Donald Trump said the words “humanitarian crisis” during his bullshit-laden speech from the Oval Office Tuesday night but meant none of it, because truly addressing any humanitarian crisis facing our nation right now would have meant addressing his own actions, as pointed out by Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York during a fiery response on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show.
“The one thing that the president has not talked about,” she said, “is the fact that he has systematically engaged in the violation of international human rights,” including family separation and the recent deaths of 7-year-old Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin and 8-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo under federal immigration custody. “The president,” she said, “should really be defending why we’re funding such an agency at all, because right now what we are seeing is death.”
Gómez Alonzo, specifically, was shuffled between numerous Customs and Border Protection (CBP) locations for six days before becoming seriously ill. “These children and these families are being held in what are called hieleras,” she said, “which are basically freezing boxes that no person should be maintained in, for any amount of time.” This is the humanitarian crisis.
Ocasio-Cortez also pointed out the uselessness of Trump’s proposed border wall, not just because it’s a racist chant without any basis in reality, but because “the majority of immigrant overstays, the majority of the reason why people are undocumented, is visa overstay. It’s not because people are crossing a border illegally.” Not to mention the fact that overall arrests at the southern border are at a historic low, while the undocumented immigrant population in the U.S. is at the lowest since 2007.
Trump is fighting for his mass deportation agenda based on lies, pure and simple, and lies have real effects—just look at the thousands of asylum seekers and vulnerable families being illegally blocked right now from presenting themselves at the border. “This is systematic, it is wrong, and it is anti-American,” she continued. “Those women and children trying to come here with nothing but the shirts on their back to create an opportunity and provide for this nation, are acting more in the American tradition than this president is right now.”
Watch Ocasio-Cortez’s response below.