Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Friday after he demanded that she apologize for comparing migrant detention centers at the southern border to concentration camps.
Ocasio-Cortez said McCarthy himself needs to apologize for his “deliberate conflation” of her words and his support of the overcrowded detention centers in the first place.
“I think he should apologize for the conditions he’s supporting on the border. He should apologize to the children that have been separated from their parents,” Ocasio-Cortez told Intercept reporter Nicholas Ballasy. “He should apologize for his support for widespread human rights abuses. That’s what he should apologize for.”
“And until he stops supporting the absolute dehumanizing conditions on our border, I will not apologize for holding him to account for it,” she added.
On Wednesday, McCarthy attacked the Democratic congresswoman for her comment, saying that she “does not understand history” and that there was “no comparison” between the centers and concentration camps.
“To take something that happened in history where millions of Jews had died, and equate it to somewhere that’s happening on the border, she owes this nation an apology,” the House minority leader told reporters.
McCarthy joined other Republicans in their outrage against Ocasio-Cortez after she said that the squalid conditions that migrants and asylum seekers are forced to experience at the detention centers (along with the fact that several of them have died while in custody) made the centers “concentration camps.”
Watch AOC below:
“He should apologize to the children that have been separated from their parents,” said Rep. @AOC of GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who demanded she apologize for calling ICE detention centers “concentration camps.” https://t.co/zf2Zdt9diu by @nicholasballasy pic.twitter.com/jjLXI0bjcV
— The Intercept (@theintercept) June 21, 2019
