Trump slaps back at AOC on detention centers for immigrants: 'They're not concentration camps'

Donald Trump denied Tuesday that immigration detention centers at the border are essentially 'concentration camps,' in a slap back to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

She and other members of her squad, a group of progressive Democrats including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, have been calling the holding facilities camps and railing against the administration for squalid conditions for immigrants.

Trump told his Cabinet that the 'far-left' lawmakers are incorrect.

'They’re not concentration camps. They’re really well run,' he insisted.

Vice President Mike Pence conceded Friday that there's overcrowding in migrant holding facilities. But he echoed the president and blamed the conditions on Democrats' refusal to fund additional beds. 

'I was not surprised by what I saw,' he said, 'I knew we'd see a system that was overwhelmed.'

Tlaib warned Saturday of life-long trauma to migrant children being held at influx centers on the border.

Following on testimony that she, AOC and other lawmakers who visited the facilities delivered, in which they recounted their visit, the Michigan congresswoman said migrants are being imprisoned, just completely dehumanzied' and the detention centers should be permanently closed. 

'As a nation, we need to realize, we're going to look back at this moment as a very, very dark time. We are. Not only because of who is in the White House, but more importantly because of the policies, and we're going to look back and say, what did we do, as a nation to push against this,' she warned at a conference for progressives.

'This is a whole generation of children who will never forget what our nation did to them. They will never forget the trauma.' 

She has backed up Ocasio-Cortez's claims that the detention centers are functioning as 'concentration camps' and said Saturday that the nation cannot look away from the border crisis. 

'The fact that, you know, we, we were holding them down and injecting them with medicine, so they could stop crying. The fact that we're separating them away from their parents and telling them that their father and mother don't want them any more. That kind of trauma is something that we all need to, like, not look away from, and to be able to combat it in a very aggressive way,' she said. 

Omar said migrants are coming to the U.S. in droves 'because of some of the policies that this administration has implemented.' She the most immediate step would be fore Congress to pass legislation restoring federal funding for the Northern Triangle that Donald Trump reprogrammed without congressional approval. 

'But none of these things are going to be possible if there isn't a mass movement in the recognition of the dignity and the humanity of the people who are at our borders,' she said. 

The Somali-American lawmaker said another legislator told her that if it were dogs and not people being kept in cages at border facilities 'every single member of Congress would vote to make sure that all of these cages didn't exist any longer.'

'We live in a society and govern in a body that might value the life of a dog more than they value the life of a child who might not look like theirs,' she argued. 'And that is completely sad.'

She hinted at a dispute between progressives on the stage and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a bill that provided $4.6 billion in emergency aid to immigration facilities. Omar was one of four Democrats, along with Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley, to vote against the original measure.

A version of the bill that passed without the group's support, and that of many other Democrats, gave the White House more the funding it was asking for to maintain overflow facilities. 

'I don't have the values to allow me to vote and continue the implementation of that, because somebody could get soap,' Omar said, 'or maybe a glass of water.'

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley visited a set of migrant detention facilities in Texas last week as part of a delegation of Democratic lawmakers, days before an inspector general report sounded the alarm on facility conditions.

The report warned of 'dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults' at the facilities.  

Trump claimed Friday that Democrats and journalists are making up detention center horror stories, hours before his vice president would witness nearly 400 men living cages at a McAllen, Texas, detention center. 

'We're the ones that said they were crowded. They're crowded because we have a lot of people. But they're in good shape,' he claimed. 

The president has not visited a migrant facility himself. He said that leadership at Border Patrol and ICE called him 'almost crying' about news reports he alleged are fabricated.

He singled out the New York Times, and claimed, 'They never saw anything. They have phony sources. They don't even have sources. They write whatever they want .... They are truly the enemy of the people, I'll tell you that. They are the enemy of the people. And what they wrote about detention centers is unfair.'  

The president said he would visit one himself. I'll be going. I'll be going. But I've seen it. I've seen it. And these centers are -- I mean, to have Ocasio say, 'They're drinking out of toilets.' She made that up, okay? That's a phony story.'

'I've been with ICE and I've been with Border Patrol a lot. They love those people coming across the border. They love them. And I've seen it. They love them,' he claimed.

Tlaib has called for Trump's impeachment and invoked her infamous pledge to boot him from office at the start of her term at Saturday's conference, where she encouraged attendees to dig into the migrant detention camps' funding sources.

'We're going to to impeach the M-fer, don't worry. We're going to impeach him,' she insisted to applause. 

She said that that two of the companies 'benefiting from caging up children at the border' donated to Trump's inauguration, making reference to private prison owner and operator GEO Group, and Corrections Corporation of America. 

Each business donated $250,000 to Trump's inaugural committee after his 2016 election.

Alleging conflicts of interest between Trump's business and his government and deriding his extreme vetting measures for majority-Muslim nations, which said said is based on 'religious discrimination,' Tlaib argued that the Republican president has committed 'impeachable offenses' for which he should be removed from office. 

She said, 'I will not back down on impeaching this lawless president.'

Source: Daily Mail

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