On X, AOC has come under fire for giving listeners potentially illegal advice, defying Tom Homan, President Trump’s “Border Czar” and one of the most important people working to solve the border crisis. For context, in a February 28, 2025, interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, AOC ripped into the Republican Party, described Democrats as moving through the stages of grief after President Trump’s victory, and defended her highly controversial “know-your-rights” forum, in which she gave legally dubious advice to illegal aliens.
In the NPR interview, host Steve Inskeep asked AOC to describe the current state of the Democratic Party, asking if Rep. Ocasio-Cortez believed that the left was “on the defensive.” AOC gave a predictably obtuse response, saying, “I think we’ve moved through shock. I think we’ve moved through dismay. I think we’ve moved through the five stages of grief.”
Continuing, AOC insisted that the Republican Party is currently making “certain large errors,” going on to criticize President Trump’s policies, saying, “They also directly appeal to very specific pockets of people who tend to be working class, and that creates a permission structure, right? You give the big fish the farm and throw us a crumb. Inskeep asked the representative about the reasoning behind her recent immigration-focused online forum in an effort to get AOC back on track. This was the core of a debate between Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Tom Homan. AOC responded by saying, “I was informing all of my constituents of their constitutional protections and, in particular, their Constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure in the United States.” As a means of defending herself, AOC offered the following statement: Playing the Devil’s advocate, Inskeep explained President Trump’s Border Czar’s criticism of AOC’s forum, clarifying to AOC, “Homan was upset, I suppose, because he felt that you were giving advice to people who were here illegally. Were you?” “I was giving advice to all of my constituents, yeah,” AOC responded. AOC’s brazen admission of giving out potentially illegal advice online drew ire from X user Matt Van Swol, who clarified that AOC’s statements were in violation of a Constitutional statute: “Harboring or Encouraging Illegal Presence, 8 U.S.C. § 1324.” “If AOC’s advice is sufficiently specific, it is a crime under this statute,” he wrote.