Rep. Ilhan Omar (D- MN) backed Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) claim that migrant detention centers are modern-day “concentration camps” during an interview with Public Radio International Thursday.
Omar definitively stated that “people are being put in camps” and defended Ocasio-Cortez’s assessment, accusing her critics of conflating concentration camps with death camps.
She said:
And when you think about the definition, if we separate it from death camps, I would say these are camps and people are being concentrated in them. And so that’s the general definition. I think a lot of people are conflating what a death camp looks like or a specific removal of people. These people are coming to the border. We are removing them from the border. We are placing them in camps. Some of them are being removed from communities and being put in what we’re calling detention centers — but are essentially camps. There has to be a way for us to have this conversation without calling people names and accusing them of things when they are just having a general honest conversation on how detrimental this is.
Omar did not go as far as describing migrant detention facilities as “death camps,” but she insinuated that it was just the beginning of the process.
Bombshell Report: US Intel Finds Ukrainian Messages Detailing Plot to Swing Election Toward Biden
Andy Barr seeks to thwart ‘patently false’ Kentucky Senate ad with cease and desist
Netflix Denies Exec Called Muslims ‘Dangerous People’ After Reportedly Asking Comic to Cut Islam Joke
‘You can do everything right’: Crime reporter on sexual assault survival and lack of justice
Judge blocks Fulton County bid to force FBI testimony over seized election records
Long Island woman missing after jumping from moving vehicle in panicked state
Los Angeles schools accused of quietly funding race-based programming for Black students only
Trump pauses Iran energy plant strikes for 10 days as talks ‘going very well’
House Democrats vote to keep DHS shuttered as funding lapse hits day 40
Mysterious 4-Second Video Posted by Official White House Account Ignites Rampant Speculation
Army Increases Maximum Enlistment Age by 7 Years, Softens Other Restrictions
Fox News poll gives Trump highest disapproval rating across both his terms
Schumer, Democrats say they support voter ID — then block GOP amendment to require it
Trump reveals ‘present’ from Iran as oil tankers move through Strait of Hormuz
Report: Trump Weighing ‘Final Blow’ Options to End Iran War
“When you talk about the process of de-humanizing people so that you can exterminate them, there is a process,” she explained, accusing the Trump administration of engaging in dangerous rhetoric.
“When you are constantly engaging in the kind of rhetoric this administration has engaged in — when it comes to immigrants and people who are seeking asylum and refugees — we have to be alarmed,” she said.
“It is very worrisome. When we say ‘never again,’ that means we have to be vigilant that that doesn’t happen under our watch as we stay politically correct and try to find the proper words to use or even worse look the other way,” she added.
Ocasio-Cortez sparked the political dispute during an Instagram live video streamed Monday evening.
“That is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps,” she said of migrant detention centers.
“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,”
she continued.
Bombshell Report: US Intel Finds Ukrainian Messages Detailing Plot to Swing Election Toward Biden
Andy Barr seeks to thwart ‘patently false’ Kentucky Senate ad with cease and desist
Netflix Denies Exec Called Muslims ‘Dangerous People’ After Reportedly Asking Comic to Cut Islam Joke
‘You can do everything right’: Crime reporter on sexual assault survival and lack of justice
Judge blocks Fulton County bid to force FBI testimony over seized election records
Long Island woman missing after jumping from moving vehicle in panicked state
Los Angeles schools accused of quietly funding race-based programming for Black students only
Trump pauses Iran energy plant strikes for 10 days as talks ‘going very well’
House Democrats vote to keep DHS shuttered as funding lapse hits day 40
Mysterious 4-Second Video Posted by Official White House Account Ignites Rampant Speculation
Army Increases Maximum Enlistment Age by 7 Years, Softens Other Restrictions
Fox News poll gives Trump highest disapproval rating across both his terms
Schumer, Democrats say they support voter ID — then block GOP amendment to require it
Trump reveals ‘present’ from Iran as oil tankers move through Strait of Hormuz
Report: Trump Weighing ‘Final Blow’ Options to End Iran War
She further explained that she was only interested in talking to people who were “concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something.”
“I don’t use those words to just throw bombs,” she added. “I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it’s very difficult to say that.”
On Thursday, Dominik Tarczyński, a member of Poland’s Parliament, sent a letter to the New York lawmaker, inviting her to fly to Poland to “study the concentration camps here for real.”
