#CloseTheCamps is trending on social media, with users largely rebuking the administration of President Donald Trump and its treatment of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers in the United States.
On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called the nation's detention facilities for migrants "concentration camps." On Tuesday, she tweeted a link to an Esquire article, in which Andrea Pitzer, a historian of concentration camps, was quoted making a similar claim, saying that "mass detention of civilians without a trial" was what made the camps concentration camps.
Ocasio-Cortez's full tweet said: "This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis."
At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2019
#CloseTheCamps was trending on Twitter on Saturday, the same day that Trump took to Twitter to declare his plan to delay deportations for two weeks.
Trump wrote: "At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!"
Actress Patricia Arquette replied to Trump in a tweet, goading him to "deal with your child abuse riddled detention centers? Get those kids, diapers, toothpaste and toothbrushes, showers, hair brushes, food that is healthy. Blankets and Matresses, toilets, showers and clean clothes. NOW."
Many others took to the platform to criticize the administration's handling of the camps.
This is what the United States is doing in the name of the American people.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2019
It’s child abuse, it’s indefensible, and we cannot wring our hands out of discomfort with the reality of the situation.
We must have the courage to see this for what it is.#CloseTheCamps #AbolishICE https://t.co/rGX4IhFmsA
Author Kurt Eichenwald tweeted a link to an Associated Press story that alleges a Texas border facility neglects migrant kids. David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting in 2018, equated the Trump administration's treatment of children in the camps to child neglect. Ocasio-Cortez made a similar claim, calling the treatment of children by ICE "child abuse."
"The question isn't whether these are concentration camps or whether the US has deployed concentration camps throughout its history. They are and it has. The question is whether #ConcentrationCamps will be as much a part of our future as they've been of our past. #CloseTheCamps," wrote Pacific Standard columnist David M. Perry.
The Associated Press article that Eichenwald linked was published on Friday and revealed a team of lawyers conducted 60 interviews with migrant children being held in an El Paso, Texas, detention camp and found conditions to be dismal, with minors being tasked with caring for other children in an unsanitary and unsafe environment.
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Hayley Prokos is an entertainment fellow at Newsweek. On the beat, she reports on viral news, as well as film, ... Read more
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