As the representative of a large portion of the Bronx, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s relationship to the New York City borough plays a central role in her political identity, and she has repeatedly defended her self-proclaimed Bronx roots against political opponents who call her ties into question.
Most recently, during a heated exchange between Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. President Donald Trump on X, a political opponent took issue with her referring to herself as a “Bronx girl” and posted alleged images of her in his Yorktown High School yearbook, a school in the suburbs approximately 40 minutes’ drive from the Bronx.
Stories and posts (archived) across multiple social media platforms then circulated the claim that Ocasio-Cortez was not from the Bronx in the days that followed. One X post (archived) from June 29, 2025, received more than 7.6 million views, as of this writing.
In reality, Ocasio-Cortez and her family have publicly shared that the family moved north of the Bronx when she was around five years old.
The claims pertaining to Ocasio-Cortez’s ties to the Bronx from June 2025 began when she called for Trump’s impeachment (archived) on X on June 21, citing his bombing Iran without Congressional approval. Trump responded on Truth Social (archived), calling her “one of the ‘dumbest’ people in Congress,” to which Ocasio-Cortez responded: “I’m a Bronx girl. You should know that we can eat Queens boys for breakfast.”
On June 24, 2025, Republican Assemblyman Matt Slater chimed in, posting images of who he claimed to be Ocasio-Cortez in his 2004 yearbook from Yorktown High School. “If you’re a BX girl then why are you in my Yorktown yearbook? Give it up already,” Slater wrote on X (archived) on June 24, 2025.
(X user @slater4ny)
As of this writing, we have been unable to verify the authenticity of the yearbook images (although we did find someone named Matt Slater in a 2002 yearbook from the school on Classmates.com).
Ocasio-Cortez herself has confirmed that her family moved to Yorktown Heights when she was young, although an archived version of an official campaign biography from 2018 states that she “commuted” between school and her family in the Bronx.
Her press secretary, Karla Santillan, told Snopes Ocasio-Cortez lived in the Bronx when she ran for Congress and pointed to the current biography on her official website which begins as follows, as of July 2025 [bold formatting added for emphasis]:
Born in the Parkchester neighborhood of The Bronx, Alexandria’s parents moved the family 30 minutes north to Yorktown in search of a stronger public school for her and her brother. Alexandria’s mother was born and raised in Puerto Rico and worked throughout her childhood as a domestic worker. Alexandria’s father was a second-generation Bronxite, who ran a small business in The Bronx. Throughout her childhood, Representative Ocasio-Cortez traveled regularly to The Bronx to spend time with her extended family. From an early age, the stark contrast in educational opportunities available to her and her cousins, based on their respective zip codes, made an impression on her.
The older (archived on June 27, 2018) version of her biography from the campaign site read:
Alexandria was born in the Bronx to two working-class parents. Her father was a small business owner from the South Bronx. Her mother was born in Puerto Rico, growing up around a large family near Arecibo. She grew up in a working-class household where her mother cleaned homes and everyone pitched in on the family business.
From an early age, Alexandria grew up with a deep understanding of income inequality. The state of Bronx public schools in the late 80s and early 90s sent her parents on a search for a solution. She ended up attending public school 40 minutes north in Yorktown, and much of her life was defined by the 40 minute commute between school and her family in the Bronx. It was clear to her, even then, that the zip code a child was born in determined much of their destiny. The 40 minute drive represented a vastly different quality of available schooling, economic opportunity, and health outcomes.
This also is not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has responded to comments regarding the location of her upbringing. In July 2018, commentator John Cardillo posted an image (archived) of what he claimed was her childhood home, writing: “This is the Yorktown Heights (very nice area) home [Ocasio-Cortez] grew up in before going off to Ivy League Brown University. A far cry from the Bronx hood upbringing she’s selling.”
Her response (archived) from July 1, 2018, implied that the house depicted was her family’s. “Hey John, 1. I didn’t go to Brown or the Ivy League. I went to BU. Try Google,” she wrote. “2. It is nice. Growing up, it was a good town for working people. My mom scrubbed toilets so I could live here & I grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.”
Just days earlier, a New York Times story (archived) from June 27, 2018, included an interview with Ocasio-Cortez’s mother, who shared that while her daughter was born in the Bronx, around the time she turned five, the family moved to Yorktown Heights. The story read:
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s mother was born in Puerto Rico. Her late father, Sergio Ocasio, an architect, was born in the Bronx. The family lived in Parkchester, a planned community of mid-rise buildingsin the same apartment where Ms. Ocasio-Cortez now lives, until Alexandria was about 5, when they moved an hour north to a modest two-bedroom house on a quiet street in Yorktown Heights, a suburb in Westchester County, in search of better schools.
That same New York Times article reported that after Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Boston University in 2011, she moved back to the Bronx. Other stories confirmed her mother worked as a house cleaner.
At least one article from 2018 repeated the claim made in her campaign biography at that time that she commuted from the Bronx to Yorktown High School for school, but we’ve been unable to substantiate this. The statement is no longer present in Ocasio-Cortez’s biography.
In sum, Ocasio-Cortez and her family have publicly confirmed that they moved from the Bronx to Yorktown Heights when she was around five years old. According to her official biography, she “traveled regularly to the Bronx to spend time with extended family.” According to The New York Times, she returned to the Bronx after graduating college.
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