The Biden administration has been widely criticized for its failure to address the humanitarian crisis at the southern border. But one key voice seems to be missing: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Just two years ago, the congresswoman from New York stood outside a migrant detention facility in Texas, where hundreds of unaccompanied children were being held, and denounced then-President Donald Trump’s “fascist” administration for keeping children in “mass concentration camps.” Yet, when it was reported that the Biden administration used the exact same apprehension strategy as Trump, Democrat Ocasio-Cortez responded with a mellow rebuke.
“This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay — no matter the administration or party,” she wrote on Twitter on Feb. 23.
In a follow-up tweet later that day, Ocasio-Cortez expanded on what she thought the Biden administration should do to deal with unaccompanied migrant children.
Since then, she’s had very little to say — until this week, when she suggested that the people referring to the border crisis as an immigration “surge” are enabling white supremacy.
”This is not a surge. These are children, and they are not insurgents, and we are not being invaded,” she said on Tuesday. “Which, by the way, is a white supremacist philosophy. The idea that if another is coming in the population, that this is an invasion of who we are.”
Never mind the fact that the term “surge” is a factual way to describe the flood of migrants currently seeking access to the United States. The word simply means that there is a very high volume of people heading to the border. It has nothing to do with white supremacy, nativism, the military, or whatever else Ocasio-Cortez is trying to tie it to.
But at least she’s decided to weigh in on the border crisis. During the Trump administration, she tweeted about the border’s “cages,” “concentration camps,” and “internment camps” more than two dozen times. She posted pictures of herself crying in front of one of these facilities. She, along with many of her Democratic colleagues, used Trump’s “children in cages” to slam his administration’s immigration policy repeatedly. But now, she can’t even be bothered to refer to the border crisis as a surge.
What changed? The conditions for Guatemalan children haven’t. Biden’s migrant detention facilities are up and running. Pictures from inside the centers show thousands of children huddled on concrete floors with access to few resources. Border officials expect mass detentions to continue over the next few months as they work to get control of the influx.
So, why isn’t Ocasio-Cortez up in arms about this like she was during the Trump administration? Because this is politics, and it would appear Ocasio-Cortez is finally willing to play by Washington’s rules.
