TEXAS - In an interview with reporters after a visit to an immigrant detention center, a visibly shaken Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted that Border Patrol agents had turned her into a newt.

"How do you know Border Patrol is evil?" a journalist asked.

"Why, they turned me into a newt!" she cried. "I walked into that concentration camp and right away I knew I wasn't safe, because they pulled out their spellbooks and pointy witches' hats and started muttering ancient incantations. The next thing you know, I was a small, semiaquatic, salamander-like creature." She also claimed they all had long, warty noses and hats, though she later admitted she dressed them up like that.

The obvious question came to mind.

"Uh... a newt?" one bewildered reporter asked.

During the few awkward moments of silence that followed, you could "almost" hear the gears in Ocasio-Cortez's head slowly begin to turn, creaking from disuse. She suddenly realized the hole in her story, that she was no longer a newt.

Thinking fast, she replied, "I got better."