HOMESTEAD, Florida — Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) told demonstrators and the assembled media outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children that migrant children from Central America “had no choice but to come here” because climate change had ravaged their countries.
O’Rourke said that rising temperatures had created droughts, which made it more difficult for people to grow their own food. That, he said, forced them to undertake the arduous journey on foot to the U.S. border, and to cross illegally.
O’Rourke was the fourth presidential candidate to visit the protest outside the facility, where thousands of teenagers, most of whom arrived unaccompanied, are temporarily housed until they can be handed over to a sponsor in the U.S.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was the first the protests: he was followed on Wednesday by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and then several other candidates decided to visit as well, turning the protests into something of a presidential pilgrimate. O’Rourke was preceded an hour before by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
O’Rourke, who was greeted and briefed by local activists, turned his visit into a rally, spending roughly half an hour atop a ladder overlooking the fence around the facility.
Nicki Minaj to star in ‘Shark Tank’- style show for Trump administration
Video: Trump Can’t Hold Back After Reporter Asks If He Plans to Nuke a Militarily Defeated Iran: ‘Stupid’
Woke stunt goes horribly wrong as Michigan Dems open convention with brutal ‘land acknowledgment’
Watch: JD Vance Echoes Will Smith in Fiery Response to Abdul El-Sayed’s Comments About Wife
White House brings receipts after media claims noncriminal ICE arrests ‘soaring’: ‘False narratives’
Hasan Piker’s Claim He Doesn’t Hate America Clashes With That Time He Declared ‘I Hate America’
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll Resigns After Internal Disagreements
Ex-House Freedom Caucus chair says GOP isn’t ‘a conservative party anymore,’ but Democrats are ‘worse’
FLASHBACK: Mamdani torched for recycling 9/11 tributes after years of near-identical posts
AOC’s pivot for 2028 has begun. Will it work?
2 Grand Canyon flooding victims photographed on hiking trip in days before deaths
Teen arrested in girl’s murder one year after police said she accidentally shot herself while recording video
Trump Announces Plan to Help Ranchers Going Through Beef Market ‘Hell’
Top election schemes roiling key midterm races as both parties accuse rivals of trickery
Watch: Markwayne Mullin Goes Off on Reporter Who Tried to Downplay the Danger of Illegal Alien Truckers
Unlike other candidates, he was not content to peer over the fence, but delivered an impromptu speech.
“He who denies the stranger or the outcast, he also denies America,” O’Rourke said, citing Robert Kennedy.
“Instead of reuniting them [the teenagers] with their families, we are incarcerating them in tents in a for-profit facility with no oversight,” he added. He demanded that the Homestead facility, and every other like it, be shut down.
In Spanish, he declared: “We must reunite every boy and girl here with their family.”
He also urged the small crowd to wave to the teenagers inside the facility, barely visible in the distance, wearing bright orange caps.
Nicki Minaj to star in ‘Shark Tank’- style show for Trump administration
Video: Trump Can’t Hold Back After Reporter Asks If He Plans to Nuke a Militarily Defeated Iran: ‘Stupid’
Woke stunt goes horribly wrong as Michigan Dems open convention with brutal ‘land acknowledgment’
Watch: JD Vance Echoes Will Smith in Fiery Response to Abdul El-Sayed’s Comments About Wife
White House brings receipts after media claims noncriminal ICE arrests ‘soaring’: ‘False narratives’
Hasan Piker’s Claim He Doesn’t Hate America Clashes With That Time He Declared ‘I Hate America’
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll Resigns After Internal Disagreements
Ex-House Freedom Caucus chair says GOP isn’t ‘a conservative party anymore,’ but Democrats are ‘worse’
FLASHBACK: Mamdani torched for recycling 9/11 tributes after years of near-identical posts
AOC’s pivot for 2028 has begun. Will it work?
2 Grand Canyon flooding victims photographed on hiking trip in days before deaths
Teen arrested in girl’s murder one year after police said she accidentally shot herself while recording video
Trump Announces Plan to Help Ranchers Going Through Beef Market ‘Hell’
Top election schemes roiling key midterm races as both parties accuse rivals of trickery
Watch: Markwayne Mullin Goes Off on Reporter Who Tried to Downplay the Danger of Illegal Alien Truckers
O’Rourke added: “Donald Trump has done this; its up to change who is in the White House going forward.” However, the facility was first opened under the Obama administration, and briefly closed before re-opening in March 2018.
Gayle Bouley, of Miami, arrived with her family to join the protest, carrying a sign with a yellow Star of David and the words, “Never again is now.”
Asked by Breitbart News if she supported comparisons between the migrant facilities and concentration camps, she said she did.
“I don’t know how look at how you look at it any other way,” she said, stressing that she was both a veteran and a Jew.
Story cited here.
