"The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Monday night in an emotional Instagram live video. "They are concentration camps," she reiterated to her viewers, who flooded the feed with comments.
Sitting in what appeared to be her apartment, the freshman congresswoman criticized the border facilities that currently house undocumented migrants who have crossed into the U.S. and are waiting to be processed. Images from the centers show some migrant children sleeping under foil blankets. Many are kept in small fenced-in areas; some are outdoors.
"I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that 'never again' means something," Ocasio-Cortez continued in her live video. "The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the 'Home of the Free' is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it."