Fox News contributor Rachel Campos-Duffy on Wednesday night said “you have to wonder” if Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria Ocasio-CortezOn The Money: Anxious Democrats push for vote on COVID-19 aid | Pelosi, Mnuchin ready to restart talks | Weekly jobless claims increase | Senate treads close to shutdown deadline McCarthy says there will be a peaceful transition if Biden wins Anxious Democrats amp up pressure for vote on COVID-19 aid MORE (D-N.Y.) is working for terrorists, criminal cartels and sex traffickers.

Campos-Duffy was reacting to an interview in which the freshman lawmaker suggested she was open to dissolving the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“We’re looking at someone who basically wants to give you the wish list for terrorists, the wish lists for criminal cartels and sex traffickers,” Campos-Duffy said. “You have to wonder, is she working for them or the American people?”

ADVERTISEMENT

Ocasio-Cortez told "The New Yorker Radio Hour" that Immigration and Customs Enforcement "and, frankly, the entire Department of Homeland Security" are "very large threats to American civil liberties."

When asked if she would work to remove DHS, which was established after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the New York Democrat said, “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."

Campos-Duffy went on to say that migrants attempting to enter the United States are not just fleeing violence and poverty in Late American countries.

“We have seen people from terrorist countries come across, from hostile countries come across the border from Africa, from the Middle East,” she added.

Members of the Trump administration, including former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sarah Elizabeth SandersSarah Sanders on Trump's reported war dead criticism: 'Those comments didn't happen' Sarah Sanders memoir reportedly says Trump joked she should hook up with Kim Jong Un McEnany stamps her brand on White House press operation MORE Sanders, said earlier this year that Customs and Border Protection stopped nearly 4,000 “known or suspected terrorists” at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018.

The State Department, however, issued a report last year finding “no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups have established bases in Mexico, worked with Mexican drug cartels or sent operatives via Mexico into the United States.”

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams, a columnist for The Hill who appeared during the panel discussion with Campos-Duffy, noted that Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out frequently about the poor conditions being reported on from migrant detention centers along the border.

“Let me just also point out she recently had to deal with Customs and Border Patrol postings on Facebook the were deeply offensive, disrespectful, not only of her as a member of Congress but they derided her,” Williams said.

He was referring to two private Facebook groups linked to Customs and Border Protection that included derogatory posts mocking her, the separation of migrant families, Asians and African Americans.

“Those postings are nothing that anybody would defend, they were completely disgusting,” Fox News host Martha McCallum said. “However, she went down there, border agents said, and yelled in their faces.”

The Hill has reached out to Ocasio-Cortez’s office for comment.