MIAMI ? Ahead of his turn on stage Thursday night in the Democratic presidential primary debate, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet ripped President Donald Trump over the escalating crisis surrounding migrant refugees detained at the southern border.

Bennet, one of 25 declared candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump in next year’s election, told Colorado Politics that it’s important to understand the distinction between disputes over immigration policy and problems that have recently come to light involving refugees seeking asylum – and the sometimes appalling conditions at detention centers where unaccompanied migrant children are kept.

“When I look at this, I see my mom, who was a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust – and I know that she sees herself in the pictures of these children,” Bennet said in an interview. “It’s devastating and it’s heartbreaking and it’s unnecessary; it didn’t have to happen.”

Bennet’s mother, born Susan Klejman, escaped war-torn Europe and emigrated with her parents to Stockholm. She then moved to Mexico City before her family was able to enter the United States in 1950.

“Donald Trump has so mismanaged this crisis from closing the refugee centers that existed in other countries so that people couldn’t turn themselves in there, to cutting off the $500 million to the Central American countries, to sending completely different signals from day to day,” Bennet said. “We are a rich and powerful country, and we can manage this crisis at the border.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday agreed to send a $4.6 billion emergency legislation drafted in the GOP-controlled Senate to the White House, where it’s expected to get Trump’s signature. The bill funds care for migrant refugees, including thousands of unaccompanied children.

In the interview at his Miami hotel, Bennet recalled bipartisan immigration legislation he helped put together in 2013 as part of the so-called Gang of Eight. The comprehensive reform package passed the Senate with 68 votes, including 14 Republicans, before languishing and then dying in the then-Republican controlled House of Representatives.

Last year, Trump torpedoed a somewhat less ambitious immigration reform package – this time co-authored by Bennet and his home state Republican colleague, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, as part of a bipartisan Gang of Six.

“What we’ve got to do is distinguish between fixing our immigration issues and dealing with the refugee crisis that we have right now. The immigration issues, I think, can be fixed along the lines of the Gang of Eight bill still, with updates and changes,” he said.

Taking care of refugees, Bennet said, is a different problem – one that shouldn’t fall victim to impasses over broader immigration policy.

“The refugee crisis, we need to address first, so that we are treating people humanely who are not coming here for jobs, but are fleeing for their lives,” Bennet said.

“And we have to work with our hemisphere, from Canada all the way to Argentina, for having an approach dealing first with the refugee crisis, but then with the instability in these countries that is causing people to flee for their lives. And I believe we can do that. We are a great country, we are a great power. Donald Trump behaves like we’re a weak country. And his management of this refugee crisis is just one of many reflections of that.”

Bennet also said that after spending nearly two months as an official presidential candidate he’s hopeful that a package of government reforms – including a lifetime ban on lobbying by former federal lawmakers, putting an end to gerrymandering and measures making it easier for Americans to vote – will be enacted.

“I’m actually very optimistic about our democracy if we deal with the problems that we’re confronting,” he said. “If we don’t, we’re going to have a really hard time getting done any of the things that any of the candidates are talking about here. I think it’s a combination of fixing the way Washington works, ending the corruption in Washington, and at the same time giving people the chance to really participate in the democracy by making it easier for people to vote and register to vote. I think that combination will be a powerful combination.”

It’s an uphill battle, he acknowledged, adding that it’ll take success at the ballot box to put the reforms in place.

“Mitch McConnell will fight it the whole way – he will, and he always will, and I think unless, politically, he feels jeopardy, he won’t change his mind,” Bennet said, referring to the hard-line Senate Republican leader, who has vowed to block similar legislation sent to the Senate by House Democrats.

Bennet continued: “It’s possible to create jeopardy by having others who agree with him lose races on these issues – or Democrats have to win the majority, which is another big part of this, because I believe that we have to build a broad coalition of Americans to beat Donald Trump but also to fix a corrupt Washington and to begin a new era of our American democracy and American opportunity. I think we’ll do that with the kind of policy agenda that I have been talking about. It’s less likely if we do it with the policy agenda that some others in the [presdiential] field have talked about.”