Ocasio-Cortez rips ‘barbaric’ conditions at border

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) ripped into the conditions at the southern border late Wednesday, calling them “barbaric” and “horrifying.”

“We’re looking at what’s going on in these facilities. It’s unacceptable, it’s horrifying and it’s a result of the fact that we have built our immigration system on the same principles and scaffolding as our carceral system,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a virtual town hall.

“The fact that this keeps happening over and over and over again is a political failure by both parties,” the congresswoman said.

She added that she didn’t want to draw “false equivalents” between the Biden and Trump administration’s actions.

“What is happening here is not the same as what happened during the Trump administration where they took babies out of the arms of mothers and deported their families and permanently traumatized these children,” she said, adding that President Biden’s policies toward families are “simply not the same” as his predecessor.

“Both are these things are barbaric and wrong, but when you rip a baby out of hands of a mother, you cannot draw the same comparison and anyone who is trying to do that is doing a profound disservice to the cause of justice.”

The Biden administration has been under scrutiny for the conditions at the border and the opening of additional facilities for undocumented migrant children.

A recent poll showed that 54 percent of adults disapprove of Biden’s work on immigration and at the border.

Ocasio-Cortez also criticized Biden when he opened the first facility for undocumented children.

“This is not OK, never has been OK, never will be OK — no matter the administration or party,” she said in February.