Concentration Camps in the US? Rosie Makes Her Dumbest Comment Yet

If you don’t know much about a topic, common sense would tell you it’s best to keep quiet. But ignorance didn’t stop far-left comedian Rosie O’Donnell from spouting off nonsense on television about the migrant crisis at America’s southern border. Without regard for facts or data, O’Donnell told Bravo Channel’s Andy Cohen that there are “over 100,000” immigrant detention centers in the U.S.

Well, she didn’t call them detention centers, actually. Glomming onto the new scare-word fad made popular last week by Democratic U.S. House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, O’Donnell called them “concentration camps.”

Responding to Cohen’s question about her upcoming Lights for Liberty vigil, Rosie responded:

“Yeah, the concentration camps, even though there’s lots of controversy about the word. But, actually, legitimate scholars who study genocide say, yes, these are, in fact, the criteria for concentration camps, they meet them. There are over 100,000 camps, in nearly every state.”

The controversy O’Donnell mentions is between technical accuracy and the larger attempt by the left to both demonize immigration enforcement and border patrol and subtly whitewash the horrific imagery that comes to American’s minds when they hear the term “concentration camp.”

How many immigrant detention centers are there?

Setting aside O’Donnell’s use of “concentration camp,” the number of facilities for processing illegal immigrants isn’t close to 100,00. Even the most pro-open-borders groups’ estimates don’t come close to that whopping figure.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports they operate 128 adult detention centers, whereas the Freedom For Immigrants website counts “more than 200 immigrant prisons and jails.” The highest reported estimate by the National Immigrant Justice Center in 2017, was 1,478. That number includes refugee resettlement shelters, hospitals, and other facilities.

Unless Rosie misspoke, she actually believes we’ve recently created more than 98,000 facilities.

If you want people to take you seriously, using ridiculously inflated or made-up statistics won’t win reasonable people to your side. But Rosie O’Donnell clearly panders to the activists with the lowest rate of fact-checking. That she went to the intellectually lightweight, pop culture Bravo network to discuss it, speaks volumes.