Laura Ingraham Uses Taco Bell Ad To Mock Immigrant Children's Detention Plight

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, a contributor for Fox and ABC News, used a sound bite from a Taco Bell commercial to mock the plight of hundreds of migrant children fleeing violence in Central America who are being held in a makeshift shelter in southern Arizona.

The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that nearly 60,000 unaccompanied children who will make the dangerous trip from Central America over the next year fleeing violence will require care. In Nogales, Arizona, the Department of Homeland Security made available a warehouse to house thousands of children, but according to local media outlets, it has not been without problems. CBS Houston reported that some of the children have complained to the consul of Honduras that the food provided by the shelter is making them sick.

On the June 10 edition of her radio show, Ingraham responded to this news by dismissing the children's plight, saying, “I bet there are a lot of American kids who would like free food before they go to bed at night.” She followed her comments with a sound clip from a Taco Bell advertising campaign of the 1990s, in which a chihuahua says repeatedly, "Yo quiero Taco Bell."

Ingraham is no stranger to controversial sound effects. On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “I Have A Dream Speech”, the radio host used the sound of a gunshot to cut off a sound bite of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) -- a man whose skull was infamously fractured by a state trooper on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, AL, in 1965.

She also repeatedly engages in smearing and denigrating immigrants.