Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday engaged in some over-the-top fear-mongering, warning Fox viewers that undocumented immigrants who “don’t speak English’ are being dumped in “working-class areas” and crowding schools with all their “extra kids.”
Criticizing Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro’s plan to decriminalize illegal entry into the United States and offer a path of citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants, Kilmeade expressed nativist angst over non-English speaking children attending American schools.
“My question to you is what’s more important social programs for Americans, public schools for Americans or illegals who come here and need English as a second language,” the Fox News host said. “Need to be given public school. Need to be given tutoring help. Maybe need social programs to prop them up.”
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“I’m sure they are fine people,” he added.
The hosts went on to argue President Trump’s case that the southern border needs to be closed if the flow of asylum-seeking migrants doesn’t decrease, playing a clip of a former gang member claiming to Fox News host Laura Ingraham that “you are going to see a lot of gangs” coming across the border in migrant caravans.
“It’s not just our border cities,” Kilmeade declared. “They dump these illegals in areas, and President Obama did it with those unaccompanied minors, in working-class areas without telling mayors or governors.”
The Fox & Friends host concluded: “Next thing you know you are sitting there and your kids come home and from school and there’s 10 extra kids in the school and they don’t speak English. So that’s what happens. They fan out across the country!”
In recent months, Fox News’ opinion hosts have come under fire for inflammatory and controversial remarks about immigrants. Last August, Ingraham claimed that “massive demographic changes” make it “seem like the American we know and love doesn’t exist anymore.” Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, spurred an advertiser boycott in December after he said immigration makes the United States “dirtier and poorer.”
This also isn’t the first time Kilmeade has sounded the alarm bells about migrant children. In January, he claimed that immigrants who “don’t speak English” had “flooded into Long Island” and doubled the classroom sizes of the schools.
