By Scott McDonald
Deputy Night Editor
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The acting director of the country's Immigration and Custom Enforcement harshly criticized New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday for her comparison of border detention facilities to concentration camps.
Mark Morgan, the acting ICE executive director, said Ocasio-Cortez was "flat out wrong" during an interview Tuesday with The Hill.
"Its completely inappropriate, it's reckless, it's irresponsible, it's misinformed, and it's flat out wrong," Morgan said on Hill.TV.
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First, here's what Ocasio-Cortez said Monday night on an Instagram livestream.
"The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are," Ocasio-Cortez said. "They are concentration camps."
She compared temporary facilities where illegal migrants are held until further notice to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, where millions were killed during the Holocaust.
"The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it," she said.
Morgan snapped back at those comments in his interview, saying the detention facilities "have so much oversight."
"I encourage the check and balance, I encourage inspections," Morgan said. "I feel very satisfied that if you go to these facilities, whether it's a border patrol facility or an [Health and Human Services] facility or an ICE facility that there will be safe and adequate conditions to detain individuals."
Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, said Ocasio-Cortez should "learn some actual history" in a tweet.
"Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this."
Ocasio-Cortez fired back by asking Cheney what she would call "building mass camps of people being detained without a trial?"
"Hey Rep. Cheney, since you're so eager to 'educate me,' I'm curious: What do YOU call building mass camps of people being detained without a trial?," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "How would you dress up DHS's mass separation of thousands children at the border from their parents?"
Ocasio-Cortez's comments and remarks sent her way follow President Donald Trump's Twitter comment in which he said "millions of illegal aliens" will be deported, starting next week.
"Next week, ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States," the president tweeted. "They will be removed as fast as they come in."
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