New York Daily News

Racist Don scars kids, says AOC

- BY JASPER K. LO AND CATHY BURKE

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unloaded on President Trump Saturday, bashing his immigratio­n policy as one that focuses on “ethnicity and racism.”

At her first town hall event in Queens since the president’s weeklong bashing of her and three other minority congresswo­men — Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachuse­tts — that included a tweet advising they “go back” to the countries they came from — the freshman firebrand vowed, “we’re gonna stay right here.”

“All you have to do is hear what the president said this week,” she said. “It’s not about immigratio­n. When the president starts telling American citizens to ‘go back’ to their countries, this tells you that this president’s policies are not about immigratio­n, but ethnicity and racism.”

She later told reporters, “He’s putting millions of Americans in danger. That’s what the real problem is, it’s not about me, it’s what he’s telling people in this room and rooms across the country.”

The Queens lawmaker also railed at the Trump administra­tion’s separation of children from their families at the southern border, and called for “a 9/11 style commission.”

“They were charged with investigat­ing and digging up every nook and cranny of the system,” she said of the panel created after the terror attacks. “Even if we do reunite the children, you create lifelong trauma after 48 hours. Some of these kids have been separated for a year. The United States is responsibl­e for their lifelong trauma.”

Ocasio-Cortez (above) doubleddow­n on her criticism of Customs and Border Protection officers at the Clint, Texas, detention facility, where children were found to be without toothpaste, blankets or beds.

“It was that these officers felt so confident to break rules in front of their bosses. … If this is how they’re acting when people are watching, then how will they behave when no-one is watching?” she said.

She blamed the Obama administra­tion, however, for setting up the system, and for having “left all the trappings there, thinking that someone responsibl­e would be in charge.”

“This isn’t about building a better cage,” she raged. “It’s about not caging people at all.”

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