Ocasio-Cortez Stands By Trump ‘Concentration Camps’ Accusation
Members of the legal team cited by the Associated Press said they had never seen such inhumane conditions for children.
(Bloomberg) -- Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back at the top House Republican’s assertion that she should apologize for accusing the Trump administration of operating “concentration camps” to hold undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The New York Democrat said Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans are “aiding and abetting” as “people are dying.”
“We’ve had 24 people die in these concentration camps that Trump has established on our border,” she told reporters Thursday.
Lawyers who visited a border facility in Texas found inhumane conditions for about 250 minors, the Associated Press reported, including children incarcerated for almost four weeks without adequate nutrition and sanitation. The report was published Thursday after Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks.
Immigration has become an increasingly controversial issue during President Donald Trump’s administration, with his supporters demanding tighter border security and his opponents passionately defending the rights of migrants. Trump on Monday threatened to deport “millions” of undocumented immigrants as soon as next week.
“They will be removed as fast as they come in,” he said on Twitter, without offering further explanation.
Republicans have criticized Ocasio-Cortez’s comparison of the U.S. detention facilities to concentration camps. McCarthy of California said at a press conference that Ocasio-Cortez needs to apologize for using the term, “not only to the nation but to the world. She does not understand history.”
But Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that McCarthy “should apologize to parents who have been separated from their children.”
She asserted that efforts have failed to get information from the government on the location and condition of some of the children so that they can be unified with their families.
Republicans are trying to turn the discussion “into a controversy about words” and away from “a controversy about why kids are dying on the border with U.S. dollars,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Thursday’s AP report described at least 15 sick children, and a toddler in dirty clothes and no diaper being cared for by three older girls who were also in detention. Some of the children said they were given uncooked food to eat and hadn’t bathed or changed clothes for weeks, according to the report.
Members of the legal team cited by the AP said they had never seen such inhumane conditions for children. The facility they visited was in Clint, Texas, near the border city of El Paso, the report said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Larry Liebert
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