Pence Condemns Ocasio-Cortez for ‘Concentration Camps’ Remarks

(Bloomberg) -- Vice President Mike Pence condemned Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for comparing U.S. migrant detention facilities to “concentration camps,” calling her remarks an insult to victims of the Holocaust.

“To compare the humane work of the dedicated men and women of Customs and Border Protection with the horrors of the Holocaust is an outrage,” Pence said Monday at the Christians United for Israel Washington Summit. “The Nazis took lives. American law enforcement save lives every day.”

The Trump administration has come under fire from Democratic lawmakers for conditions in detention centers on the border with Mexico, where migrants have been held in what their advocates say are unsanitary and unsafe conditions for weeks on end. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said last week she had visited a detention center where migrants told her they had been instructed by authorities to drink toilet water.

She has called the detention centers “concentration camps” in tweets and other public remarks.

“This slander of law enforcement was an insult to the 6 million killed in the Holocaust,” Pence said. “It should be condemned by every American of every political party everywhere.”

He conceded that U.S. detention centers are “overcrowded” but said that’s “because they’re overwhelmed.” CBP has reported apprehending or turning away more than 100,000 migrants at the U.S. border in each of the last three months.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that hundreds of migrant children as young as five months old have been held at a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas without enough beds or food. Agents working at the facility raised concerns with their supervisors, but federal officials took no action, the paper reported.

The Times said it interviewed current and former Border patrol officials who worked at the facility; lawyers, lawmakers and aides who had visited; and an immigrant father whose children were held there.

“The New York Times story is a fabrication,” President Donald Trump told reporters before departing his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey on Sunday. He said migrants were better off in U.S. detention centers than in their home countries.

“It’s all cases, if you look, people who came from unbelievable poverty, they had no water, they had no anything where they came from, those are people that are very happy with what’s going on, because relatively speaking, they’re in much better shape right now,” he said.

Pence blamed Democrats, saying they dismissed Trump’s characterization of the border situation as a “crisis” and refused to provide more money to immigration authorities until late June. Trump signed legislation on July 1 providing about $4.5 billion in emergency funding to improve conditions for migrants.

--With assistance from Erik Wasson and Josh Wingrove.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alyza Sebenius in Washington at asebenius@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Wendy Benjaminson

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