El PASO - U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Friday blasted the Trump administration’s immigration policies for endangering the lives of migrants trying to cross over to seek asylum, including the death of a 7-year-old migrant girl who died last week while in the custody of U.S. authorities.

In taking on President Donald Trump's immigration policies, the El Paso Democrat appears to indicate he's getting close to a decision about whether he'll run for president, although he insisted in a briefing with journalists that he hasn't made a decision and won't yet rule out a challenge to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in 2020.

At a Friday morning town hall, O'Rourke also blamed previous administrations, from President George W. Bush to President Barack Obama, for border policies that have led to a rising number of deaths of migrants who head to the U.S. to escape poverty and violence.

He said "nothing but the violence that you fear for your child," is forcing parents to sacrifice all to head for the U.S. to seek "safety for her salvation, refuge, asylum under laws that were written by your government," he said. "Those are the people that the president proposes to wall off from this country, though we know -- and a seven-year-old understands this because it's common sense -- that no wall is going to shut out that level of misery and desperation and vulnerability. No walls will change our obligations to one another as human beings."

O’Rourke was referring to 7-year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, the Guatemalan girl who entered the country with her father on December 6 as part of a large group that crossed near a legal border crossing in Lordsburg, New Mexico. The girl was taken into federal custody and died hours later of dehydration and exhaustion at a hospital in El Paso. The father remains at Annunciation House, a migrant shelter in El Paso. On Saturday, Ruben Garcia, the shelter's director, is expected to read a statement on behalf of the father, Nery Caal, an indigenous man who speaks no Spanish.

O’Rourke said he will return to Washington next week to vote against Trump’s call for $5 billion for his border wall. He noted that the current fencing and militarization of the border costs $19.5 billion a year. A wall would be not just a waste of taxpayer money, he said, but it “also costs us our conscience when hundreds of our fellow human beings lose their lives trying to come into this country."

O'Rourke, who held his goodbye town hall at Chapin High School in El Paso, said he wants to make "sure that our laws match our values, which they don't right now ... My hope is that this community through our next representative in Congress, that all of us, being part of the conversation, stand up at this critical moment to lead and that we not lose another child in a way that breaks every one of our hearts. Please note that this one (death) is on all of us."

O’Rourke traveled to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Friday afternoon to visit asylum seekers and will lead a congressional delegation to the Tornillo, Texas, tent city for detained immigrants on Saturday - moves that analysts say represent the latest steps in his expected march toward becoming a presidential candidate for the 2020 race.

One constituent told O’Rourke, “I’m sorry to see you go, but you’re running for president, right? I’m here to volunteer.“

Many in the crowd roared with laughter and clapped. O’Rourke just smiled and took a swig of water. He later said he will make a decision after the holidays.

To stem the flow of Central American migrants long term, O'Rourke echoed a proposal from other U.S. lawmakers and the new administration of Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: Invest in the Central American region long impacted by ravages of drug war, past U.S. conflicts, climate change and corruption. The Trump and Lopez Obrador administration have been talking about ways to find a solution.

"I do hope that Lopez Obrador and President Trump are able to come to an agreement," O'Rourke said following the visit to Juarez. "I want them both to be successful. I want our countries to be come closer. I want us to work together, but i want us to do it in a way that reflects the best traditions of this country."

Roberto Velasco, a spokesman for Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, said of the Lopez Obrador government, "Our focus is on cooperation for development."

If O’Rourke does decide to run, he’ll enter a crowded field of Democrats already hinting of joining the race. They include former Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Sherrod Brown, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and fellow Texan and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, 44, who took a step toward a bid for the White House this week by announcing he was forming a presidential exploratory committee.

O'Rourke said in Spanish that he thought Castro's decision was "positive for the United States," adding to the debate on issues like healthcare, and he said he is "very proud of him and his work" as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Mayor of San Antonio.

But separating O’Rourke from the rest of the field is the fact that he’s from the border, the epicenter of what’s become Trump’s almost daily fixation, his wall, which some estimates say will cost $25 billion, an amount that O'Rourke said was "an expression of our smallness, our meanness, our fear to the rest of the world at a time when we have record low levels" of apprehensions," from 1.6 million in the year 2000 to less than 400,000 last fiscal year.

O'Rourke said he preferred taking a bipartisan approach and said in these divisive times it's important to "focus on issues, on our potential, on our promise, on the future, instead of our fears, instead of attacking one another personally."

He added: "I know that something good is going to come out of all of this at the end of the day, but there has never been a darker moment in this country, at least in my lifetime," he said. "All of us are the answer to that."

O'Rourke's successor, Veronica Escobar, said an investigation is needed to determine what happened, but added, "The fact that our Customs Border Protection officers have been instructed to block asylum seekers from setting foot on American soil. The consequence of that is that families have been living in limbo and have gotten desperate and are looking at other ways to enter our country and it is that desperation that leads families and refugees to seek any way to get into the United States. That desperation is caused by our government and our president's policies."

White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said Friday that the death of the 7-year-old girl is “tragic” and “horrific,” but added, “Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country? No."