Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made a big accusation about U.S. border policy Wednesday evening during an Instagram Live video in which she was drinking wine and assembling furniture on the floor of her apartment.
“At least I’m not trying to cage children at the border and inject them with drugs,” she said. “That’s not a mistake. That is a deliberate policy to attack people based on their national origin. That’s not a mistake, that’s just hatred. That’s just cruelty. That’s just wrong!”
She made the comment after she complained about the frequent criticism she faces for gaffes as a 29-year-old Congresswoman.
Ocasio-Cortez claims without evidence that CBP officials are “deliberately” trying to “cage children and inject them with drugs” because “of their national origin” pic.twitter.com/ZEwu7AvCv3
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 4, 2019
Democrats have repeatedly claimed that U.S. Customs and Border Protection puts children in detention areas that are “cages,” something Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen has denied.
"[W]e don’t use cages for children," Nielsen told Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee. "To my knowledge, [Customs and Border Protection] never purposefully put a child in a cage.”
She said children are sometimes detained in "areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those that remain there while they’re being processed."
Ocasio-Cortez’s comment about children being drugged was possibly referencing a lawsuit last year which claimed that immigrant children were given psychotropic drugs at U.S. government-funded youth shelters to manage trauma.