Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) said President Donald Trump’s immigration policies were “the greatest cruelty and inhumanity in this country’s history.”
O’Rourke said, “The critical thing is to make sure that we overturn this president’s executive action. So a Muslim ban, when has a country ever banned all people of one religion as though they’re somehow defective or violent? That cannot be us. Or putting kids in cages or deporting their moms from the countries from which they fled or keeping them separated today with no hope or prospect of being reunited. Those things we must overturn on day one of our administration. But we will have to work with Congress to rewrite this country’s immigration laws in our own image. The nine million legal permanent residents, let’s make sure they become citizens as soon as possible, waive their citizen fees, mail them already filled out application forms. Eleven million undocumented, start with the more than one million DREAMers, free them from fear of deportation by also making them U.S. citizens in this, their true home country. Follow our asylum laws and invest in solutions in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, reduce violence there, so no family has to make that journey to our border.”
He added, “My empathy and my sympathy is with the families who have had to flee the deadliest countries on the face of the planet, who are met with the greatest cruelty and inhumanity in this country’s history. We have the capacity to take care of those families.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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