Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called out the United States in an interview with All In with Chris Hayes Tuesday for allegedly "contributing to the conditions" that have forced Central Americans to migrate in mass to the US southern border over the last few months.
Ocasio-Cortez said that Central Americans were choosing to make the long journey to America because "they believe they have a greater chance of being targeted, killed, and murdered if they stay, than the odds of them being killed if they go on that journey."
"What the United States has not done is actually own up to the fact that we have contributed to regime change, destabilization and interventionist foreign policy that has contributed to these awful conditions throughout Latin America," said Ocasio-Cortez.
"And the reason this is a problem, and this is not just US supporting regime change, this is also climate policy that is impacting the global south disproportionately," she said, noting that farmers in South America have not contributed to climate change.
"Even though these farmers and these folks in Central and South America contributed to climate change the least in terms of their carbon emissions, they are experiencing the ravages the most right now."
"US climate policy has contributed to this."
Ocasio-Cortez goes on to say that the nation cannot "continue to show up in Latin America and say that this is their fault, or that they are to blame."
"Because this seems like almost a precursor to say, in saying that we are going to allege that you are coming to this country illegally when seeking asylum on our border is in fact legal, and use that to predate any violence that we are willing to inflict on immigrants as a deterrent," she continues.
Ocasio-Cortez clarifies that while these policies, caging of immigrants, other "inhuman policies," happened during the Trump administration, they happened during the Obama administration as well.
"And the caging of immigrants was very much documented and it was asserted in many ways along with many of the other inhumane policies as a deterrent to say, you know, if we are cruel enough, maybe people will think twice before coming. And this at its core is completely inhumane," said Ocasio-Cortez.
She slammed the "carceral immigration policy" that she believes has led to the crowding at souther border facilities holding immigrants, saying that the policies are a "shameful" thing to adopt.
Ocasio-Cortez said that the nation "choose to gratuitously cage people seeking a better life… Imagine if right here in New York City, in Ellis Island, if people’s grandparents and great grandparents were met with cages, how different would the DNA and our family histories and our trauma be? This is not who we should be as a country."
There are two messages Ocasio-Cortez says we as a nation should be sending to Latin America. Firstly, "we should be acknowledging our role because we have been hiding and running away from actually acknowledging the role of U.S. history. So, it’s actually a major step for us to even say what we’ve done."
"And then the second thing we can do is say we can come together as partners to try to figure out how we clean up this mess that the United States helped contribute to, because no one wants to leave their home. None of these people want to leave the communities and ancestral lands that they and generations of their families have stayed in."
Ocasio-Cortez's comments come after Vice President Kamala Harris held a news conference with Guatemala’s president on Monday. Harris told those considering the trek to America, "I want to emphasize that the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home, at the same time I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border … Do not come. Do not come."
"The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border. There are legal methods by which migration can and should occur. But we, as one of our priorities, will discourage illegal migration," Harris continues.
"And I believe, if you come to our border, you will be turned back. So let's discourage our friends, our neighbors, our family members, from embarking on what is otherwise an extremely dangerous journey. Where in large part the only people who benefit are coyotes."
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