David Catanese is senior politics writer for U.S. News & World Report
The most meaningful moment of Donald Trump’s spectacle of a presidential campaign thus far may have come during a solemn evening news conference last Friday in Los Angeles, when he stood silently behind the family members of crime victims.
One after another, a father or mother or aunt spoke emotionally about the death of a son or nephew at the hands of someone who was in the country illegally.
“Nobody wants to hear from us,” lamented Don Rosenberg, whose 25-year-old son was struck and then run over three times by a car driven by an unlicensed man from Honduras. “We get ignored constantly.”
Lupe Moreno, a Hispanic woman who wore a button with a photograph of her deceased nephew, Ruben Morfin, fought back tears while describing his death: Gunned down at age 13 in Salinas, California, by an immigrant without the proper legal documents.
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“Our children are dying every day. They’re being raped. They’re being brutalized,” Moreno said in raw remarks that echoed Trump’s controversial missive about Mexican immigrants last month. Her sister had gone to Capitol Hill 20 years ago to deliver congressional testimony she hoped would spur action to move against those who broke the law to get to the U.S. They’re still grieving, and still waiting.
Moreno thanked Trump for speaking hard truths. Then, with a pained look on her face, she scolded the reporters in the room for failing to adequately cover the deaths or describe the perpetrators’ legal status: “You’re not helping at all; those other candidates aren’t helping, either. I wish they had the cojones of our forefathers.”