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.
Trump Clarifies Stakes of Texas Senate Battle: If Talarico Wins, ‘I Will Be the Last Republican President’
Breaking: Mass Shooting in Downtown Minneapolis, Civilian Killed, Officers Shot
Putin swears there won’t be mass mobilization, accuses Ukraine of ‘state terrorism’
Grandmother, Fiancé Turned Semi-Truck into Rolling Dungeon, Imprisoned 4 Children for 6 Nightmarish Years: Cops
Trump says Iranians won’t rise up because ‘they’re being shot’ and refuses to say if CIA would aid protesters
Sheriff suing Maryland says sanctuary laws ignore lessons of 9/11: ‘Stupidity at its best’
Salena Zito’s Butler to begin filming this month, revisiting a day of trauma and loss
Republicans fail to ease one of Trump’s greatest fears as Supreme Court measure collapses
Breaking: Judge Sends Lindsay Clancy Jurors a ‘Dynamite Charge’ as They Report Second Deadlock
Spanberger’s ICE restrictions dealt major setback as judge warns other blue states
Coast Guard plane with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin on board makes emergency landing after engine failure
What is a Tuey-Rodriguez charge? Judge gives instruction to deadlocked Lindsay Clancy jury
Where Tunnel to Towers’ Steel Across America tour will stop ahead of 9/11
Longtime ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Announcer Suspended from Show Months After Commercial Flight Led to Police Probe
Newly Uncovered Arrest Records: Democratic Congressional Candidate Slapped Man at MLB Game, Swallowed Crack in Front of Cops
“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.
Trump Clarifies Stakes of Texas Senate Battle: If Talarico Wins, ‘I Will Be the Last Republican President’
Breaking: Mass Shooting in Downtown Minneapolis, Civilian Killed, Officers Shot
Putin swears there won’t be mass mobilization, accuses Ukraine of ‘state terrorism’
Grandmother, Fiancé Turned Semi-Truck into Rolling Dungeon, Imprisoned 4 Children for 6 Nightmarish Years: Cops
Trump says Iranians won’t rise up because ‘they’re being shot’ and refuses to say if CIA would aid protesters
Sheriff suing Maryland says sanctuary laws ignore lessons of 9/11: ‘Stupidity at its best’
Salena Zito’s Butler to begin filming this month, revisiting a day of trauma and loss
Republicans fail to ease one of Trump’s greatest fears as Supreme Court measure collapses
Breaking: Judge Sends Lindsay Clancy Jurors a ‘Dynamite Charge’ as They Report Second Deadlock
Spanberger’s ICE restrictions dealt major setback as judge warns other blue states
Coast Guard plane with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin on board makes emergency landing after engine failure
What is a Tuey-Rodriguez charge? Judge gives instruction to deadlocked Lindsay Clancy jury
Where Tunnel to Towers’ Steel Across America tour will stop ahead of 9/11
Longtime ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Announcer Suspended from Show Months After Commercial Flight Led to Police Probe
Newly Uncovered Arrest Records: Democratic Congressional Candidate Slapped Man at MLB Game, Swallowed Crack in Front of Cops
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.”
