that point during the interview, the two men argued over each other as El-Sayed attempted to answer the question. “I mean, to your point –– Jesse, Jesse, let me just answer the question,” El-Sayed replied. He then claimed there were far fewer illegal immigrants under INS.
“To your point, we had far fewer under INS. … If you want to do that correlation, we have ICE now and we have far, far more undocumented people. So ICE is clearly not working,” El-Sayed said, according to a report from Trending Politics News. El-Sayed then said that Michigan voters “are asking me about how they’re going to afford their gas and groceries” and aren’t that concerned about immigration.
Watters then accused the far-left Democrat of dancing around the question. The interview changed over to a discussion about the Iran war. Watters asked El-Sayed if he was “glad the ayatollah is dead,” making a reference to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei was taken out during the initial strikes by the U.S. and Israel back in February 2026.
“I understand selective memory about history, but we had a JCPOA that was well negotiated, that actually had nuclear nonproliferation far more securely than we have right now after having gone to war for the better part of six months,” he went on to say, referring to the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.
“Yeah, I like the fact that the nuclear program is buried under a mountain of rubble,” Watters replied. “You understand that, like, nuclear material doesn’t just go away because you buried it under a mountain of rubble?” El-Sayed asked the host. “You understand they can still go back and bury it out, right?” Watters countered by saying that the U.S. was “watching it from Space Force.”
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He then added that anyone trying to dig up the nuclear material would “go kaboom.” The Michigan Democrat then accused his opponent, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) of “ducking” a debate with him and said the Republican was also avoiding an appearance on Watters’ show. “Can we all agree that Mike Rogers is a beta?” El-Sayed said, drawing a chuckle from Watters.
“Can we all agree with that? He won’t even come on your show. He’s afraid of getting grilled,” he added. The two later went head-to-head over the topic of transgender athletes, reparations for descendants of slaves, the NFL, and transgender surgeries for minors. Watters brought the interview to a close by saying the two would speak again.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video