Fact Check by CNN & Politifact
‘AOC was photographed, by photojournalists, as she participated in a 2018 protest on a road outside a tent city shelter in Texas that was used to detain migrant children, including some the Trump administration had separated from their parents. The protesters were not permitted to walk right up to the tents at the Tornillo facility. Ocasio-Cortez made the trip to Texas days before she became a national name by defeating a high-ranking incumbent congressman in a Democratic primary in New York. The photos of Ocasio-Cortez looking emotional during the protest did not go viral until a year later, when Texas photojournalist Ivan Pierre Aguirre tweeted some of his shots from his work that day. "To this day I have never spoken to AOC. I didn't talk to her that day or before the photos. I just saw a moment and started to make photos as I am wired to do," Aguirre said in an email to CNN. Aguirre also emphasized that they were not standing beside a "parking lot." Another photojournalist said the same to PolitiFact in 2019.’
Read CNN’s fact check in full here.
Read Politifact’s fact check in full here.