CNN political commentator Angela Rye claimed on the network Tuesday night that the United States is headed down a path that leads toward the implementation of “death camps.”
The topic of “death camps” gained media attention on Tuesday after Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez alleged that the detention centers that house migrants are the equivalent of “concentration camps.”
Rye was on Chris Cuomo’s show Tuesday to debate Steve Cortes, a fellow CNN commentator, who’s a Trump supporter.
“What we have now are foreign citizens who are trespassing into the United States overwhelmingly for economic reasons, and we know that to be true historically and presently because the director of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] just told us 90% are not showing up for their asylum hearings, they’re not legitimate refugees, they’re economic migrants who have decided on their own when and how they can become American citizens and that’s not the right away,” Cortes argued.
“I don’t know when we decided that a humanitarian crisis could be defined whether or not someone is carrying a green card or whether or not someone has their papers,” Rye responded. “Before we are American, we are human beings and it is not okay, it is a damn shame what is happening at this border and the fact that you’re going to justify it by economics, let me just tell you, there are a whole lot of people making a whole lot of money by having these people in detention centers.”
“In 1933 there were concentration camps. In 1941, they were death camps and that is where we are going if our consciouses are not quickly pierced, it is a problem — do not laugh it off,” she added.
Cortes proceeded to then read a quote from former President Barack Obama discussing what circumstances a foreign individual must experience to be granted asylum.
