AOC Responds To Backlash Over Calling Trump Camps ‘Concentration’ Camps

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Republicans continue to maintain an apparent deeply rooted interest in countering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) when and wherever they can, flipping out at the possibility of a progressive young woman of color from New York City helping upend some of their favorite policies. This week, figures like leading House Republican Liz Cheney (Wy.) flipped out after she called the Trump administration’s detention system for immigrants over the southern border “concentration camps,” but as she pointed out in response, that’s not a stretch. The “shrieking Republicans” may not like it, but the mass detentions that the Trump administration has undertaken fit the bill for concentration camps.

As she explained alongside a link to a run-down of historians sharing her exact same conclusion:

‘This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis. And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps. Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.” And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.’

Her quote comes from Andrea Pitzer, who wrote One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps. Although they’re not the only agency operating Trump administration detention facilities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have some 53,000 people in custody across some 200 facilities on average, which is a record high. Late Monday, Trump took to Twitter to “vow mass immigration arrests,” as The Washington Post described it, having ranted on the platform that ICE will soon “begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” which suggests further detention spikes are incoming.

As the analysis that Ocasio-Cortez shared makes clear, calling the people in the United States without long-term documentation “illegal aliens” is a misrepresentation at best. Seeking asylum in the United States is a legally allowed process, and those who arrive at the border to do so are therefore legally protected. Even when they cross the border outside ports of entry, they’re guilty of only a misdemeanor and their asylum claim is still legally protected. When all these people are then put into the detention facilities where one recent inspector general report shared they’ve been left in standing-room only places for days at a time — that’s unsettling to say the least and a blanket removal of their human rights just because the Trump administration feels like it.

Check out Twitter’s response, below, including the racists…

Screenshot-2019-06-18-at-12.23.22-PM AOC Responds To Backlash Over Calling Trump Camps 'Concentration' Camps Donald Trump Politics Social Media Top Stories Screenshot-2019-06-18-at-12.22.48-PM AOC Responds To Backlash Over Calling Trump Camps 'Concentration' Camps Donald Trump Politics Social Media Top Stories Screenshot-2019-06-18-at-12.22.11-PM AOC Responds To Backlash Over Calling Trump Camps 'Concentration' Camps Donald Trump Politics Social Media Top Stories Screenshot-2019-06-18-at-12.21.48-PM AOC Responds To Backlash Over Calling Trump Camps 'Concentration' Camps Donald Trump Politics Social Media Top Stories

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