It is intellectually dishonest to attribute literal intent to some of his statements, but others made with the same bombastic style only obviously more ridiculous are hand-waved away as "it was the spirit of the thing he meant, not literally". And whether or not his followers care about Mexico paying for the wall, his various statements clearly indicated a literal intent on the topic. And while some on the left may mean "let's massively reorganize ICE and rethink its operational policies", it's clear that some also mean this literally.

You're right about Occasio-Cortez: she is shaping up to be about as bad as Trump in this respect. I'm not quite sure which of them is worse, but I know the prospect of her someday getting to the White House is a chilling prospect, even though my political leanings are in that direction. She appears to be about as dangerously ignorant (and perhaps callous) of facts of situations. The only mitigating factor for her is that perhaps experience will temper this, and maybe she is just uninformed but not unwilling to learn.