Beto O'Rourke: 'I'd take the wall down'

Potential 2020 presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke said if it were up to him, there would be no border wall in El Paso, Texas.

O’Rourke, a Democratic former Texas congressman and candidate for Senate, responded in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Thursday to a question tweeted by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who asked whether O’Rourke would make the city’s border wall disappear if he could.

“Absolutely,” O’Rourke said without hesitation.

“I’d take the wall down,” O’Rourke said, adding that the barrier has “not in any demonstrable way made us safer.”

O’Rourke said the existing wall “has pushed migrants and asylum seekers and refugees to the most inhospitable, the most hostile stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border ensuring their suffering and death.”

Related: Beto O'Rourke throughout his political career:

O’Rourke, a fierce opponent of President Donald Trump’s fear-mongering on immigration, vehemently opposes Trump’s plan to declare a national emergency to build his promised border wall after failing to gain congressional approval.

“It’s hard to make a rational case for an emergency declaration or troops on the border or any amount of additional border wall or border fencing or steel slats,” O’Rourke said.

O’Rourke held a Trump counter-rally in El Paso on Monday during the president’s visit to the city.

• This article originally appeared on HuffPost.