Watch: Michele Bachmann Blames US Job Losses And Rape On ‘Invasion’ Of Young Immigrant Kids

GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann Tuesday evening called the young immigrant children crossing the border from Mexico and Central America an “invasion,” accused them of stealing American jobs, and even blamed them for a rape and deadly 2008 bus accident.

Tea Party Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann actually tried to blame young immigrant children — many grade-school aged and not even teenagers — for the rape of an unnamed college student, a deadly 2008 crash caused by an undocumented immigrant bus driver, and, somehow, even the loss of American jobs.

“Foreign nationals that have come into the United States are between 300- to 500,000,” Bachmann told CNN’s Crossfire co-host Van Jones. Of course, her numbers are wrong. Even the right wing Daily Caller website quotes a New York Times article that places the number at 292,000.

“My heart is broken for a female college student in Minnesota who was raped, murdered and mutilated by a foreign national who came into our country,” Bachmann accused. “We had a school bus full of kids in Minnesota — four children were killed on that school bus because an illegal alien driving a van went into that schoolbus.”

“There are lines that can’t be crossed here,” Jones insisted. “I’m sorry, Congresswoman. Are you going to scapegoat children for the crime of this despicable person?”

Arturo Garcia at The Raw Story, who first reported on Bachmann’s claims, writes that while “it’s unclear which rape case Bachmann was referring to, the crash she alluded to was likely the 2008 accident that resulted in the deaths of two 9-year-old boys, a 12-year-old boy, and a 13-year-old boy riding on the bus. At the time, several conservative media outlets seized upon the fact that the driver of the van, 23-year-old Alianiss Morales, was an undocumented immigrant to criticize U.S. immigration policy.”

“My tears are crying for the family members who lost four little children on a school bus in Minnesota,” Bachmann continued, before ceding the floor to Jones for a second.

“We should stand with those children, but we should not scapegoat every one of these kids for that despicable crime,” he said. “You know better as a congressperson than to lay at the feet of these children the acts of a despicable criminal.”

“Don’t scapegoat the American people,” Bachmann countered. “Van, don’t scapegoat the American people right now who are losing jobs.”

Watch: