Fox News host Laura Ingraham continued to use her nightly talk show as a pulpit to espouse anti-immigrant rhetoric, suggesting to her millions of viewers on Friday that "most" migrants entering the U.S. illegally could be carrying infectious diseases.
"Most of those people could be bringing a variety of diseases into the country," she charged, while interviewing conservative writer Heather Higgins. "...We just don't have the infrastructure or we don't have the will, or combination, to actually get these people screened. Just the sheer number alone we can't do it."
Ingraham was referring to documented cases of outbreaks in overcrowded detention centers to make her point. Mumps, measles and other infectious diseases have been reported in holding centers, caused in part by the number of unvaccinated people housed there and what human rights workers have termed "unconscionable" living conditions.
However, while progressive groups and those aligned with the Trump administration have both agreed that the situation presents a "public health emergency," Ingraham's charge that "most" migrants could be carrying diseases has not been substantiated by the Centers for Disease Control or other official agencies. What's more, the number of reported cases of illness pales in comparison to the total migrants currently housed; According to Reuters, a total of 2,287 detainees were quarantined for disease outbreaks as of March 2019 out of some 50,000 people held in facilities.
US Customs and Border Protection facilities have said in a statement that more funding is needed to adequately house the number of migrants entering from the Southern Border.
"As DHS and CBP leadership have noted numerous times, our short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis."
Ingraham—who has faced previous boycott campaigns for anti-immigrant rhetoric—also speculated that migrants could be to blame for rising illness rates in California's homeless populations, without providing data or statistics to support her theory.
