Fox News calls Katie Hopkins’ internment camp remarks ‘reprehensible’

Controversial columnist calls for British authorities to immediately 'round up' 3,000 people on the watch list

Fox News has been forced to apologise to viewers after Katie Hopkins suggested Britain should introduce “internment camps” for suspected terrorists live on air.

The Mail Online columnist, who was recently axed by LBC radio station, called for the British authorities to immediately “round up” 3,000 people on the watch list.

Hopkins, a former Apprentice contestant who has risen to fame for her inflammatory, anti-immigrant opinions, argued the British government would not have the “stomach” or the “political will” to implement “internment camps” but nevertheless argued it was imperative for them to do so.

“We do need internment camps,” the controversial columnist told Fox and Friends on Sunday.

“Before, I would’ve bought the idea that, no, this gets more people radicalised. You know, that’s not the solution. But we’ve gone beyond the tipping point. I tell you this country cannot take another attack.”

She added: “We need to hear 650 jihadis that returned to the UK are going to be incarcerated and deported and we need to hear that Saudi-backed Mosques and extreme hate preachers and Imams within those mosques are also going to be shut down and reported.”

The UK has not used internment camps on a mass scale since they arrested 1,981 Northern Irish people who were suspected to be linked to violent republicanism in the 1970’s. Many argue the move inadvertently boosted IRA recruitment.

Appearing earlier on the show, Nigel Farage argued that while calls for internment would continue to grow he had serious reservations about the prospect.

The former Ukip leader said: “I’m concerned that if we do intern 3,500 people we might create more martyrs within that community. We did this with suspected IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland 30 years ago and it led to more recruits in the IRA. I’m not sure that is the right route myself.”

Right-wing cable TV outlet Fox News immediately sought to distance themselves from Hopkins’ comments and branded them “reprehensible”.

Host Clayton Morris said: “Earlier on the show, we had a couple of guests mention the word internment, the idea of internment camps, as a possible solution to this.

“I think I made it well-known my feeling on that, which I find reprehensible, but on behalf of the network, I think all of us here find that idea reprehensible here at Fox News Channel. Just to be clear.”

His co-host Pete Hegseth added: “No suggestions of that”.

Hopkins agreed to leave LBC at the end of May after she came under fierce criticism for calling for a “final solution” to Islamic terrorism in the wake of the Manchester Arena terror attack that killed 22.

"22 dead - number rising. Schofield. Don't you even dare. Do not be a part of the problem. We need a final solution #Machester," Hopkins wrote on Twitter.

The Metropolitan Police immediately received complaints about Hopkins’ since-deleted tweet which appeared to be a reference to the Nazi term for the Holocaust – Nazi Germany’s mass murder of six million Jews.

Hopkins left The Sun in 2015 after writing a column that compared migrants to “cockroaches" and "feral humans" and said they were "spreading like the norovirus". The remarks prompted more than 400 complaints to press regulator Ipso and she became the victim of a petition calling for her to be sacked.