Rep. Mackenzie on measles outbreak: Many of these instances that are coming into our country are from illegal immigrants who have crossed the border and they are bringing these diseases into our country. There is a reason why measles has started to spread in our country pic.twitter.com/8JMjyo25Mx
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 11, 2025
If he believes that the least he could do is tell his constituents to get vaccinated. But of course he doesn’t really believe that. He just wants to use the fact that a lot of people are really stupid and self-destructive to demonize immigrants.
I’ve been wondering when I would hear this. It’s a very old story and perfect for Trump. I’m just shocked they haven’t fully implemented the traditional plan.
For decades, U.S. health authorities used noxious, often toxic chemicals to delouse Mexicans seeking to cross the border into the United States. Before being allowed to cross, Mexicans had to bathe, strip nude for an inspection, undergo the lice treatment, and have their clothes treated in a steam dryer.
The treatment included gasoline baths and toxic fumigations (including DDT). The Bath Riots began when 17-year-old Carmelita Torres rallied 30 others in 1917 to refuse.
The Mexican housekeepers who revolted had good cause to be upset. Inside a brick disinfectant building under the bridge, health personnel had been secretly photographing women in the nude and posting the snapshots in a local cantina. A year earlier, a group of prisoners in the El Paso jail died in a fire while being deloused with gasoline.
U.S. and Mexican troops eventually quelled the riot, and young Torres was arrested. Though she’s been compared to Rosa Parks, Torres’ protest had little effect, Romo says.
The baths and fumigations (DDT and other insecticides were later used) continued for decades, long after the Mexican typhus scare ended.
It’s worse than that:
In Ringside Seat to a Revolution, author David Dorado Romo reveals some of his findings from the National Archives in Washington DC:
I discovered an article written in a German scientific journal written in 1938, which specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican immigrants with Zyklon B. At the start of WWII, the Nazis adopted Zyklon B as a fumigation agent at German border crossings and concentration camps. Later, when the Final Solution was put into effect, the Germans found more sinister uses for this extremely lethal pesticide. They used Zyklon B pellets in their own gas chambers not just to kill lice but to exterminate millions of human beings.
Yep. We’ve always been an inspiration to the world.