New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) called New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D) characterization of detention facilities for migrants as concentration camps “wholly inappropriate” Wednesday, The New York Daily News reported.
“The Holocaust, you’re talking about a tragedy of Biblical proportion and one of the greatest scourges in history. Six million Jews died during the Holocaust, there is no comparison to the Holocaust, period,” Cuomo said, according to the Daily News.
“To draw an equivalency suggests one does not understand what happened in the Holocaust,” he added.
{mosads}Ocasio-Cortez’s original remarks did not specifically invoke the Holocaust.
“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are — they are concentration camps,” she said in an Instagram Q&A last week.
Conditions in the detention facilities have become a flashpoint in the immigration debate in recent weeks, particularly after reports that the facilities are unsanitary and lack resources like food or soap.
Although numerous Republicans and Trump administration officials have condemned Ocasio-Cortez’s description, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) joined the Democrats who have backed her House colleague Wednesday, saying “I’m not afraid to use that word because we are concentrating people, children, in one place in horrible, unacceptable conditions.”
Cuomo conceded that the situation in the facilities was “horrendous in and of itself,” calling it a “human rights violation,” according to the Daily News.
Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill, but tweeted Wednesday afternoon that since she used the description, Bank of America announced its divestiture from for-profit detention and acting Customs & Border Patrol Commissioner John Sanders announced his resignation. “Words matter,” the freshman representative added.