Possible 2020 contender Beto O’Rourke said Thursday night that he would take down the border wall in El Paso, Texas.
“Yes, absolutely,” the Texas Democrat said when asked by MSNBC host Chris Hayes if he would remove the wall if he could. He added that he thinks the city could pass a referendum to tear it down.
He said that the wall has not made El Paso safer and it only pushes migrants away from cities and ports of entry to more dangerous areas of the border.
Hayes asked the question because it had been posed earlier in the week by Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas.
.@BetoORourke should answer a simple question tonight with respect to the border debate:
If you could snap your fingers and make El Paso’s border wall disappear, would you?
Because this DHS graph shows that when the wall was built, illegal crossings dropped significantly. pic.twitter.com/JgquXfw2Ee
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) February 11, 2019
O’Rourke and President Trump held dueling rallies in El Paso earlier this week, with the former arguing a wall endangers lives more than protects them.
O’Rourke, a former congressman and candidate for U.S. Senate, said ideally the U.S. would allow in asylum seekers and give “Dreamers” citizenship and provide a path for their parents to become citizens as well.
O’Rourke admitted that there are “legitimate concerns” about border security, but said that such issues could be solved by improving infrastructure at ports of entry.
“To end the scourge of illegal drug trafficking and the trafficking in human beings, let’s invest in the infrastructure, the technology, and the personnel at the ports of entry to improve our quality of life and make this a safer country,” he said Monday.
