Democrat Rep. Beto O’Rourke argued Friday the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico is causing the death of more migrants who are trying to cross illegally into the U.S.
O’Rourke, D-Texas, told a town hall meeting that the barrier near his home city of El Paso is forcing migrants to find other ways in, which is forcing them to take more treacherous routes across the desert in Mexico.
“The number of people dying at the U.S.-Mexico border in some years has grown, and in some years has grown because it’s connected to that wall that we have already built that pushes people who are at their most desperate and vulnerable to ever-more inhospitable stretches of the Chihuahua Desert,” he said.
O’Rourke cited statistics that said 263 died trying to cross the border from Mexico in 1998, a number that grew to 365 by 2010, after much of the barrier near El Paso was put in place.
“The wall in this area was built in 2006, 2007, and 2008,” he said. “So even though total crossing attempts had decreased, the number of deaths went up.”
O’Rourke spoke in the same week that the Department of Homeland Security reported that a 7-year-old migrant girl died last week. Officials said she showed up dehydrated and with a temperature of 105.7 degrees and died soon after being choppered to a hospital.
That event has already prompted Democrats to call for an investigation into the girl’s death.
O’Rourke and other Democrats have opposed President Trump’s push to add another $5 billion in funding to expand the border wall. He told his constituents that he would vote against any language adding money to the wall, which he called an “expression of our smallness.”
O’Rourke in November narrowly lost his bid to win Sen. Ted Cruz’s Senate seat, but he has been talked about as a possible presidential candidate in 2020.
