Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas Tribune
TORNILLO — World Cup soccer and backyard barbecues were set aside Father’s Day morning for hundreds of people who chose instead to descend on this small West Texas outpost that’s become famous the last 72 hours for being home to an immigration detention center for children.
Lawmakers, political candidates and members of the faith-based community joined people from across the country here to express their outrage toward the Trump administration’s practice of separating immigrant children from parents who are seeking asylum.
“We decided there wouldn’t be a more powerful way to spend Father’s Day than with children who have just been taken from their fathers, children who have been taken from their mothers, children who won’t be able to be with their family,” said U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, who spearheaded Sunday’s protest with former El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar, the Democratic nominee to succeed O’Rourke in Congress. Others attending the demonstration included Lupe Valdez, the Democratic nominee for governor; Democratic state Reps. Mary González of Clint and César Blanco and Lina Ortega of El Paso; and Gina Ortiz-Jones, the Democrat challenging U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes.
On Thursday, the Trump administration confirmed that Tornillo would house a detention center for immigrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. On Friday, that facility was up and running. O’Rourke said he was told Sunday morning that there are 200 minors in the center, 20 percent of whom were separated from their parents. He said the remainder of the children arrived to the border unaccompanied. But O’Rourke said that once the children are separated, they are labeled “unaccompanied” and processed that way so it’s unclear how many of them actually arrived alone.
Escobar said that the El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights has scheduled another protest for Tuesday, and that lawmakers and activists have vowed not to let up until the administration rethinks its current policies.
“I feel like the rest of the country needs to be as angry as we are on the border,” she said. If the administration continues to separate families, she added, then the president will use the policy as leverage to beef up border security and build his long-promised wall.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
