Jewish GOP leader rebukes AOC for calling ICE facilities ‘concentration camps’
WASHINGTON – The national chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition rebuked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) after the freshman lawmaker called ICE detention centers that house undocumented immigrants “concentration camps.”
“It’s so offensive…It denigrates the memory of those who suffered and died in the Holocaust,” former Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, told TMN in an interview on Tuesday.
He added: “But this is who she is. And this is what she does. And this is what she says. And so I’m not surprised to hear this latest utterance.”
Coleman referenced Ocasio-Cortez’s history making of what many have described as anti-Israel remarks and her steadfast defense of fellow freshman Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), who has been accused of anti-Semitism on multiple occasions.
“This is not new news, this is old news. It’s continuous news,” Coleman said.
He called on House Democratic leaders to condemn AOC’s latest remarks.
“I wish that her colleagues in the House, including Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and [Majority] Leader [Steny] Hoyer, would show a little more backbone in rejecting those comments and casting her aside and saying that she doesn’t represent their caucus.”
He added: “Unfortunately she does represent their caucus, and I think that’s a shame.”
In a Monday evening livestream video featured on her Instagram page, AOC said of ICE detention centers: “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are. That is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps.”
She added: “The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it.”
TMN contacted the offices of both AOC and Pelosi for comment. No one responded by the deadline for this story.
This article is republished with permission from TMN
Bryan is an award-winning political journalist who has extensive experience covering Congress and Maryland state government.
His work includes coverage of the election of Donald Trump, the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and attorneys general William Barr and Jeff Sessions-as well as that of the Maryland General Assembly, Gov. Larry Hogan, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bryan has broken stories involving athletic and sexual assault scandals with the Baltimore Post-Examiner.
His original UMBC investigation gained international attention, was featured in People Magazine and he was interviewed by ABC’s “Good Morning America” and local radio stations. Bryan broke subsequent stories documenting UMBC’s omission of a sexual assault on their daily crime log and a federal investigation related to the university’s handling of an alleged sexual assault.