CNN political commentator Angela Rye declared Tuesday that the U.S. will be soon be running "death camps" along the U.S. southern border unless "our consciousnesses are not quickly pierced."

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Rye backed Ocasio-Cortez's comments, pointing to an encyclopedia definition of concentration camps and saying: "Whether we call them concentration camps or we call them detention, they are problematic."

Cortes argued that the migrant detention facilities were necessary due to the "overwhelming" number of migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.



"What we have now are foreign citizens who are trespassing into the United States overwhelming for economic reasons, and we know that to be true historically and presently because the director of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] just told us 90 percent are not showing up for their asylum hearings, they’re not legitimate refugees, they’re economic migrants who have decided on their own when and how they can become American citizens and that’s not the right away," said Cortes, who also serves as a CNN contributor.

Rye responded by warning that what she described as concentration camps could soon become "death camps." Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday drew a distinction between the two, tweeting, “And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps. Concentration camps are considered by experts as ‘the mass detention of civilians without trial.’ And that’s exactly what this administration is doing."

In responding to Cortes, Rye pointed to "white fear" and racism in the U.S. as a factor in the situation at the border, which she described as an "inhumane crisis."



"I don’t know when we decided that a humanitarian crisis could be defined whether or not someone is carrying a green card or whether or not someone has their papers," Rye said Tuesday night.

"Before we are American, we are human beings, and it is not OK," she continued. "It is a damn shame what is happening at this border, and the fact that you’re going to justify it by economics, let me just tell you, there are a whole lot of people making a whole lot of money by having these people in detention centers."



"You are on the wrong side of history. In 1933 there were concentration camps. In 1941, they were death camps and that is where we are going if our consciousnesses are not quickly pierced, it is a problem," she added, as Cortes rolled his eyes in disagreement.

"Do not laugh it off. Do not laugh it off," Rye responded.

“As an American, I’m deeply concerned about the treatment of children at our borders,” Gottheimer said in a text. “But, make no mistake, the comparison is cruel and disrespectful to the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust, including members of my own family. Concentration camps were places where Jews and others were enslaved, tortured, and then sent to gas chambers to be murdered.”