Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said this week that President Donald Trump is going after illegal immigrants during the coronavirus crisis and making them afraid to go to the doctor if they have COVID-19 symptoms.

“He has been contributing to the health inequities by targeting communities like ours. He’s made people afraid to go to the doctor because they are concerned that ICE will pick them up in the E.R.,” Ocasio-Cortez told ABC’s “Nightline,” referring to Trump.

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AOC has said those who are eager to re-open the country are “selfish.” She also believes seeking health care often “becomes gambling” to poor Americans without insurance. “When you don’t have health insurance and you are scared to go to the doctor, your decisions around your own health become primarily financial decisions,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And it becomes gambling.”

The self-described socialist called for “system solutions to systemic inequalities” because “inequality” and “poverty” are “pre-existing conditions.”

“To me, an essential worker is any person in this country that is helping keep the lights on and helping us live day by day,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “The great irony of essential workers is that they have typically been underpaid, under-recognized and under-valued in our economy, and if there’s one thing that this crisis shows us it’s that our essential workers deserve so much more.”

AOC said she hopes the coronavirus crisis will make more Americans wake up to all sorts of inequalities in American society. “We all live in our own worlds and sometimes it’s hard to see experiences outside of our own, but I think one silver lining to this crisis is that people are now recognizing the inequities that have been here all along—people saying, ‘wow, I didn’t know it was this bad,’” she said.

This piece originally appeared in ThePoliticalInsider.com and is used by permission.

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