Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Calls Out Border Detainee Centers As 'Concentration Camps'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., fired back at “shrieking Republicans,” particularly Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wy., who criticized the freshman congresswoman for comparing detainment centers at the U.S.-Mexico border to concentration camps.

Ocasio-Cortez streamed an impromptu video on Instagram Monday night that opened with the comments: “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are — they are concentration camps.”

She went on to say, “if that doesn’t bother you…I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity…that we should not…that ‘never again’ means something.”

That video and a follow-up tweet by Ocasio-Cortez sparked Cheney’s ire. Cheney shot back that Ocasio-Cortez needed to take a few minutes to learn some “actual history” and that Ocasio-Cortez demeaned the memory of those lost in the Holocaust and that she had disgraced herself.

The comment prompted a Twitter response from Ocasio-Cortez.

The exchange ignited a flurry of debate across the tweeter sphere, seeking to define concentration camps differently than Nazi death camps where 6 million Jews perished, or the internment camps where Japanese-American citizens were held after the Pearl Harbor attack that prompted U.S. involvement in World War II.

Twenty-four detainees have died in border facilities since Trump became president, not counting migrants, including five children, who died while in the custody of other federal agencies. At least four others have died shortly after being released from custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Three deaths have occurred since April, including a 54-year-old Mexican immigrant after several days in a solitary cell. A 21-year-old man from India died in an Arizona jail in May after hanging himself and in early June a 25-year-old asylum seeker died in a Texas hospital after nearly six weeks in ICE custody.

The release of several internal and watchdog reports paint a grim picture of conditions at a sprawling network of more than 200 detainment centers across the U.S., holding more than 52,500 immigrants a day.

Those held in detainment centers by ICE are civil detainees, not criminal, and their detainment is not supposed to be punitive. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general released a report this week that found “egregious violations” at two detainee centers it inspected. Those violations included nooses in cells, inadequate medical care, rotten food and other conditions that endangered detainees.

"What we're seeing is a reckless and unprecedented expansion of a system that is punitive, harmful and costly," said Katharina Obser, representing the Women’s Refugee Commission. "The U.S. government is not even doing the bare minimum to ensure [immigrants] are getting the medical care and the mental health care they need."

ICE said in a statement that it “takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care."

Mark Morgan, acting ICE director, called comments by Ocasio-Cortez “reckless rhetoric.” He added, the agency has been sounding the alarm for months that the border facilities are for adults, not children and families.

The death toll from ICE facilities remains lower than a high of 32 in 2004, the first full calendar year detainee deaths were recorded.