After a week of making her comments claiming former presidents Trump’s border policies were likened to those that were in Nazi concentration camps, Jacksonville Democratic Mayor Donna Deegan is still getting criticism for her comments.
It all began when the mayor went over to London and was interviewed by Times Radio, saying on four different occasions that Trump’s mass deportation program, if implemented, would amount to a “concentration camp type situation.”
“Yes, we absolutely must fix the broken immigration system, let’s pass a tough border law, but to put people in what would really amount to a concentration camp type situation, to round them out of the country, doesn’t seem to me to be a very American thing to do,” said Deegan.
The host interviewing the mayor said, “The use of the term concentration camp is loaded. You consider that’s completely justified?”
Deegan’s response was, “What would we call them? If you’re rounding people up and putting them in camps, what? What would we call those? It’s a concentration of people that are in a camp. I’m not suggesting anything beyond that, but I just think, I think it seems rather inhumane to me,” said the mayor.
After Deegan was criticized by some city council members and the local sheriff, the mayor released a statement saying, “Anyone who knows me, has listened to me speak, or watched my actions, knows I would never diminish the unique awfulness and horror that was the Holocaust. However, I have no regret about calling out the inhumanity of treating immigrants, or any person, as less than human,” she said.
Those comments weren’t enough for some officials. This past Wednesday on WBOB Talk Radio, Jacksonville Republican councilman Rory Diamond slammed the mayor for her “weak response”
“She (Deegan) didn’t even apologize for her comments. She invokes the memory of the Holocaust and she’s trying to do scare people at home to not vote for Donald Trump. She campaigned on bringing people together, and obviously, it hasn’t happened,” said Diamond.
One who supported Deegan’s comments was Democratic councilperson Matt Carlucci. He said Trump was to blame for the cages that separated families at the border but failed to mention the policy was started under the Obama Administration and continued through the Biden Administration.
Recent polling by Ipsos and Fox News shows over 66% of voters support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
