The "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade said on Tuesday morning that "it's a fact" that there is an "invasion" of immigrants coming across the US's southern border.

Kilmeade echoed the rhetoric of the shooter who killed at least 22 people and injured dozens of others in El Paso, Texas, who warned of a "Hispanic invasion" in a manifesto posted online before the shooting.

"If you use the term 'an invasion,' that's not anti-Hispanic — it's a fact," Kilmeade said. "If the Russians were coming through Alaska, through Canada, the president would be using the same language."

President Donald Trump's campaign has either directly invoked or legitimized similar anti-immigrant rhetoric on multiple occasions, including warning of "an invasion" across the southern border in over 2,000 Facebook ads.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The "Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade said on Tuesday morning that "it's a fact" that there is an "invasion" of immigrants coming across the US-Mexico border, echoing the rhetoric of the shooter who killed at least 22 people and injured dozens of others in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday.

Authorities have said the gunman traveled from Dallas to El Paso to target Latinx people. The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism, and the suspect could face hate-crime charges.

Shortly before the shooting, the gunman published a 2,300-word manifesto on the website 8chan in which he explained his motivation as stopping a "Hispanic invasion" that would turn Texas into a "Democrat stronghold."

He further wrote that he was "simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion," adding that "it makes no sense to keep on letting millions of illegal or legal immigrants flood into the United States."

Read more: The Trump campaign's Facebook ads promoting 'invasion' rhetoric are similar to what the El Paso shooting suspect wrote

In the segment, Kilmeade and his cohosts Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt denounced commentators who have said President Donald Trump's years of perpetuating that same kind of xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric are partly responsible for the shooting.

"What the president has during his 2 1/2 years is a major problem at the border, which was not his doing, unless you want to blame President Obama for the unaccompanied minors" trying to enter the US in 2014, Kilmeade said.

"When you have over 110,000 people coming a month, over a million last year, and then well over a million this year, if you use the term 'an invasion,' that's not anti-Hispanic — it's a fact," Kilmeade continued. "If the Russians were coming through Alaska, through Canada, the president would be using the same language. But it's the fact it's happening at the border."

Trump's campaign has either directly invoked or legitimized similar anti-immigrant rhetoric on multiple occasions, including warning of "an invasion" across the southern border in over 2,000 Facebook ads.

And when a person in the crowd at a Trump campaign rally in May in Panama City, Florida, yelled "Shoot them!" in response to Trump asking how to stop people from coming across, the president laughed and said, "That's only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff."

Read more: 'Trump has to stop': The president's racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric has encouraged mass shootings, including El Paso, according to hate and extremism expert

In remarks at the White House on Monday, Trump denounced white supremacy, saying: "In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America."

But despite Trump's condemnations, experts say that Trump's long history of anti-immigrant rhetoric has helped normalize and legitimate such views.

Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, told INSIDER's Kat Tenbarge that Trump's rhetoric "legitimizes fears of Latinos," adding that the shooter's manifesto "in some ways embodied the same language we've heard on Trump's Twitter feed."