"Today we were able to bear witness, to ensure that this is on us, on our conscience. And that we bear that burden now because we know it will be unbearable for long -- that it will force us to act, to push, to pressure, to ensure that our laws reflect our kids, those kids, and that idea and ideal of America that we still hold true." NPR, UK, CBS coverage, plus Washington Post Editorial excerpts, making Ted Cruz look inhumane

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This statement is entirely by Beto; I only have the honor of sharing it here.

When our country takes kids away from their mothers and fathers as punishment for coming to this country to seek asylum, when we call those kids "unaccompanied alien children" after we've forcibly "unaccompanied" them and sent them to shelters without any clear idea of when, or if, they'll see their moms and dads again...we'd like to say this isn't us, this isn't what we do, this isn't America.

Today, we did something about it. We took action.

With less than 24 hours notice, thousands of our fellow Americans made the trip to Tornillo -- where a makeshift shelter of tents has been constructed to hold those children -- to bear witness, to testify to our fellow Americans, and to force us to act.

Under a bright sky and a sun that burned our faces and the backs of our necks, we remembered that we were there for the families who'd traveled under these same skies -- for thousands of miles -- and endured under this same sun, arriving to this country burned, dehydrated and desperate. Like millions of families over the course of our history, they finally arrived, in the hope that they had found refuge, shelter and asylum when their own country could no longer protect them from hunger, brutality and death.

They came only to discover that under a new zero-tolerance policy, that those parents who had risked everything to bring their children here -- as any parent, any human would do -- as Amy and I would do in the same situation -- would have their children taken from them.

So we marched to the Tornillo tent city that was constructed last week to house the children of those parents and the children who had arrived without parents. There are over 200 children in there right now. Up to 4,000 coming over the days and weeks ahead.

My 7-year-old son Henry called me to wish me a happy father's day this morning before we left for the march. I told him I loved him and I'd see him soon but today we were marching to be there for those kids being detained in Tornillo. He asked me if Tornillo was a jail or if it was a camp. And I told him it's kind of like both at the same time.

And then he asked me,

"Why, dad? Did they do something wrong?"

There's no more important time to be alive than this one. To be an American, to be on the U.S.-Mexico border, to have the opportunity to define who we are as a country.

What's happening right now, it's on us, all of us -- no person, no party, no administration however powerful. It's on all of us, the people of America.

And after today I know that America is ready to meet this challenge, this test -- a moment that will define us for the rest of our lives and for the history to be written long after we're gone.

Whether it was Angela who came in from Rockport, a city still recovering from Hurricane Harvey. Or the delegations from Midland, Lubbock, Dallas, Austin and Houston. Joe, who took two flights from Boston. All the kids from El Paso, the teachers from Fort Hancock, the families from New Mexico. A woman who learned about this 20 hours ago in Salt Lake City, and jumped in the car stopping only for gas and a McDonald's.

People from all walks of life. Musicians (thank you David Garza and Jim Ward!), teachers, veterans, retirees, activists and shut-ins. People who've never been involved in politics, people who hold public office, people who want to hold public office. And people who want to hold those in public office accountable.

Veronica Escobar, our former County Judge and future Congresswoman who initiated the call to action and brought us together. Lupe Valdez who for the day suspended her campaign for governor and flew to El Paso, got a few hours of sleep and then drove to Tornillo to help lead the march. Fernado Garcia. Ruben Garcia. Cristobal Joshua Alex. Melissa Lopez. Congressman Joe Kennedy.

Today we were able to bear witness, to ensure that this is on us, on our conscience. And that we bear that burden now because we know it will be unbearable for long -- that it will force us to act, to push, to pressure, to ensure that our laws reflect our kids, those kids, and that idea and ideal of America that we still hold true.

No good tough important thing has ever happened in this country because Congress, Presidents, people in positions of power, woke up and decided to do the right thing.

It's only ever happened when the people of this country forced those who had the power to use it for our common good.

I saw that today, and I am grateful that I got to be part of it.

Beto O'Rourke, US Congressman from El Paso and Candidate for the United States Senate from Texas

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Coverage:

1. Beto O'Rourke, Veronica Escobar lead Father's Day march on tent city housing separated immigrant children

Days after a tent city went up near El Paso, demonstrators near the facility took aim at the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant children from parents who were seeking asylum.

click here

2. El Paso Times: click here

3. UK Coverage:

Hundreds join Fathers' Day march to camp where Trump administration is separating children from families

click here

4. NPR~~~~

Hundreds March To Texas Tent City Holding Detained Immigrant Kids click here

5. Washington Post: click here

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), father of two girls, nevertheless defends the monstrous practice of child separation, saying that it's "inevitable" when you arrest their parents. That, however, is the inhumane policy decision -- arresting each and every person, even including asylum seekers -- that set off this humanitarian disaster. That is as clear a choice as voters are going to get as to the direction of the country. Are we Cruz's America, where children are used as pawns to win points with Trump and Cruz's anti-immigrant base, or are we, as O'Rourke put it, "better than this"?

At this point, O'Rourke is directing his ire primarily at the administration, but he should not be shy about pointing the finger directly at his opponent, who slavishly supports every move the administration makes and has consistently opposed immigration solutions that would have overwhelming bipartisan support. Every parent in Texas (and every decent human being) should understand they are making not just a political choice but a moral one, too.

We know Trump embraces dictators, attacks allies, assaults law enforcement, undermines the rule of law and lies nonstop. Evidently that's not enough to arouse the ire of most Republicans. However, among all of the mind-numbingly awful things the GOP has countenanced, none comes close to the family separation policy. There surely must be a wide, diverse coalition of Americans who recoil at a practice so distasteful -- a coalition that transcends class, race, gender and ideology and is backed by Catholic, Baptist and Jewish clergy (among others) who have denounced the practice as evil. These Americans will have the opportunity in November to throw out politicians who cheer the monstrous policy of child separation.

(Article changed on June 18, 2018 at 03:58)

Authors Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Authors Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev