Ocasio-Cortez Not Apologizing to Kevin McCarthy: “He Should Apologize to the Children That Have Been Separated From Their Parents”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., fired back on Thursday at House Republican Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who had demanded that she apologize for her use of the term “concentration camps.”

“I think he should apologize for the deliberate conflation and attack on these terms. I think he should apologize for the conditions that he’s supporting on the border,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Capitol Hill. “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.”

McCarthy said on Wednesday that Ocasio-Cortez needs to apologize “not only to the nation but to the world. She does not understand history.”

Ocasio-Cortez was asked if she could find any common ground with Republicans on border security and reforming the nation’s immigration system.

“They always bring up certain issues, for example, the fentanyl crisis. If they want to actually fund — I don’t know — evidence-based solutions, like materials to assess the actual tankers, the actual boats and accessing that, then that’s fine,” she said.

“But as long as they continue to support, fund, aid, and abet human rights violations, the conditions that are killing children at our border, the lack of accountability — we have asked DHS and ICE for information on these kids, where they are, what their conditions are, and they will not even give us documents so that we can reunify children with their families. This is a human rights violation that has happened on a massive scale, and the GOP is aiding and abetting it. People are dying,” she added.

Ocasio-Cortez argued that the GOP is turning the border crisis into a “controversy about words instead of turning it into a controversy about why kids are dying on our border with U.S. dollars.”