A Florida Republican congressman called undocumented immigrant children at the border not children at all but gang-affiliated persons from a culture of thievery, murder, and violence.

"A lot of these children ... quote-unquote ... ya know, the first caller mentioned it, ya know, they're gang members. They're gang affiliated," Florida Republican Rep. Rich Nugent said on WOCA radio Monday.

Nugent added that the culture the children were coming from was one of violence and there would be a complications in bringing the children into American culture.

"Listen, if you're 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, and you're coming from a country that's gang-infested — particularly with MS-13 types, that is the most aggressive of all the street gangs — when you have those types coming across the border, they're not children at that point. These kids have been brought up in a culture of thievery. A culture of murder, of rape. And now we are going to infuse them into the American culture. It's just ludicrous."

Thousands of children, many under the age of 8, have crossed the border in recent months from Central America.