Beto O’Rourke is holding a rally in El Paso, Texas, on Monday at the same time President Trump holds a “Make America Great Again” campaign stop in the border city.
Both events will start at 9 p.m. EST.
Earlier in the day, O’Rourke planned to join his successor in Congress, Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, for a conference to “denounce” Trump’s campaign rally and “his fixation on a racist and useless border wall.”
“Monday we will welcome the president to one of the safest cities in the United States,” O’Rourke wrote in a blog post about the event. “Safe not because of walls, and not in spite of the fact that we are a city of immigrants. Safe because we are a city of immigrants and because we treat each other with dignity and respect.”
Last year O’Rourke lost his bid to unseat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Trump ally. He’s now considering a 2020 presidential bid.
El Paso has found itself at the center of the immigration debate in America following Trump’s reference to the city in last week’s State of the Union address.
Although Trump and his team have highlighted the border city as being a wall success story in which the violent crime rate decreased upon the barrier’s completion, that claim has been disputed by fact-checkers. An El Paso Times review found the rate of crime in the city did not substantially drop after the wall was constructed a decade ago.
At his “Make America Great Again” rally, Trump will continue to push for $5.7 billion in border wall funding to be included in a long-term spending deal as the threat of yet another partial government shutdown looms as the deadline is the end of the week and negotiations in Congress broke down over the weekend.
