(Headline USA) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., admitted this week that immigration is President Joe Biden’s “weakest issue.”
The self-described Democratic socialist was asked on Wednesday to grade Biden’s handling of the border crisis, and she pointed out that more asylum-seekers are being held in detention centers today than under former President Donald Trump.
“Immigration is arguably this administration’s weakest issue,” Ocasio–Cortez said in an interview with the New York Times.
“This is one area where our policy is dictated by politics, arguably more so than almost any other. There are very clear recommendations and suggestions that we have made to the administration to provide relief on this issue, and it’s my belief that some of the hesitation around this has to do with a fear around just being seen as approving or providing permission structures, or really just the Republican narratives that have surrounded immigration.”
Ocasio-Cortez was also asked whether she has any plans to visit the southern border, to which she said that a border visit is “something that we’re actively planning on.”
The last time Ocasio-Cortez weighed in on the border crisis was during the Trump administration, when she and several other freshman lawmakers visited a detention facility and posed for photographs while crying in front of chain-link fences.
One user in her Instagram live asked why Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t “address the border crisis and the kids in cages like you used to,” leading her to go on a bizarre rant about climate change and white supremacy.
“Are you for real?” Ocasio-Cortez responded. “It’s not a border crisis. It’s an imperialism crisis, it’s a climate crisis, it’s a trade crisis, and also, it’s a carceral crisis. Because, as I have already said even during this term and this president, our immigration system is based on our carceral system.”
