Beto O’Rourke called out former President Barack Obama’s immigration practices at a forum of women of color activists Wednesday at Texas Southern University in Houston.
When an audience member at the She the People presidential forum shouted out a question about whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be disbanded, former Texas Rep. O’Rourke criticized not only the “practices under this president,” meaning Donald Trump, but also those carried out by his predecessor.
“I think in one year alone in the previous administration [there were] 400,000 deportations from inside the U.S.,” O’Rourke said, referring to the 409,849 ICE deportations under Obama’s administration in 2012. “Some people who had been here for decades, who posed no threat to their families, to their communities, in fact in any way that you can measure, are contributing far more than they are ever taking.”
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