Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is demanding a ‘9/11-style commission’ to look into the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border.
Speaking at her first town hall meeting since Donald Trump exhorted her House ‘squad’ to ‘go back’ where they came from, the New York Democrat said Saturday that the president was ‘racist’ and was stoking white supremacy in the US.
The liberal firebrand told the town hall in Queens that the US had a ‘lifelong commitment’ to migrant children separated from the parents under the policy, adding that it ‘will take a 9/11-style commission.’
‘We need a commission on child separation,’ she added.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez holds an immigration Town Hall In Queens on Saturday
AOC also hit out at Trump for being racist, and allowing racist groups to flourish under his presidency.
‘We do not have to acquiesce to the president’s racism, because he is using racism, he is stoking white supremacy, and he is allowing frankly neo-Nazi groups to go off unchecked because that is a key part of rousing his base,’ Ocasio-Cortez said.
‘We cannot allow and give into that,’ she continued.
The 9/11 commission was set up on November 27, 2002, ‘to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.’ AOC is demanding a similar account of the migrant border policies.
But the congresswoman’s comparison of the child separation policy to the World Trade Center terror attacks has been criticized by the Republican National Committee.
RNC spokesperson Liz Harrington told the New York Post that the statement was ‘anti-American’.
‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s divisive rhetoric never ends,’ she said. ‘If the Democrats truly cared about addressing the crisis on the border, they would fix the loopholes in our immigration laws,’ Harrington added.
The remarks came a week after Trump ignited controversy with tweets about Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who moved from Somalia as a child, and her colleagues Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
‘Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done,’ Trump tweeted.
At the town hall, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that the remarks proved the true motivation behind Trump’s stance on immigration.
‘This tells you that this president’s policies are not about immigration, it’s about ethnicity and racism,’ she said.
Ocasio-Cortez has slammed President Donald Trump as a ‘racist’ in her first town hall meeting since the president exhorted her House ‘squad’ to ‘go back’ where they came from
On Friday, Trump reversed his previous criticisms of a North Carolina campaign crowd that chanted ‘send her back’ this week about Omar.
Trump on defended the rally-goers as ‘patriots’ while again questioning the loyalty of four Democrats.
When reporters at the White House asked if he was unhappy with the Wednesday night crowd, Trump responded: ‘Those are incredible people. They are incredible patriots. But I’m unhappy when a congresswoman goes and says, ‘I’m going to be the president’s nightmare.”
‘You can’t talk that way about our country. Not when I’m president,’ Trump said. ‘These women have said horrible things about our country and the people of our country.’
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, second from left, speaks, as U.S. Reps., from left, Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.,Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., listen
He also tweeted that it was ‘amazing how the Fake News Media became ‘crazed’ over the chant ‘send her back’ by a packed Arena (a record) crowd in the Great State of North Carolina, but is totally calm & accepting of the most vile and disgusting statements made by the three Radical Left Congresswomen.’
Omar was defiant after the rally, telling reporters at the Capitol that she believes the president is a ‘fascist’ and casting the confrontation as a fight over ‘what this country truly should be.’
‘We are going to continue to be a nightmare to this president because his policies are a nightmare to us. We are not deterred. We are not frightened,’ she told a cheering crowd that greeted her like a local hero at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as she returned from Washington.