On Monday, Florida Republican Rep. Rich Nugent shared his take on the influx of unaccompanied Central American minors crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that many of them were involved with gangs in their homeland and are a thus a threat.

"A lot of these children ... quote-unquote ... you know, the first caller mentioned it, they're gang members," he said in an interview with Ocala, Florida radio station WOCA, according to BuzzFeed. "They're gang affiliated."

According to Nugent, the minors are not children fleeing gang violence, as many outlets have depicted them, but rather a criminal threat to U.S. society.

"Listen, if you're 14, 15, 16, 17 years old and you're coming from a country that's gang-infested -- particularly with MS-13 types, that is the most aggressive of all the street gangs," he explained. "When you have those types coming across the border, they're not children at that point. These kids have been brought up in a culture of thievery, a culture of murder, of rape, and now we are going to infuse them into the American culture. It's just ludicrous."

Nugent is a former Hernando County sheriff and was elected in 2010, Fox News Latino reports. He faces re-election in November.

David Koeller, who will be challenging Nugent as the Democratic Party representative, has expressed disgust at Nugent's comments.

"It sickens me that lives of these children are being defined by such hateful rhetoric by Rep. Nugent," Koller told FNL. "All Latino children are not gangsters as he broadly implicated. We should be addressing the situation [at the border] rather than using rhetoric to instill fear and create hate and dissension. I don't believe that is in the spirit of America. America is a very inclusive country."

Koeller has his own suggestions for handling the border crisis.

"At the border we may need extra caseworkers, extra immigration processors out there, instead of just collecting children in centers," he explained. "I'd like to see some action in Congress instead of finger-pointing."
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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