O’Rourke to visit Mexico to meet with asylum seekers

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke will visit asylum seekers denied access to the U.S. during a visit to Mexico on Sunday, the former Texas congressman’s campaign said. 

O’Rourke will visit Ciudad Juárez and hopes to shed light on the individuals and families “directly impacted” by President Trump’s “cruel and inhumane policies,” according his campaign. 

“In all of the debate around immigration, we can’t forget who it impacts most: the people traveling thousands of miles, fleeing the worst kind of violence and oppression,” O’Rourke said in a statement. “Turning away refugees, families and asylum seekers is not who we are as a country. But as long as Donald Trump is president — it will be.”{mosads}

O’Rourke, who represented a border district, released an immigration plan earlier this year that calls to end family separation, reunite those already separated and create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. 

O’Rourke’s immigration proposal fails to go as far as other candidates, notably fellow Texas Democrat Julián Castro, in calling to decriminalize the borders. 

O’Rourke’s planned trip to Mexico marks the first foreign trip by a presidential candidate this election. He is also scheduled to visit a Border Patrol facility on Sunday in Clint, Texas, where poor conditions for migrant children have been reported.

Immigration has been a key issue in the election, as Trump has kept it in the spotlight with this threats of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and reports of unsanitary conditions at border facilities under his administration.  

Several candidates, including O’Rourke, visited a child migrant detention center in Homestead, Fla. last week while in Miami for the first debates.