“Are you worried about your country?” the voiceover begins. “Do you feel like your land is being invaded by foreign intruders who want to change your culture?” A series of serious-looking agents look into the camera and say what “ICE is” to them.
For the first minute or so, you could be forgiven for thinking the pitch is a real, if heavy-handed, public service announcement for ICE. Then comedian Michelle Wolf appears as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in an explosion of flames.
“It’s popular nowadays to say ICE is bad,” Wolf says in a new sketch for her Netflix show The Break. “But there’s no better representation of American values right now than ICE is.” As an “equal opportunity employer,” she says the organization accepts “all levels of experience and education, from low to very low, and actively welcome those with diagnosed anger issues.”
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Towards the end of the ad, which depicts ICE agents as racist maniacs who were rejected by every other form of law enforcement in America, Wolf’s Nielsen says, “Join us today and you too can tell your ‘ICE is’ story.”
“ICE is waging war for everything that is holy in this country,” one agent says. “I guess you could call it a holy war.”
“Take it from me, no organization is better than ISIS,” Wolf adds, raising an automatic rifle in the air and shooting into the air surrounded by men wearing black masks and waving scary flags. The words, “Apply now, you sick fucks” appear on the screen.
Shockingly, the sketch did not go over well Saturday morning with the hosts of Fox & Friends, who have expressed their distaste with Wolf in the past. “That actually happened,” co-host Abby Huntsman said after airing a clip, reminding viewers that she is the same comedian who was “quite disrespectful” to Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “Everytime I hear her speak, she just seems very, very angry,” she added.
Fox & Friends enlisted Sanders’ father and noted humor expert Mike Huckabee, to weigh in on the sketch. “You know, comedians are supposed to be funny, they’re supposed to make us laugh,” Huckabee mused. “I love satire, it’s one of my favorite forms of comedy, but her form of comedy is not satire, it’s angry, bitter hate.”
Elsewhere on Fox News, host Neil Cavuto showed the clip to Thomas Homan, former acting director of ICE, who called the sketch “the most repulsive thing I’ve seen in my 34 years.”
“What ICE is doing is protecting this country and keeping us safe. We’re not cutting heads off, we’re not a terrorist organization, and it’s just insulting to the men and women of ICE,” Homan added. “They should be respected and not called terrorists, so I am angry. I’m insulted.”
