AOC and other Democrats visit El Paso, Clint border facilities in Texas - Vox - organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- the article contains comments by Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-TX), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA), Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA), Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA), Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ).
Jonathan M. Katz
on Twitter: "I interviewed @AOC about what she saw inside the El Paso camps: a border guard taking selfies, detainees freezing in the "icebox," the Cuban woman who said they were told to drink from the toilet https://t.co/G2s7oEeiGS" / Twitter noting
“The Whole Facility’s Culture Is Rotted From the Core”: What Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Saw Inside the El Paso Camps – Mother Jones
On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez was part of a 16-member congressional delegation that got a rare glimpse inside three highly fortified facilities: “Casa Franklin,” a downtown facility housing children run by the nonprofit Southwest Key; the US Border Patrol Station at Hondo Pass; and the Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas. Congressional staffers had privately worried that officials would sanitize and curtail their tour inside.
But the visit turned out to be more revealing than anyone had expected.
Then the interview.
So what was your impression?
I mean, it was pretty horrifying. The first CBP facility [at Hondo Pass], the thing that I was just so immediately struck by was how brazenly disrespectful the CBP officers were, from the beginning. From the jump.
We initially went into a conference room with all of the other CHC members. We sat down to get initially briefed on the conditions. And a lot of the other members who had been on several of these tours before started saying, “They’re filibustering. They’re trying to draw this beginning portion out as long as possible so we have as little time as possible with the actual communities inside.”
Then that ProPublica story, something that made them very defensive. Then into a surveillance-center room with lots of views of the camp. After an employee tried to take a selfie with the delegation, she got outraged at the "lack of professionalism" of personnel there. After a bit where she asked about the temperature of one of the rooms,
The fact that these officers had felt comfortable enough to use sarcasm in these circumstances tells me that the whole facility’s culture is rotted from the core, and prioritizes and incentivizes dehumanizing behavior.
Then she started speaking to some of the inmates, speaking in Spanish. The women there described how their children were taken away from them and how they were there for several days. They were from Cuba. After finding out about their inadequate nutrition and cleaning,
I spent a lot of time with those women. I considered just staying in there, and saying I wasn’t going to leave until they did, but then I got cajoled because they were saying we needed to see the kids in Clint. And so—
Cajoled by who?
I mean it was like, the office of the general counsel. And she was like, “You’re going to really want to see the kids in Clint.”
But AOC and the other Congresspeople found that Clint and the El Paso Border Station had been emptied out, with their inmates moved elsewhere.
As to calling these facilities concentration camps, she freely concedes that those facilities were started by the Obama Administration, and that the Trump Administration only made those facilities much worse. "He’s like, “Oh, here’s this great thing that will be really convenient to turn into a complete force for dehumanization.”" She started calling the facilities "concentration camps" as a way of publicizing how horrible they were. After noting some Democrats' complicity, she says "And so it’s not like the Republican Party is bad, and all the Democrats are good on this issue. There are Democrats on this issue that are horrible, and absolutely willing to aid and abet this depravity for political points."
After a lot of the politics of the recent appropriations bills for the facilities, she talks about subpoenaing the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS would not hand over anything, and she has had experience with officials' foot-dragging in the Oversight Committee.
on Twitter: "Breaking!!! Young Jews with @NeverAgainActn are about to be arrested for blocking ICE building in solidarity with refugees and immigrants: “never again means never again for anyone” #JewsAgainstICE #NeverAgainMeans https://t.co/6KOYf3hozC" / Twitter