This week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago touched on everything from reproductive rights, the sanctity of democracy, and especially border and immigration.
Several speakers at the DNC’s third night focused on immigration policy, migration and people who live along the border.
Bexar County, Texas, Sheriff Javier Salazar said his office responds to desperate calls.
“The traffickers, they pack migrants into 18-wheelers like cattle, 50, 100 at a time. Then they seal the doors. That’s when the 911 calls come. We hear them, desperate, terrified, gasping for air,” he told the crowd on Wednesday. "When Donald Trump comes down to Texas, and stands next to officers in uniforms just like mine, he's not there to help us, don't think that, not for a second."
Salazar and other speakers, like Congresswoman Veronica Escobar of Texas, tore into former President Trump and other Republicans who rejected a border security package from earlier this year.
“When it comes to the border, hear me when I say, you know nothing, Donald Trump," Escobar said. "Congress hasn’t passed immigration reform in nearly four decades. The three times they tried, Republicans blocked legislation that would have funded border security and created a more humane immigration system."
The bipartisan measure would have introduced more funding for asylum officers and border personnel, along with harsher restrictions on border migration. But it failed to pass in Congress.
The speeches came before Trump’s visit to the Arizona border this week in Cochise County.
-
Find everything you need to know about elections in Arizona and Maricopa County from KJZZ's politics team.
-
Voters can bring their early ballots in person through Tuesday to have their votes cast.
-
Voting rights groups are training Arizona residents to become constitutional observers on Election Day. Around 80 people filed into a hotel in Tucson Saturday for an event organized by LUCHA.
-
The amount of money at play in the race for Arizona superintendent of public instruction has far eclipsed previous cycles.
-
President Donald Trump claimed in an address on Thursday that newly unclassified documents prove that there was foreign interference in American elections. Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes scoffs at those allegations.