By Newt Gingrich

The Cruel Dishonesty of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

It took Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s visit to the border – and her dishonest comments afterwards – to help me understand how profoundly vicious, cruel, and dishonest she is.

When you look at the larger picture, it is clear that Ocasio-Cortez is eager and determined to undermine and destroy America as we have known it. When your goals are that radical, lying is simply part of the game. When you despise American values and find the American people “deplorable” and contemptible, lying is perfectly natural.

The tragedy of Ocasio-Cortez’s type of vicious, deliberately dishonest politics is it sets the stage for innocent people to die. The poignant, heart-wrenching picture of the father and his daughter who died trying to get into the United States illegally should serve as a moral condemnation of every Democrat trying to use the border as a political weapon against Trump.

Let me be clear: The American border is a disaster. The American immigration system is profoundly broken.

Despite these tremendous problems, Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow left-wing activists continue to send signals to desperate and ambitious people around the world that they can (and should) enter the United States illegally. These signals are simply increasing the pressure on the border and overwhelming the Americans who are working to protect and control our national boundaries. We have immigration laws to protect Americans from people who may be criminals, carrying infectious disease, or are committed to changing America rather than becoming American.

It is important to remember that during the late 19th century, when we had enormous immigration, it was still tightly controlled. Immigrants sailed past the Statue of Liberty to Ellis Island and were processed in an orderly way. If they had infectious diseases, criminal records, were anarchists – or even showed signs of low morals – they were denied entry and sent back to their home countries.

The modern left-wing idea of opening the borders as wide as possible would have been thoroughly rejected in any previous era.

The people who are coming to our borders determined to begin their lives in America by breaking the law are being encouraged by Ocasio-Cortez and her hard-left allies.

The Democrats have refused to control the border. They have refused to amend the amnesty provision in our immigration law (which is the loophole used by most sophisticated people seeking illegal entry). They have also refused to provide legislative solutions for various left-wing judicial decisions that have crippled our enforcement capabilities. So, the word is out that it is a good time to sneak into the United States.

Now the Democrats are going a step further and talking about providing free health care for people who come here illegally. When word spreads that sick people can sneak into America and get free medical treatment from American doctors and nurses, the flood of sick immigrants will double and triple from the current numbers.

Meanwhile, the current team of hardworking, patriotic government officials working to enforce and administer our laws are being overwhelmed by the size of the invasion. Instead of helping these officials with their difficult jobs, the Democrats attack them, try to shame them, lie about them, and hold them up to ridicule.

This is not a cost-free political game.

The Ocasio-Cortez wing is blocking the help, undermining the existing work force, maximizing the number of new people coming into the United States illegally, and then blaming the hard-working immigration and border agents for trying to do their jobs.

We owe it to the father and daughter who died in the Rio Grande to make clear who has moral responsibility for the system which lured them into the river and left them to die.

That system is the one upheld by the Democratic Party’s political ideology in the House and Senate – and now in the presidential nominating process.

Every day that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Ocasio-Cortez radicals block reforming the immigration system, the House Republicans should take special orders and show the pictures of those who died the day before in a system the Democrats helped ruin – and refuse to reform.

Furthermore, Ocasio-Cortez should be called out for the viciousness, destructiveness, and dishonesty of her words and actions. It is time for decent people to stand up to her and ask, “have you no shame?”