Laura Ingraham Receives Backlash for Comparing Child Detention Centers to 'Summer Camps'

Fox News host Laura Ingraham compared child detention centers to "summer camps," prompting the hashtag #BoycottIngraham to ask advertisers to pull from her show.

Every time it seems like Fox News couldn’t get any worse, it does. Laura Ingraham, who you may know as the woman who told LeBron James to shut up and dribble, has returned with some monstrous comments about child detention facilities and is now fielding backlash.

The “zero tolerance” immigration policy now being enforced by the Trump administration has separated nearly 2,300 children from their parents in the last two months. Currently many of those children are being held in child detention centers in areas near the border. These facilities have been the center of attention as human rights activists, politicians on both sides, and other decent human beings continue to call out this practice as a gross violation of human rights and traumatic treatment of children.

Audio released on Monday revealed just a fraction of that horror by capturing the crying of several children being held in a detention facility after being separated from their parents.

But Ingraham wants everyone to know that these facilities aren’t really that bad. In fact, the host claims they’re basically summer camps.

As Mashable points out, Ingraham is misrepresenting an article by the San Diego Union-Tribune. When responding to backlash, Ingraham doubled down on her incorrect comments on The Ingraham Angle, saying, “Apparently there are a lot of people very upset because we referred to some of the detention facilities tonight as essentially like summer camps. The San Diego Union Tribune today described the facilities as essentially like what you would expect at a boarding school. So I will stick to there are some of them like boarding schools."

She added: "I suggest that a lot of the folks who are worried about that spend more time in Central America. I have. And we should make adoption easier for American couples who want to adopt these kids who are true candidates for adoption because our policies don’t allow that. So let’s put our hearts out there for the kids in the right way. Take care of them the right way. Open your hearts and your homes to them.”

These statement have generated backlash online, some coming from Parkland activist David Hogg who tweeted at Ingraham’s advertisers. Hogg previously was able to get some advertisers to back out of Ingraham’s show after the Fox host taunted Hogg earlier this year. 

In response to the calls for a boycott, Fox News released the following statement to Complex: "Laura Ingraham’s very personal, on-the-ground commitment to the plight of impoverished and abandoned children—specifically in Guatemala— speaks for itself. So too does her strong belief in a commonsense, legal immigration system, which will continue to be a focus of her show. FOX News will never tolerate or give in to attempts to silence diverse viewpoints by agenda-driven intimidation efforts."

Latest in Life