Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered no apologies for her clueless remarks on “concentration camps” along the U.S. border, instead doubling down and slamming “shrieking Republicans” for their criticism.
The New York Democrat defended her false claims that detention facilities operated by the U.S. on the southern border are like concentration camps, tweeting out her response Tuesday to the backlash.
“I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not — that ‘Never Again’ means something,” she said in an Instagram video on Monday. “And the fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it.”
AOC falsely repeats over and over US is running concentration camps on border in blathering home video https://t.co/C8tqzFo6dM
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) June 18, 2019
Her comments sparked a firestorm, with Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer on Tuesday calling for the 29-year-old lawmaker to apologize to “every Jew on the planet.”
”She used the extermination of 6 million people… to describe what’s happening at the southern border,” he said, speaking to the National Border Council’s Art Del Cueto who called her remarks “a slap in the face” to Border Patrol agents and others doing their job.
Ocasio-Cortez cited “expert analysis” that notes concentration camps are not always death camps in a tweet declaring “This is not hyperbole.”
This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.
This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis ⬇️https://t.co/2dWHxb7UuL
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
“Not every concentration camp is a death camp — in fact, their primary purpose is rarely extermination, and never in the beginning,” politics editor Jack Holmes wrote in the Esquire article the congresswoman cited. “Often, much of the death and suffering is a result of insufficient resources, overcrowding, and deteriorating conditions.”
Ocasio-Cortez managed to jab former Presidents Obama and Clinton in the process as the article she cited:
Of course, the Obama administration temporarily housed migrants at military bases, including Fort Sill, for four months in 2014, built many of the newer facilities to house migrants, and pioneered some of the tactics the Trump administration is now using to try to manage the situation at the border.
The same article also noted that the “system at the southern border” was “first set up by the Bill Clinton administration, built on by Barack Obama’s government, and brought into extreme and perilous new territory by Donald Trump.”
Ocasio-Cortez fired back at critics, notably Republicans, by schooling them on what the “experts” think of concentration camps.
And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.
Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.”
And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
One of those Republicans, Rep. Liz Cheney, had slammed the freshman lawmaker earlier for her remarks and urged her to learn some history.
Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this. https://t.co/NX5KPPb2Hl
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) June 18, 2019
A short time later, Ocasio-Cortez responded in her usual snarky, disrespectful way.
Hey Rep. Cheney, since you’re so eager to “educate me,” I’m curious:
What do YOU call building mass camps of people being detained without a trial?
How would you dress up DHS’s mass separation of thousands children at the border from their parents? https://t.co/OOfrrfa1Ew
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
The self-proclaimed Democratic socialist doesn’t seem to know when to apologize and move on, and Twitter users let her have it.
One of the *many* key differences is that illegal immigrants are leaving their homes voluntarily.
— BadgerNP (@BadgerNP) June 18, 2019
The people at the border came here. They chose to come here. They chose to break the law. The innocent people slaughtered in the #holocaust had no choice. They were shoved in rail cars and gassed. There are claw marks on the walls of the gas chambers. There is no comparison.
— This Really Happens (@teaching4reals) June 18, 2019
1) They are not being detained without trial. They are awaiting adjudication. Most of the delays are due to a lack of resources approved by Congress.
2) I would call them temporary detention facilities.
3) Lastly, that doesn’t explain you invoking Holocaust references. https://t.co/FhGK4BuvMm
— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) June 18, 2019
There are concentration camps that exist in the world today. The North Korean Gulags are a good example. The temporary border facilities we have consistently used to house immigrants while we process them at the border are not comparable. Any suggestion otherwise is ignorance.
— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) June 18, 2019
And one of main reasons those facilities are sub-par and adjudication is taking longer (aside from the huge influx of people crossing the border) is a lack of resources approved by Congress. AOC has repeatedly opposed providing those resources.
— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) June 18, 2019
Also, if a detainee were to come forward and say “I want to return to my home country”, wouldn’t they be released allowed to return to that country?
— Jeff Wills (@jchillwills) June 18, 2019
What’s worse than her comment is all the people supporting her stupidity.
— Stand N Smirk MAGA Mama ???? ✡️? (@StandSmirk) June 18, 2019
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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