Speaking at a downtown rally near the border with Mexico, O’Rourke said that his hometown El Paso, its embrace of immigration and its rich ties with Mexico, represented the best of the American experience.
Quoting King, he said El Paso and its Mexican neighbor of Ciudad Juárez were “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
His words and the setting on the street that connects El Paso with Ciudad Juárez, symbolized what his campaign said would be one of O’Rourke’s themes — a “unifying vision for bridging divides” to unite Americans from all walks of life.
But the speech by O’Rourke, a former three-term member of Congress, comes at a time of extraordinary discord over immigration, with a surge of migrants trying to enter the United States and President Donald Trump threatening to seal off the border in the coming week. El Paso has been a flashpoint for much of that unrest, with hundreds of migrants now being held in a makeshift encampment near where he spoke.
In El Paso, and later Saturday in rallies in Houston and outside the state’s Capitol in Austin, O’Rourke planned to stress climate change, criminal justice reform, health care, the economy and immigration, all topics that have emerged as major issues in the effort by Democrats to unseat Trump in 2020.
The campaign also said it was livestreaming the event to 1,000 volunteer-organized watch parties across the country.
The rally area was partly hemmed in by a construction site. As the crowd built, several supporters of O’Rourke said they were intimidated by a gantlet of pro-Trump protesters blocking their way.
“They were just very confrontational and yelling scary stuff at us,” said Thelma Ramos, 38, of El Paso. Ramos said her 13-year-old daughter, Maya, was in tears as they walked past the Trump supporters, who were yelling, “Beto’s lying to you,” and “Build the wall.” Others carried signs saying that O’Rourke supported abortion both “before and after” birth.