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, adding that the challenges facing the country presented “a moment of truth.”
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 under a bridge near where O’Rourke was speaking.
The encampment, where immigration officials are detaining people with little hot food, was set up last week when El Paso’s main border processing center reached overflow capacity following the largest influx of migrants in years.
Acknowledging the plight of the migrants, O’Rourke said, “Let us remember that every single one of us, including those who are just three or four blocks from here detained under the international bridge — behind chain-link fence and barbed wire — they are our fellow human beings and deserve to be treated like our fellow human beings.”
O’Rourke, who also had rallies scheduled for Houston and outside the state’s Capitol in Austin, stressed not only immigration but also health care, education, climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy and racial inequality, all topics that have emerged as major issues in the effort by Democrats to unseat Trump in 2020.
“This is our moment of truth and we cannot be found wanting,” he told the enthusiastic crowd.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.