Because freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., once said that “a very, very long time ago” she had Jews in her family, I’m assuming it’s culturally fine for her to make Holocaust comparisons as she sees fit. But are we allowed to call her an airhead for effectively accusing U.S. Border Patrol agents, which are currently breaking their backs to to save dying Central Americans, of functioning like Nazis?
During one of her cozy Instagram livestreams on Monday, she said the United States “is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps.”
On Twitter thereafter, she attempted to explain that she was simply referring to “the mass detention of civilians without trial” and not necessarily the “death camps” in Nazi Germany. But that doesn’t jibe with the fact that during her Instagram livestream, she dropped the “Never Again” phrase, a reference to the Holocaust.
Here’s what happened in Nazi Germany, and eventually elsewhere: Millions of Jews were forced out of their homes to live in massive labor camps where their new home was an overcrowded shed, and that was just before their mass slaughter.
Here’s what’s happening at our southern border: Central Americans and Mexicans are voluntarily trekking to the U.S. and after entering the country illegally, our government is giving them free healthcare and legal rights that allow them to indefinitely remain in the country to soak up yet more public benefits.
It’s true that the Department of Health and Human Services, just one of three federal agencies grappling with the emergency at the border, is ending educational and recreational programs for migrant children thrown into its care by illegal border-crossers. The administration no longer has the resources to provide every comfort to every illegal immigrant wanting to stay in the country, and Democrats in Congress have failed to pass a bill that would both manage the mess and stem the flow of migrants.
At first, venturing into the U.S. without authorization may not be like a stay at the Ritz. But the Trump administration has been warning about this happening for months. I even remember something about a “national emergency.”
Now-former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said in December, after migrant children started dying at the border, that “the system is clearly overwhelmed.” In March, she warned Congress of a “system-wide meltdown,” explaining that “DHS facilities are overflowing, agents and officers are stretched too thin, and the magnitude of arriving and detained aliens has increased the risk of life-threatening incidents.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told journalists just this month that “We are going to be faced with very stark choices” if Congress doesn’t allocate more money to deal with the endless flow of Mexican and Central American immigrants crossing illegally into the U.S., where they immediately secure legal protection by claiming asylum.
These are the “stark choices” they’re making. It’s either free Nintendo or free medicine, free attorneys or free doctors.
Detention centers on the border, where migrants are forced to stay for a short while before they’re turned loose in the U.S., are over capacity by the thousands.
I’m sure it makes for an unpleasant experience, just like the scent of burning flesh and hair that overpowered the air of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps.
We already knew that Ocasio-Cortez isn’t very bright about economics. Now we know she’s ignorant about the Holocaust, regardless of her Jewish ancestry from “a very, very long time ago.”
