Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) attempted to downplay President Joe Biden’s border crisis this week by falsely suggesting that it was not as bad as the situation under former President Donald Trump and claiming that people were trying to “weaponize” the situation.
Ocasio-Cortez made the remarks during a virtual town hall event for her 14th Congressional District in New York, which comes after she has been called out for weeks over her silence about the crisis that has erupted on the southern border under Biden.
During her remarks, Ocasio-Cortez said that the lawful border security and immigration enforcement apparatus that the United States uses was morally “wrong.” The far-left lawmaker suggested that authorities even temporarily holding people who were trying to illegally enter the U.S. was “wrong.” She did not even know what CBP stood for, claiming it was the Customs and Border Patrol, when it’s Customs and Border Protection.
Ocasio-Cortez suggested without evidence that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies contributed to the crisis at the border and that immigrants that were subjected to some of the Trump administration’s policies were owed “reparations.”
“And then we have these complete inhumane conditions at CBP facilities and some of just the horrifying things that we’ve seen. Now, the first thing I want to say is that the fact that this keeps happening over and over and over again, is a political failure by both parties,” Ocasio-Cortez said as she started to downplay the crisis under Biden. “And I want to be very clear about that, because I don’t want to drop false equivalence. What is happening here is not the same as what happened during the Trump administration, where they took babies out of the arms of their mothers, and deported their families and permanently traumatize these children.”
While the Biden administration’s policies are different, mainstream media reports have indicated that the Biden administration is separating children from their parents, sometimes for weeks.
“So I don’t want to excuse any of this, But I also I don’t think we should also get them twisted together, because one is not the same,” she continued. “And we cannot dust that under the rug. And by the way, those families are owed reparations, period.”
Ocasio-Cortez claimed that U.S. foreign policy is responsible for what is happening in Central America right now and she continued to blame Trump, claiming that Trump beefing up border security contributed to the problem, which is not true. Mexico deployed thousands of troops under Trump to help stop illegal immigration into the U.S. and has recently deployed troops to their own southern border to cut off illegal immigration flooding into Mexico.
“I have been in contact with the Biden administration, personally, and what I can tell you that’s different about this administration,” she said. “Again, I’m not here to excuse it, I’m not here to say this is good. I’m not here to do anything. But one thing that is different, is that they’re trying to figure out and they’re trying to, to create the resources to actually end this problem.”
Numerous former officials have stated that top career officials, not just political appointees, warned the Biden administration that if they overturned the Trump administration’s policies that it would cause a crisis on the border. AOC claimed that the Trump administration contributed to the crisis “with this freaking census question.”
Former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan has gone as far as to claim that Biden intentionally “designed” the situation on the southern border because he wants those who are flooding into the U.S. to “be counted on the census” because that “leads to seats in the House [and] Electoral College in elections.”
AOC also demonized those who claim what is going on at the border is a surge, saying that the U.S. was not being invaded and that that type of language was dehumanizing. A report by CNN this week said that the U.S. is on track to see 2 million migrants on the southern border this year, which is more than the populations of Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska — combined.