Nic Rowan, Washington Free Beacon, February 7, 2019

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) {snip} told the crowd of activists, joined in their goal of defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about the story of how her family risked their lives to flee Somalia into Kenya, before eventually coming to the United States. She said that because of her experience, she will “cry” every time she sees a picture of a little girl “standing in the desert waiting to get processed in the country.”

“The difference between what is happening to some of those little girls and me is that I didn’t have a cage waiting for me,” Omar said. “I had an open-armed people with moral clarity, awaiting us and saying ‘you’ve been through a lot, here’s your new home, you’re our new neighbor, you need water and you need food.'”

Omar said refugees in the United States do not receive the same “open-armed” treatment.

“They are separated and processed. They are detained and tortured. And we can’t continue to allow that to happen. At least not under our watch,” she said.

{snip}

Fellow freshmen Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) accompanied Omar at the rally.