Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should shut up and legislate

On Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made headlines after she visited a Customs and Border Patrol detention facility and claimed migrants were mistreated and Border Patrol agents were "physically" and "sexually" threatening toward her and other members of Congress. Or was it AOC who screamed at Border Patrol agents in a threatening manner? Witnesses dispute the congresswoman's story, but one thing is abundantly clear: There is a crisis at the southern border, and Ocasio-Cortez's would rather make outrageous claims on Twitter than solve the problem.

The proof is what she's doing. Among the claims AOC makes without evidence are facilities in disrepair and without running water, women told to drink out of toilet bowels, a lack of toiletries for hygiene, and overcrowding in tiny cells. Many of these claims have been disputed, yet the congresswoman is racking up tens of thousands of retweets with these shocking accusations:

What she's not doing is taking action in Congress to solve the problems that do exist. Superficially, the lack of supplies and known overcrowding problems at migrant detention facilities could be alleviated with additional funding from Congress. But when the House of Representatives took up a $4.5 billion emergency border funding bill, Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats opposed the legislation while accusing the Trump administration of treating migrants inhumanely. Given the chance to do something productive, Ocasio-Cortez essentially said no, she'd rather tweet.

More fundamentally, the border crisis is not a funding problem but a policy problem. As Conservative Review's Daniel Horowitz has written, the causes of the crisis are rogue federal courts overreaching and preventing the Trump administration from enforcing immigration law and almost the entire political class' refusal to acknowledge border security as a national defense issue and to use the U.S. military on transnational cartels. If AOC and other Democrats were serious about the border crisis and genuinely concerned about the welfare of migrants and American citizens, they would speak to these issues. They do not. Instead, Ocasio-Cortez retweets vague slogans like "close the camps" without explaining what happens when the government does that. Should the apprehended migrants just be released into the U.S. while their asylum claims are processed? What is the government supposed to do when migrants don't show up in court? Is it good policy to release human trafficking victims and drug mules into the United States to be further abused by cartels? The Democrats don't have answers to these questions.

If you're looking for congressional leadership on this issue, look to Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. Roy doesn't just angrily tweet; he has introduced the Charitable Donations Freedom Act to enable federal facilities to accept donations of soap, diapers, and other needed supplies for detained migrants. His bill would let ordinary Americans step up to help migrants in custody.

“You know it’s the American way. We saw in the wake of Harvey and in this case, there are migrants both legitimately and illegitimately seeking to come to the United States, but when we’ve got human beings in custody we want to make sure they’ve got everything that they need, and frankly our system is overwhelmed,” Roy told Texas Public Radio.

Roy is a tireless advocate for securing the border, directly confronting inaction by both political parties on the root causes of the border crisis and pushing the Trump administration to end the abuse by the courts and reclaim the lawful power to stop illegal immigration.

Bottom line: Roy's legislative action is more compassionate than Ocasio-Cortez's outrage-mongering.

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