O’Rourke: Migrant deaths preventable if US stopped building walls, militarizing border
El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke said Friday the death of migrants can be avoided if the US increased staffing at ports of entry and stopped militarizing the border.
“We can stop building walls and stop militarizing the border so that we stop people from trying to enter in isolated places like Antelope Wells,” said O’Rourke at the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry.
A 7-year-old Guatemalan girl found with her father and dozens of other migrants along a remote stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border suffered seizures and spiked a high fever in immigration custody and later died, federal officials said Friday. The girl was found with the group in the Southern New Mexico desert near Lordsburg. She died at an El Paso hospital.
O’Rourke spoke with the media after visiting asylum seekers at the Casa de Migrante, a shelter in Juarez that helps migrants waiting to seek asylum in the U.S.
The congressman said he spoke with a mother from Guatemala who is fleeing gang threats. The woman told O’Rourke threatening phone calls were becoming more frequent and more demanding and she believed it was a matter of time before she or her daughter were harmed by gang members.
O’Rourke said most of the migrants he spoke with were fleeing violence in Cuba and Central America. He said they had numbers written with permanent markers on their wrist, listing their place in line to meet with immigration officials at the ports of entry.
The congressman said the US should increase staffing capacity at ports of entry so more asylum cases are processed daily. O’Rourke also said he and other lawmakers have discussed a “Marshall Plan” for Central America in order to invest in those countries to improve their economies so their citizens do not flee north.
“We can either try to address these issues here at the border by turning asylum seekers away or building a wall, or we can try to address these problems in countries of origin. Some of my colleagues have suggested a Marshall Plan for Central America. I think it makes sense to think about investing in those countries,” O’Rourke said.
Earlier this week, the CBP commissioner told members of Congress a wall is necessary – and could help migrants – because it would deter them from crossing dangerous parts of the border. “We must invest in border security, including a modern border wall system at our ports of entry, additional agents and officers and air and marine support,” said Kevin McAleenan, “All of these steps will make a difference, but we must also confront and address the vulnerabilities in our legal framework for lasting change at the border.”
