Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) made shocking remarks about concentration camps on Friday, stating that she does not “even know why” it is “controversial” to compare immigrant detention facilities run by the U.S. government to concentration camps.
Omar’s comments came in response to a question from a reporter at The Rebel, who asked Omar: “Do you agree with AOC that ICE is running concentration camps on the border?”
“There are camps and people are being concentrated,” Omar responded. “This is very simple. I don’t even know why this is a controversial thing for her to say.”
“We have to really, truthfully speak about what is taking place and this is why it’s really important for us to abolish ICE and make sure that we have an agency that is accountable to the people.”
Omar also claimed without evidence that the U.S. government was “terrorizing” people “in their communities.”
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Omar’s remarks came after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely claimed that the U.S. government was operating concentration camps on the southern border. In her rant, Ocasio-Cortez specifically mentioned “Never Again,” which is a direct reference to the Holocaust. Ocasio-Cortez said:
“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps. And, um, if that doesn’t bother you, I don’t, I don’t know, I like, we can have, okay whatever.”
“I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not that ‘Never Again’ means something and that the fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it,” the freshman congresswoman continued. “This week, children, immigrant children were moved to the same internment camps where the Japanese were held in, in the early, in the earlier 20th century and this is, um, this is not even about a crisis for, this is not just about the immigrant communities being held in concentration camps being a crisis.”
“This is a crisis for ourselves. This is a crisis on if America will remain America on its actual principles and values or if we are losing to an authoritarian and fascist presidency. And so I think that that is you know, I don’t use those words lightly. I don’t use those words to just throw bombs. I used 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 because it is very difficult to accept the fact that that is how bad things have gotten but that is how bad things are.”
Many condemned Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks, noting that her comments amount to Holocaust trivialization, which is on the spectrum of Holocaust denial and is a form of anti-Semitism.