Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accuses Trump of building 'concentration camps on the southern border'

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 18 June 2019

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has issued one of her sharpest rebukes of President Trump yet.

As soaring numbers of migrants cross the border, more and more reports have highlighted disturbing conditions they face while in detention centers awaiting court hearings. Migrants are often placed in overcrowded shelters riddled with disease outbreaks, including some formerly used as Japanese internment camps during World War II — if they're in shelters at all. Ocasio-Cortez summed up the conditions with one harrowing comparison: They're "concentration camps," she wrote in a Tuesday tweet.

Along with her criticism, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a link to an Esquire article in which author and historian Andrea Pitzer calls the situation on the border "a concentration camp system." Pitzer's book defines concentration camp as the "mass detention of civilians without trial." Right now, thousands of migrants are being detained as they await asylum hearings, and several deaths of children have been reported in U.S. custody.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.