Duval delegation members ‘appalled’ by Donna Deegan concentration camp comments

Blowback from Republicans continues for Jacksonville Democratic Mayor Donna Deegan, who made news in London for saying Donald Trump wanted “concentration camps” for undocumented migrants should he win the presidency again.

Democrats thus far have remained silent or supportive, dismissing objections as “fake outrage.”

In a statement released Thursday morning, Sen. Clay Yarborough and Reps. Jessica Baker, Dean Black, Wyman Duggan and Kiyan Michael are condemning Deegan for her opinion expressed this week on Times Radio in London, where she is on an extended trade mission as the hometown Jacksonville Jaguars play their customary games overseas. They want her to “immediately retract her statement and apologize to the Jewish community.”

“We are appalled by the statements made by Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan while traveling on a trade mission in London, where she irresponsibly likened President Donald Trump’s immigration policy to a ‘concentration camp.’ These remarks are not only offensive but particularly harmful to Jacksonville’s Jewish community and Holocaust survivors, who understand the horrors of antisemitism firsthand,” the legislators argue, before bringing up the unfortunate timing of the utterance.

“During this seven-day Jewish holiday of Sukkot, when families should be celebrating the fall harvest and Exodus from Egypt, Deegan has diminished its joy by comparing their years of captivity and death in Germany with Trump’s desire to reestablish a safe America. At a time when she was supposed to be representing the interests of Jacksonville abroad — at taxpayer expense, no less — Mayor Deegan instead chose to make inflammatory statements that tarnish Jacksonville’s image on the international stage.”

The legislators allege that rather than “elevating Jacksonville,” the Mayor “has embarrassed our city, showing a lack of judgment that fails to reflect the integrity and leadership our community deserves.”

Deegan’s comments surprised many who didn’t expect the Mayor to wade into presidential politics during an interview on foreign soil this week.

She said Trump would put “people in what would really amount to a concentration camp-type situation to round them out of the country,” which “doesn’t seem to (her) to be a very American thing to do.”

When the host accused her of using loaded language, Deegan didn’t back down.

“What would we call them? If you’re rounding people up and putting them in camps?” Deegan responded. “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 it seems rather inhumane to me.”

She went on to double down on the Trump denunciation, saying “human rights abuses” would be “inevitable.”

“When you flat out call a group of human beings animals and say they are poisoning the blood of our country, then promise to round them up in detention camps, what would lead anyone to believe that they would be treated humanely?”