Beto O'Rourke blamed Donald Trump for the deaths of a father and daughter who were found drowned earlier this week along a bank of the Rio Grande River.

'Trump is responsible for these deaths,' he wrote on Twitter Tuesday evening, sharing an AP story about the drowning.

His charge comes ahead of the first Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday night, where O'Rourke will share the stage with nine other contenders.

Democrats have expressed outrage over the president's immigration policies since the searing photo went viral.

'As his administration refuses to follow our laws - preventing refugees from presenting themselves for asylum at our ports of entry - they cause families to cross between ports, ensuring greater suffering & death. At the expense of our humanity, not to the benefit of our safety,' O'Rourke wrote.

Beto O'Rourke blamed Donald Trump for the deaths of a father and daughter who were found drowned earlier this week along a bank of the Rio Grande River

Democrats have expressed outrage over President Donald Trump's immigration policies since the searing photo went viral

Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramierz with daughter Valeria; the two died trying to cross the Rio Grande to illegally enter the United States

Immigration was expected to be a topic of the night but the photo, of the 25-year-old Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, a Salvadoran man, with his black t-shirt hiked up and his 23-month daughter next to him with her arm wrapped around his neck, guarantees Democrats will be fired up on the issue.

Accompanying the riveting photo were images of the 21-year-old wife of Martinez, who watched the events unfold as her husband and child attempted to cross the border illegally by swimming across the river in Brownsville, Texas.

O'Rourke was already scheduled to travel to Homestead, Fla., on Thursday to meet with activists who are leading the opposition to the Child Migration Detention Center where thousands of teenagers refugees are being held.

The center has become a must-stop on the Democratic campaign trail.

Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will visit Thursday. Senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand will visit Friday.

Elizabeth Warren visited the center Wednesday morning ahead of the debate to talk to protesters who are demanding it be shut down.

'We are better people than this,' she said.

Two buses full of 40 people each arrived at the center when Warren got there and joined the activists that were already on site. There were about 100 demonstrators in total.

The Massachusetts senator stood on a ladder with Summit, the 8-year-old daughter of a Homestead protester, and waved to children who could be seen walking between different buildings behind the shelter's fence.

Summit told Warren that the teenager at the facility only have an hour at a time to play outside and aren't allowed to hug each other.

The children held at the temporary holding facility, some for a few dozen days, wear fluorescent orange hats and – from ladders across the street – can be seen being escorted in groups of less than 10.

Warren made it a point during her visit to the center to speak with children attending the demonstrations with their parents.

One child, named Leah, has immigrant parents and gave Warren a handwritten letter that said she was scared she would lose her parents to deportation.

Elizabeth Warren rallied with protesters at the Homestead shelter for children on Wednesday

Amy Klobuchar met with protesters outside the shelter on Wednesday

The Homestead shelter for unaccompanied children has become the center of attention as Democrats head to Florida for the first primary debates, and especially after a young father and his daughter died trying to cross illegally into the U.S.

Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez, 25, left El Salvador with his wife Tania, 21, and their daughter Valeria

'I live with the constant fear of losing my parents to deportation,' the letter reads. 'Please fight… so I can finally feel safe and also please shut down detention centers.'

Warren embraced Leah, who was crying, and changed her hat to a fluorescent orange one – meant to mirror the one's migrants in the center wear. The hat read Home Instead, a play on the name of the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children.

'A government that can't tell the difference between a threat posed by a terrorist, a criminal, and a little girl, is not a government that is keeping us safe,' Warren told a town hall meeting in Miami Tuesday night.

Rep. Eric Swalwell went on Monday and Bernie Sanders's wife, Jane, visited on Wednesday after Warren.

'We are looking into a camp, a camp of children cruelly confined here,' Swalwell said when documenting the experience on his social media. 'They don't belong here. They belong with their families.'

Amy Klobuchar also visited the center Wednesday afternoon ahead of taking the debate stage.

New York Businessman Josh Rubin, who has become passionate about getting justice for the teens at the immigration center, showed Klobuchar around the grounds outside the fences and described what he knew about the facility.

He told the Minnesota senator that there were currently 2,700 children out of the 3,200 that the Homestead migrant center can accommodate.

Warren arrived at the shelter ahead of Wednesday night's Democratic debate. She was shown around by Rabbi Robyn Fisher, who has worked on educating the media and public on what is going on in the center

Klobuchar and other Democrats have made a Homestead a must-stop on the campaign trail

Jane Sanders said if her husband became president in 2020, closing detention facilities would be his first executive order.

'The right thing – one of the things that he says he'll do as president – the first executive action he'll take is to shut these down. To shut down the child detention centers across the country,' Jane told reporters in Homestead Wednesday afternoon.

Cory Booker joined O'Rourke and Warren in blaming Trump for unethical immigration policies that led to the death of Ramirez and his daughter.

'We should not look away,' Booker tweeted Tuesday night. 'These are the consequences of Donald Trump's inhumane and immoral immigration policy. This is being done in our name.'

Donald Trump on Wednesday blamed Democrats for the deaths.

'That's like I've been saying. If they fixed the laws, you wouldn't have that,' Trump told reporters at the White House before he left for the G20 meeting in Japan.

'They want to have open borders and open borders mean crime, and open borders mean people drowning in the rivers. And it's a very dangerous thing,' he charged.

Senator and 2020 contender Cory Booker blamed President Trump for the death of the migrant father and his 23-month-old daughter who were attempting to cross by swimming across the Rio Grande

Booker says this happened because of Trump's 'inhumane' immigration policies

A 21-year-old wife and mother watched her 25-year-old husband and young daughter died they attempting to cross into Brownsville, Texas by way of the river

Warren, Booker, O'Rourke and Klobuchar will be on stage together Wednesday night in Miami with six other contenders.

The two-night primary debates, hosted by NBC News on Wednesday and Thursday, will feature 10 Democratic candidates each night, randomly selected for which stage they will appear.

The Homestead center - where nearly 2,500 kids of migrants can be held without their parents and is the largest detention center for children in the country - is about 30 minutes south of the debate stage.

Homestead Shelter for Unaccompanied Children Can hold up to 2.350 children It's the only youth shelter for migrants operated for a profit The Homestead contract with the Department of Health and Human Services is worth up to $220 million It opened during the Obama administration, closed briefly and was reopened in March 2018 amid a surge in illegal border crossings Advertisement

Children between the age of 13-17 are at the shelter, which opened during the Obama administration, closed briefly and was reopened in March 2018 amid a surge in migrants crossing the border.

Border Patrol reported in January that more than 5,000 'unaccompanied alien children' have been apprehended at the border. Most are sent to the Homestead Shelter for Unaccompanied Children or similar facilities throughout the country.

The shelter has stopped letting journalists and visitors inside its doors. Protesters are a regular presence outside its gates, demanding it be shut down.

Melissa Taveras, media strategist for the Florida Immigration Coalition, said that teens at the facility are usually transported there and held for a few days while they fill out paperwork, like visas or green card applications, so they can stay in the U.S. legally.

She says, however, that they are advocating for the facility to shut down, and for these individuals to have the opportunity to go through this process while with family that is , in some cases, just a few miles away from the center.

'What happens with a zero tolerance policy,' Taveras said, referencing a Trump administration immigration policies, 'what that immigrants were criminalized. So with this criminalization, is where the detentions started.'

Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who represents the area, invited 2020 primary contenders to tour the shelter.

Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, has previously been denied entry to the facility, but said she would accompany any candidates that want to take a look around.

Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the deaths of a Salvadoran father and daughter

Eric Swalwell visited the Homestead detention center on Monday

Critics call it an imprisonment camp or an internment camp.

HHS officials said the average stay is 36 days.

But court filings – based on a tour of the shelter attorneys conducted in March – paint a different picture.

It describes 'prison-like' rules where children can only talk to relatives on the phone for 10 minutes twice a week; showers are limited to five; meal time are 15 minutes. Children are not allowed to hug or touch one another.