Conservative commentator and author Ben Shapiro slammed his home state of California Tuesday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” for being “so stupid” about illegal immigration — and he ripped Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) for wanting more illegal immigrants to apply for financial aid.

Shapiro, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, reacted to a tweet Harris wrote last week in which she shared a Los Angeles Times article called “Applications for college aid through the California Dream Act are down again.”

“For the second year in a row, fewer undocumented youth applied for financial aid in California because they are distrustful of our government. This is a direct product of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. No one in America should ever have to live in fear of our government,” Harris tweeted February 13.

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In response, Shapiro said, “My state is so stupid. I’m sorry. I lived my entire life in California. California is so dumb,” noting that Harris thinks “what California really needs is to shell out more dollars for financial aid for illegal immigrants.”

The Times reported February 15 that only 19,141 illegal immigrant students had applied for financial aid under the California Dream Act (CADA) — just over half the number that applied last year.

This year’s application deadline is March 2.

The Times article quoted Jane Slater, a teacher at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, who advises illegal immigrant students.

“There’s rumors about ICE raids all the time — some unfounded and some maybe founded,” Slater told The Times. “The headlines about immigration make people feel like they’re really in the spotlight. Kids are more afraid for their families than they are for themselves.”

Shapiro pointed to estimates from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) indicating that California spends $23 billion each year on illegal immigration.

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“Yet Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has said all illegal immigrants are not only welcome in the state of California, but that we’re going to subsidize them to be in the state of California,” Shapiro said. “Again, if you are a legal resident of the United States, if you’re here legally, you should be upset with the idea of subsidizing people to come here illegally if you’re interested at all in having a sovereign country that controls its borders.”

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Harris’s concern over the declining number of illegal immigrants applying for financial aid “is just pure insanity,” Shapiro said.

“But it shows once again that for Democrats, there’s an actual look to make illegal immigration more prominent,” Shapiro said. “They want more illegal immigrants, not fewer illegal immigrants, which explains a lot of their behavior on immigration bills that have come up for consideration.”

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Ben Shapiro [1], [2], CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)