An open letter to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez,

Since your election you have subjected us to an unrelenting barrage of vitriol against our country accompanied by a series of nonsensical pronouncements on whatever topics happen to cross your mind — enough so that even Democrats are taken aback, and that’s saying something.

While many dismiss you as a lunatic, I’m watching with growing concern as your hyperbole escalates into gross offensiveness, such as your statement that “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.”

I was a young girl living in Nazi Germany when my father was abruptly taken from us and sent to a concentration camp for refusing to join the Nazi party, where he was brutalized, inexplicably dumped back on our doorstep, and then died from his injuries shortly thereafter.

For you to casually throw around the term “concentration camp” to score a cheap political point on your brief grandstanding tour of a border holding facility is beyond offensive to me.

Illegal aliens have been swamping the border in unprecedented numbers and turning themselves in to live in our holding facilities. It speaks to your ignorance to compare them to the victims of Nazi Germany who were forced into death camps. You owe America an apology.

And while you’re at it, you might consider doing your job in Congress, namely dealing with providing our hardworking Border Patrol with the funding to do an impossible job — the funding you twice voted against.

MARGARETE FALLAT

Sandpoint