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AOC: ‘Racist’ to call border crisis a ‘surge’

Ocasio-Cortez says that those voicing concerns about uncontrolled illegal entry into the U.S. are likely speaking from a racist perspective.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has a message for Americans worried about the ongoing crisis at the southern U.S.-Mexico Border: Don’t call the influx of people a “surge” because that’s racist.

Senior ICE officials told Fox News that there has been a massive spike in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally, leading to overcrowded immigration facilities where social distancing is impossible.

Texas Deputy Border Chief Raul Ortiz told media during a press conference that he “fully expects” Border Patrol to process more than one million illegal migrants this year.

During an Instagram Live stream on Tuesday evening, Ocasio-Cortez told viewers that they should be conscious of the language they use when describing the flow of people attempting to illegally cross the southern border.

“They wanna say, ‘But what about the surge?’ Well, first of all, just gut check, stop. Anyone who’s using the term ‘surge’ around you consciously is trying to invoke a militaristic frame,” she said.

She went on to explain that those voicing concerns about uncontrolled illegal entry into the U.S. are likely speaking from a racist perspective. Because the migrants include unaccompanied minors, it’s unfair to view the rise in entry attempts as a cause for concern.

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“This is not a surge, these are children and they are not insurgents and we are not being invaded, which by the way is a white supremacist idea-philosophy, the idea that if an ‘other’ is coming in the population that this is, like, an invasion of who we are.”

Townhall journalist Julio Rosas, who has been covering the border crisis, responded to Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter.

“I’ve been using the term ‘surge’ because there’s a higher than usual amount of people illegally crossing into the U.S. I’ve seen it with my own eyes on a nightly basis for the past week,” he wrote.

“Yes, there are kids here, often by themselves. It’s emotionally taxing to see that night after night because God only knows what they’ve been through. Funny how AOC raced down to TX for the winter storm but she can’t be bothered to come down now to see what’s happening.”