EL PASO — Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders drew large and deafening crowds on a campaign swing through the important Super Tuesday state of Texas this past weekend, but one of his most important moments might have been a quiet trip to a Walmart parking lot.
There, away from reporters and cameras, Sanders visited a 30-foot golden obelisk that stands as a memorial to the 22 people gunned down last summer in the deadliest terrorist attack against Latinos in modern history.
For a candidate admired for his consistency on issues such as income equality and climate change, there are two issues on which supporters hope Sanders has evolved: gun safety and immigration reform. With a fresh wave of momentum after a solid third victory in Nevada, Sanders seemed to seek to put those concerns to rest on his weekend tour through Texas, and his visit to El Paso was widely appreciated in a city still feeling the impact of the mass shooting and Trump’s hard-line border tactics.
“I feel like the issues that are very important right now, we are living in right now,” said Rosanna Camarena, 36, a social worker who was leaning toward supporting Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren but wanted to hear what Sanders had to say about the border. She attended a rally here Saturday where he vowed to bring the nation together, in contrast, she said, to President Trump.
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“He thinks that he is going to win this election by dividing this country based on the color of our skin or where we were born,” Sanders said at the downtown convention center here, calling Trump “a pathological liar,” “a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and a religious bigot,” to boos from the crowd. “But we have news for Trump: Love and compassion and bringing people together is a lot more powerful . . "
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It has been a grim four years for people in El Paso and its Mexican sister city across the border, Ciudad Juárez. Through executive actions, the Trump administration has curbed the path to asylum and forced migrants to wait in packed shelters in Juárez. Last March, people were held behind barbed wire under an international bridge, and US immigration officials later opened a tent camp for children near El Paso as border agents began separating migrant families at the border.
Temporary closures or partial shutdowns of ports of entry, meanwhile, have disrupted trade and the commutes of people who have long crossed between the two cities for school and work.
The national political battles have become personal. Many residents here blame Trump’s divisive border rhetoric and vitriol against immigrants for inflaming the hatred that drove a mass shooter to drive in from the Dallas area and open fire at a Walmart on a quest to kill Mexicans. He pleaded not guilty to capital murder and is awaiting trial.
“El Paso Strong” signs still dot business fronts and billboards, and many students and university faculty members have spent time gathering donations or volunteering at migrant shelters.
Sanders hasn’t had the most progressive track record on immigration and guns.
During his first presidential run, in 2016, Hillary Clinton criticized Sanders’ votes against a comprehensive immigration bill in 2007 and a 1993 gun bill to establish national background checks, and his votes in favor of legislation more than 15 years ago to prevent gun companies from being sued if their weapons were used in crimes.
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This time, Sanders has put forth the most expansive immigration plan of the Democratic candidates — and the only one crafted with the guidance of so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children. Like other contenders for the party’s 2020 nomination, Sanders would decriminalize border crossings and provide a pathway to citizenship for roughly 11 million people without legal US residency.
He also went further, pledging to temporarily halt all deportations, end federal immigration raids, and break up two agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, that have been at the forefront of President Trump’s family-separation policy.
And to jubilant cheers in Texas over the weekend, he said his gun policy would “be written by the American people, not the NRA."
But former vice president Joe Biden and former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg have seized on Sanders’ past positions on guns. On Monday, Bloomberg’s campaign released a social media ad slamming Sanders for his past gun votes and the support he received from the National Rifle Association. “We deserve a president who is not beholden to the gun lobby,” Bloomberg tweeted Monday.
And Sanders is wading into trouble on at least one of his immigration pledges. The Trump campaign in January blasted him over his call for a deportation moratorium in an e-mail to supporters. Now immigration rights activists want Sanders to stand strong on the idea of a blanket ban after his campaign manager told Buzzfeed last week that there would be exceptions, saying violent criminals would still be deported.
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On Saturday, an energetic audience of more than 3,100 waited for Sanders inside and outside of the Downtown Civic Center. A couple of dozen Trump supporters were there, too.
Local surrogates made forceful cases in Sanders’ favor, calling him someone who understood the humanitarian crisis and its impact on people at the border.
“Bernie, like us, he sees the border as an asset, not a threat,” County Commissioner David Stout said to cheers. If Sanders were elected, “we would not see pictures of asylum seekers caged like animals in the heat of summer, as they were at the bridge, just a few blocks from here.”
Sanders gave a sharp rebuke of Trump’s policies and promised to end private prisons and detentions as he recounted the immigrant experience of his own parents. He spoke of his visit to the site of the El Paso shooting, drawing parallels to a Charleston, S.C., church shooting that left nine people dead and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, which killed 11 people.
“On day one, we are going end the demonization of the undocumented in this country," he said to thunderous roars from the crowd.
Aldo Mena, 49, a retired high school social studies teacher, said he decided to support Sanders after Julián Castro, a former US secretary of housing, dropped out of the presidential race. Of more concern to him than Sanders’ vote against the immigration bill was that Sanders had favored 2006 legislation supporting civilian border patrols under the Minuteman Project banner, Mena said.
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But Mena, decked out in a Castro 2020 shirt emblazoned with the words “Adios Trump,” said he had since become a wholehearted Sanders supporter. “I think he has evolved,” Mena said.
Waiting in line before the rally, Erika Reyes, 19, said she was voting for Sanders because she wanted someone who understood the urgency of the moment. She had friends who survived the Walmart shooting, and her grandmother was a frequent shopper at the store. She shuddered to think what could have happened if she had been there that day.
“I just want to see change for the future and for humanity and for the global environment." Reyes said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of people killed in the El Paso shooting. It was 22.