O'Reilly agreed with caller who labeled immigrants "biological weapon[s]"

On his nationally syndicated radio program, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly seconded a caller's assertions regarding illegal immigration -- that, with the numerous diseases "the illegals" purportedly bring to this country, "each one of those people is a biological weapon," and that the impact of illegal immigration "equals and surpasses the impact of 9-11." To those assertions, O'Reilly responded, "You might be right," and speculated about the consequences for the United States of having "11 million [undocumented immigrants] running around unsupervised."

From the April 15 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

CALLER: Hi, Bill. The point of my call today is I'd like to take a different look at illegal immigration. I believe that it has the same impact as a major terrorist attack. And here's what I mean. If you take the sum total of the economic consequences of illegal immigration, and also consider that the illegals crossing the border, that are coming across with, say, tuberculosis, syphilis, leprosy -- each one of those people is a biological weapon.

And, I believe that illegal immigration is -- equals and surpasses the impact of 9-11. And it is incumbent upon the president to close the borders.

O'REILLY: You might be right, [caller]. And, if you look at it that way, you've got 11 million at least here, unsupervised. Nobody knows the condition they're in. And you have 3,000 dead from 9-11.

So, you got 11 million running around unsupervised now. You got 3,000 dead on 9-11, so you do the math and you say, "Well, how many of these 11 million people have impacted negatively on American citizens?" I think you could probably make an absolutely airtight case that more than 3,000 Americans have been either killed or injured, based upon the 11 million illegals who are here.

You could make that case. And, you would be absolutely right. But the reason that President Bush and President Clinton and President Bush the elder, and President Reagan and President Carter all got away with doing nothing to secure the borders of the United States is that this is a shadow world. Most of us don't see it. We don't see pictures like we saw on 9-11, of planes crashing into buildings. We don't see dead people in the street. We don't see weeping widows -- we don't see it.