ODESSA — Rep. Beto O’Rourke has been barnstorming Texas, denouncing the border wall and the president’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

Sen. Ted Cruz has also made immigration a top issue, warning about liberals creating sanctuary cities to thwart federal enforcement efforts and joining the chorus demanding a wall.

Their views differ dramatically. But they have this in common: the shared assessment that immigration is a top concern for Texans, and a lever to motivate supporters. Other than the economy, it’s rare for an issue to resonate so broadly. Immigration is just such an issue at the moment, making the closely watched Senate race a referendum of sorts.

“Let’s stop taking little kids away from their parents,” O’Rourke told a cheering crowd recently in Odessa, where the El Paso Democrat called for a more welcoming attitude toward migrants — people willing to take on “backbreaking work ... that no one here in the state or the country is going to do.”

Martin Gonzalez Sr., 50, waited in line for a photo. They chatted in Spanish. He asked what O’Rourke would do about the 11 million people in the country illegally. No one is proposing amnesty, the congressman replied, explaining that he wants a three- to five-year process for immigrants to obtain green cards.

Gonzalez swam the Rio Grande illegally when he was 9. He became an American decades ago. He owns six restaurants in Odessa that employ about 100 people.

“It’s a good story. My whole family came from Mexico. There’s 12 of us. Seven of us graduated from college. Five own businesses. None has ever been arrested. Mr. Trump says that we’re all animals. We’re not. We’re not,” he said. “We come to work. ... I’ve never asked for assistance. I’m 50 years old. My kids have gone to college.”

His employees work legally, he said, but cooks and waitresses have relatives. Some get nabbed and deported, even if they’d fled drug cartels or gang violence. It’s gotten far worse under Trump, he said.

“The thing that is so wrong with this administration is that everybody has been measured with the same ruler,” Gonzalez said. “The Mexican community agree that all the criminals need to go. I guarantee that if you were to put a campaign for us to denounce people we know are doing bad things, everybody would do it.”

'Immigration' as shorthand

In Texas, Republicans cite immigration more than any other issue as their top concern in the Senate race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this month — 31 percent, ahead of the economy and the direction of the Supreme Court. It's high on the list for Democrats, too, at 20 percent, though one-third say they'll be thinking about health care first as they choose between Cruz and O'Rourke.

But immigration is a catchall term, shorthand for anything from border enforcement to labor supply, asylum policy, and the future of Dreamers brought into the country illegally as

children.

“Immigration is continually a motivational issue,” said Cruz pollster Chris Wilson. “There are voters on both sides that care deeply about it.”

But he said O’Rourke is very much on the wrong side, both in substance and in terms of how many voters his views are likely to attract compared to those he’ll repel.

Nationwide, more Americans cited immigration as the most important problem in July than in any month since Gallup began asking that question 17 years ago. The family separation crisis has clearly been driving sensitivity to the issue.

Nearly 1 in 5 Democrats named immigration as the top priority, almost doubling from June.

Over the same month, the share of Republicans who picked immigration shot from 21 percent to 35 percent.

That makes it a “fruitful theme” for GOP candidates as the party scrambles to keep control of Congress in November, Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote in an analysis of the findings. But “Democratic candidates can also gain traction on the issue — by registering their opposition to Trump and Republican policies and actions.”

“President Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign rested in part on his controversial proposals relating to immigration. He has continued to ratchet up the focus on the issue since taking office through his policy proposals and actions at the border, particularly the highly visible separation of children from parents who cross into the country illegally,” Newport wrote.

Visceral issue

On the stump, O’Rourke puts that in visceral terms.

He compares the accelerated rejection of asylum seekers at the border in recent months to the infamous “ship of the damned” incident. Jews fleeing the Nazis were forced to return to Europe. Most were killed in the Holocaust.

He led a Father's Day protest at the Tornillo tent camp, in the desert 35 miles from El Paso, where migrant children have been detained while parents they crossed the border with face criminal charges under the zero-tolerance policy Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in May.

O’Rourke notes the 110 degree summer heat, and the pain and uncertainty of separation.

“The cruelty that we’ve inflicted on these kids, though it was a decision of one person, one man, the president of the United States, it is now a stain that each of us carry,” he told 500 supporters packed into Lubbock’s Cactus Theater recently.

“A candidate for the highest office in the land ... described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals,” O’Rourke said. “And now that he’s in the White House, describes those young asylum seekers who have traveled 2,000 miles, fleeing the deadliest, the most brutal, the most violent places on the planet ... as animals, as an infestation, as a threat against which we must build a 2,000-mile wall and send the United States military.”

The crowd booed.

Texans oppose the border wall 51 percent to 45 percent, according to Quinnipiac. Support nationwide for Trump's signature campaign promise is weaker.

“Texans understand that border security is an absolute necessity. And the wall is seen as an important part of that,” said Wilson, the Cruz pollster.

Democrats resist, however.

“I believe in border security, but not the wall,” said Johnny Sandate, 60, a retired oil field worker who attended O’Rourke’s Odessa town hall. “In Berlin they knocked the wall down.”

He has an even dimmer view of family separations: “That’s bad. That’s real bad.”

Texans view family separation as bad policy by a 4-1 ratio, and as a violation of human rights by nearly 3 to 1, according to Quinnipiac’s latest poll.

Cruz initially defended the enforcement policy that prompted the separations, blaming migrants for putting their children at risk by violating U.S. law.

In San Angelo on Wednesday, Cruz was asked to explain his immigration policy.

“I can sum it up in four words,” he said. “Legal, good. Illegal, bad. We need to secure the border and stop illegal immigration.”

He emphasizes his support for “Kate’s law,” named for a woman shot and killed in San Francisco in 2015 by a Mexican man who had been deported five times. A jury acquitted him of murder after his lawyers argued the gun went off accidentally. The bill, stalled in the Senate, boosts penalties for re-entering the country after being deported.

Kate Steinle’s death touches heartstrings, too, like the plight of the kids at Tornillo.

The night of the March primaries Cruz unveiled a ditty — his first volley in the general election — that included the line: "Beto wants those open borders/And wants to take our guns."

Politifact ruled the assertion false. No one in Congress, including O'Rourke, has proposed free cross-border movement.

But it’s a potent phrase. And Cruz stands by it, arguing that if O’Rourke opposes a wall and a crackdown on sanctuary cities and a host of other enforcement policies, it adds up.

“O’Rourke is just pro-amnesty across the board. ... Whenever voters in Texas hear that a candidate is for open borders, it’s almost a disqualifier with everybody,” Wilson said, adding that the Democrat’s positions will appeal to the base of his party, and hardly anyone else.

Convergence

Immigration is a hot button on both sides but a bigger motivator for Cruz voters, said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

In the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, 53 percent of Texas Republicans picked immigration or border security as the biggest problem facing the state. Among Texas Democrats, the number was just 9 percent.

For Republicans, demands to stem illegal immigration remain a top priority, Henson said, though like Democrats, “they ... have a high level of discomfort about family separation.”

Still, there’s fodder for both sides to mobilize their bases, from opposite ends of the policy spectrum, “and it’s sort of a neat issue because they can do so without much cost,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist.

That, he said, is because immigration is somewhat different from issues such as abortion or gun control, where taking a position means inflaming not just the other side but potential swing voters.

On immigration, persuadable independents feel conflicted.

“They’ll say separating families at the border is wrong but also that there’s not room for everyone,” Jones said. “They don’t agree with deportation, but also not with open borders.”