WASHINGTON — Representative Steve King of Iowa, who has a history of issuing racist remarks and demeaning insults about immigrants, seemingly joked on Tuesday about the Chinese government’s mass detention and mistreatment of Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group.

“The Uighurs, the Muslims in China — a million of them — they’re being put into camps, and they’re taking their children away, and raising them, and then they’re sterilizing the women,” Mr. King, a Republican, said at a town hall-style meeting. He went on to explain the tactics of the Chinese government’s cultural campaign against the Uighurs, telling constituents that Beijing had forced detainees to change their clothing and diet, “which includes trying to force the Muslims to eat pork.”

“That’s actually the only part of that that I agree with, is, everybody ought to eat pork,” Mr. King, a Republican, said, drawing scattered chuckles from the room. “If we have a shortage of bacon you can’t be happy.”

Mr. King’s comments, first reported by a local news website, Iowa Starting Line, were ostensibly meant to underscore the Chinese government’s mistreatment of nearly two million Uighurs as part of a larger broadside. But in his aside, Mr. King, already under siege for his history of racist remarks, drew yet another unwelcome spotlight on himself while breathing new life into a worn Islamophobic riff mocking some Muslims for abstaining from pork.