Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds blamed immigrants crossing into the country at the southern border for the surge in covid case.
While experts have cited the more transmissible delta variant and the slowing vaccination rate for the surge, Reynolds said immigrants are also “part of the problem.”
“Part of the problem is the southern border is open and we’ve got 88 countries that are coming across the border and they don’t have vaccines so none of them are vaccinated and they’re getting dispersed throughout the country,” Reynolds told reporters Tuesday, according to the Des Moines Register.
A spokesperson for Reynolds shared a Fox News article about 135 detainees at a detention facility in Texas testing positive for the virus in the first two weeks of July, an increase compared to previous months.
Joe Henry, state political director for the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, said Reynolds’ comments Tuesday amount to “hate-mongering,” and she should focus her efforts on getting Iowans vaccinated.
“For her to cry wolf about this doesn’t seem to make sense in light of the fact that she hasn’t done the work here in Iowa to make sure that everybody gets vaccinated,” he said.
Less than half of Iowa’s 3.2 million residents are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC . Among adults, 61% are fully vaccinated and 65% have received at least one shot. Those figures have barely budged in recent weeks, as demand for the shots has plummeted, the Des Moines Register noted.
