Many experts agree with term "concentration camp" for ICE operations

Newsweek - Many experts were quick to point out that, by definition, the ICE detention facilities are concentration camps. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a concentration camp as, "a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard."

Many argue that this definition matches the detention centers currently set up on the southern border.

"Why are they called concentration camps? Well, to state the obvious, it's because large numbers of people are 'concentrated' in camps. A better question is, why don't we just call them prisons? We don't say 'prisons' because prisons are a part of the formal legal system," Lester Andrist, a sociologist who has studied indefinite detention, tweeted.

Andrist argues that the U.S. has a long history of establishing such facilities, including the Japanese-American internment camps that existed during World War II and, mostly recently, Guantanamo Bay.

Federico Finchelstein, a historian at the New York-based New School, agreed that the progressive congresswoman is right to call the ICE facilities concentration camps.

"As [a] historian of fascism & [the] Holocaust, I would also call these centers concentration camps," Finchelstein tweeted. "As a Jewish person who lost family in [the] Holocaust, I regret that some Republicans use memory of the Holocaust to defend racist policies of Trumpism."