Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is blasting politicians who have supported stricter immigration laws and procedures who are now decrying the situation at the U.S. southern border.
In a series of tweets on Thursday, she wrote, “A lot of people who are just now suddenly horrified at the dehumanizing conditions at our border are the same folks who dehumanize immigrants [and] helped build these cages in the 1st place. When we tried to stop this infrastructure over a year ago, we were overruled by BOTH parties.”
A politician’s strength isn’t based on a trip. It’s based on their policy and voting RECORD.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 1, 2021
And the fact is a LOT of Ted Cruz types who are now going down to meet refugee children in boats outfitted w/ machine guns are the ones who helped create this problem in the first place.
“A politician’s strength isn’t based on a trip. It’s based on their policy and voting RECORD.”
“And the fact is a LOT of Ted Cruz types who are now going down to meet refugee children in boats outfitted w/ machine guns are the ones who helped create this problem in the first place,” the lawmaker continued as she made an apparent reference to 19 Republican senators — including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who recently traveled to the border.
Republican senators arrive at a U.S.-Mexico border site in an armed boat. pic.twitter.com/FH0zR7wWYq
— The Recount (@therecount) March 26, 2021
“For all the new tears GOP have about the border, what are their policy solutions? A Muslim ban, racist policy, shutting down the border, [and] more cages. If you don’t want children in cages, then you need to stop upholding CBP, ICE, and the military as the solution to this crisis,” she added.
Politicians and pundits who are pretending to care about the border now but have continuously voted to expand these cages can sit down.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 1, 2021
You might be new to this, but we’re true to this.
Short-term issue is facilities. Long-term issue is destabilization that’s driving migration.
The New York Congresswoman was harshly critical of former President Donald Trump‘s immigration policies and has spoken out to criticize Biden’s reopening of a facility to hold migrants.
However, some have suggested that she has been silent on the border situation.
According to The New York Times, unaccompanied migrant children who show up at the border are being held in crowded facilities often require to sleep on gym mats with foil blankets and going days without showering.
Ocasio-Cortez is blasting politicians who are “pretending to care about the border now but have continuously voted to expand these cages.”
“You might be new to this, but we’re true to this. Short-term issue is facilities. Long-term issue is destabilization that’s driving migration,” she added.
She claimed, “Fact is a lot of the politicians crying right now don’t work to solve either. They vote to grow ICE + CBP cages and they do everything to avoid addressing the root: US foreign policy and interventionism that destabilizes regions, the climate crisis, and unjust economic policy.”
So do we do?
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 1, 2021
If facilities are your #1 concern, short term we need to shift Congress’ knee-jerk addiction to funding carceral facilities (ICE/CBP) to expansion of ORR (office of refugee resettlement) and HHS (health and human services).
But that’s not a long term solution.
In the long term, we need to address US immigration policy that drives parents to make the devastating choice to send their child alone to flee violence bc together they have less of a shot. Lots more. Also foreign policy, climate, etc.
Here’s a roadmap:https://t.co/ppny4GDpRq
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 1, 2021
While the U.S. is on track for the highest number of border crossings in 20 years, Ocasio-Cortez is also criticizing those who use the word “surge” to describe the wave of migrants coming to the border.
“They wanna say, ‘But what about the surge?’ Well, first of all, just gut check, stop. Anyone who’s using the term ‘surge’ around you consciously is trying to invoke a militaristic frame,” she said during an Instagram Live video on Tuesday.
She added, “And that’s a problem because this is not a surge, these are children and they are not insurgents and we are not being invaded, which by the way is a White supremacist idea-philosophy, the idea that if another is coming in the population that this is an invasion of who we are.”
During a virtual town hall event on Wednesday evening, she called the condition at the border “inhumane,” “horrific,” and “barbaric.”