Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., says she is open to the idea of abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, one of many "egregious mistakes" made by the Bush administration.
Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made the comments during a wide-ranging interview with The New Yorker Radio Hour's David Remnick.
"Would you get rid of Homeland Security, too?" he asked her after she suggested all of DHS was a threat to American civil liberties.
"I think so. I think we need to undo a lot of the egregious mistakes that the Bush administration did," she replied. "I feel like it is a very qualified and supported position, at least in terms of evidence and in terms of being able to make the argument that we never should have created DHS, in the early 2000s."
Ocasio-Cortez, one of many Democrats calling for agencies like ICE to be disbanded, cited her recent visit to a border detention facility in El Paso, Texas, as one of the reasons.
"It's not even living . . . it was the physical manifestation of Trump's rhetoric and calling migrants animals because that's how these women were being treated, their hair was falling out, they had sores in their mouths due to the lack of nutrition . . . the cruelty is the point," she said.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., blasted her comments as "ridiculous," while Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the third-ranking House Republican, slammed her as irresponsible for making the suggestion.
"The level of just absolute irresponsibility now that we are seeing in the Democratic side among someone who clearly is one of the intellectual leaders now in the Democratic Party is really stunning," she added.
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