Beto O’Rourke says he would ‘absolutely’ tear down Trump’s wall, along with 600 miles of existing barriers at the US-Mexico border
Beto O’Rourke denounced President Trump’s proposed border wall in an interview Thursday after Congress passed a spending bill allocating $1.4B for it
The former congressman from El Paso said: ‘Absolutely, I’d take the wall down’
He asserted that the 600 miles of barriers currently at the border haven’t made America safer, but have led to the deaths of 4,000 migrants
‘We have walled off their opportunity to legally petition for asylum’ O’Rourke said
By MEGAN SHEETS
DAILYMAIL.COM
15 February 2019
Beto O’Rourke said that he would take down existing walls and fences along the US-Mexico border if given the opportunity.
The former congressman from El Paso made the declaration in an MSNBC interview Thursday after the House and Senate passed a spending bill allocating $1.4billion for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall.
The White House said Thursday that Trump intends to sign the spending measure but will declare a national emergency ‘to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border’.
After the bill was passed by both chambers, Texas Rep Dan Crenshaw asked O’Rourke on Twitter: ‘If you could snap your fingers and make El Paso’s border wall disappear, would you?’
O’Rourke responded: ‘Absolutely, I’d take the wall down.’
O’Rourke went on to explain that barriers along the border have not improved American security, saying: ‘Here’s what we know: after the Secure Fence Act, we have built 600 miles of wall and fencing on a 2,000 mile border. What that has done is not in any demonstrable way made us safer.’
‘It’s cost us tens of billions of dollars to build and maintain. And it’s pushed migrants and asylum seekers and refugees to the most inhospitable, the most hostile stretches of the US-Mexico border, ensuring their suffering and death.
‘More than 4,000 human beings, little kids, women and children, have died. They’re not in cages, they’re not locked up, they’re not separated — they’re dead, over the last 10 years.
‘We have walled off their opportunity to legally petition for asylum, to cross in urban centers like El Paso, to be with family, to work jobs, to do what any human being should have a right to be able to do, what we would do if faced with the same circumstances they were.’
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