AOC Says Calling Border Crisis a 'Surge' Part of 'White Supremacy'

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said calling illegal immigration a “surge” is part of a racist narrative in an Instagram Live AMA Tuesday.

Democrat “squad” member, Ocasio-Cortez, responded to a question regarding her seeming avoidance of the ongoing border crisis now that former President Trump has left office. On an Instagram Live “Ask Me Anything” session with her followers, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez paused to condemn labeling the crisis a “surge.”

When a viewer asked Ocasio-Cortez why was no longer “addressing the border crisis and the kids in cages like you used to,” she paused for a moment. “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,” she said.

“But people don’t want to have that conversation,” AOC continued. “They want to say, ‘But what about the surge?'” Then she called for a “gut check,” saying “Stop. Anyone who’s using the term ‘surge’ around you, consciously, is trying to invoke a militaristic frame.”

“And that’s a problem, because this is not a surge. These are children and they are not insurgents and we are not being invaded,” she continued. She called the idea and its language part of “a white supremacist philosophy,” criticizing “the idea that if another is coming in the population that this is an invasion of who we are.”

Marine veteran and Townhall.com senior writer Julio Rosas disagreed. “I’ve been using the term “surge” because there’s a higher than usual amount of people illegally crossing into the U.S.,” Rosas tweeted Tuesday night. And unlike AOC, Rosas said he had “seen it with my own eyes on a nightly basis for the past week.”

“Yes, there are kids here, often by themselves. It’s emotionally taxing to see that night after night because God only knows what they’ve been through,” Rosas continued. “Funny how AOC raced down to TX for the winter storm but she can’t be bothered to come down now to see what’s happening.”