Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has slammed Liz Cheney in an escalation of tension between the two congresswomen over calling migrant detention camps at the US-Mexico border “concentration camps”.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who had first described the detention facilities as concentration camps during an Instagram Live appearance last week, claimed that Ms Cheney had actually invoked the Holocaust.

“Reminder: the member who directly + explicitly compared concentration camps on our border to the Holocaust was *Liz Cheney*. The horrors of the Holocaust went beyond the use of concentration camps, yet camps were part of the process,’ Ms Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “They have also been used before and after.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez said last week during her Instagram Live that the US was running the “concentration camps” on the US-Mexico border, and suggested that anyone who is not bothered by that idea is not particularly concerned with humanity.

“The US is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said last week. “If that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again means something.”