The final presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle has concluded in Nashville, Tenn. 

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden joined the stage to talk about immigration, the coronavirus pandemic, national security, and race in America.

In response to the topic of immigration, Jess Morales Rocketto, Co-Founder of She Se Puede, tells Inside the Issues one of the moments that really stood out for her, and likely for many Southern Californians, was on migrant children who have been separated from their parents at the border.

"I think it would absolutely be Donald Trump having to answer for his record on family separation," she said. "There are 545 children tonight, enough to fill eight school buses, who are alone without their parents and have been without their parents for three years because of Donald Trump’s criminalizing of immigration and ripping children away from their parents and putting them in cages."

Biden, she continued, was clear that families belong together, and that the U.S. welcomes immigrants.

"I think that was a really huge moment because there’s a lot of contrast with Donald Trump, but it’s also a moment where Biden took a chance, distanced himself slightly from the Obama Administration, and admitted that he’s going to do things differently on immigration," said Morales Rocketto. "I think that’s something that’s going to really resonate with voters across Southern California, given how many of our families are part of that legacy of immigration, of how many families continue to hope that in the next administration, there could be legalization of the 11,000,000 undocumented immigrants."

When asked during the debate about the 545 parents who cannot be located, Trump said the children “are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they used to use them to get into our country.” 

Harmeet Dhillon, National Committeewoman of the Republican National Committee for California, said the coyotes use babies for human trafficking.

“That’s a big concern from the people in Southern California, from the people I’ve heard from in San Diego County and Imperial County, but also people in Texas and other states on the border,” she said. “The border isn’t scary, but as a lawyer who’s actually helped some people come here legally and get asylum, and as a first generation immigrant who was born in India, I have tremendous respect for immigration in this country. It should be done legally, it should be done correctly, and it is unfortunate that the parents of those children either let those children be used a bait or put them in dangerous situations.”

She said the GOP is not expecting California to support Trump in the election, but he may have strengthened his support with voters in battleground states when he made a strong point on the oil industry.

"He forced Joe Biden to say that he was going to phase out oil in this country," she said. "That’s huge news. It’s going to lose him a lot of votes in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, some of the other states that rely on oil, and where a lot of jobs will be affected by that."

Republican Mimi Walters, former U.S. Congresswoman and fellow at the USC Center For the Political Future, said that when Trump initially shut down the country and banned people coming from China, it was a balancing act.

"The unintended consequences of what we’re seeing by people being locked down is unbelievable," said Walter. "Suicide rates are up, depression is up, alcoholism is up. These are the consequences that happen when people are locked in their homes and they’re told that they can’t go places."

Walters said she would like to see the administration focus on getting kids back to school because of concerns of accessibility and being left behind.

“The other big concern that I have, and this is a real balancing act, is we’ve got to get these kids back to school, we’ve got to get them in the classroom because studies are being shown to us is that kids just are not learning online, and the kids that are getting hurt the worst are the underprivileged kids that don’t have the access to the internet or don’t have people watching them and making sure that they are getting the education that they need. We’re going to have a generation of kids that are behind and that, I think, is one of our highest priorities: Get these kids back to school safely.”

In response, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, agreed with Walters on how the lockdown is “depressing” and affecting people in Southern California and across the country.

“I think all of us feel that way: captured and want to get out, want to go to restaurants and do other social activities,” said Bass. 

She is confident that, if elected, Biden would focus on science in order to move the country forward and out of the pandemic. 

"There’s just no reason that a quarter of a million Americans had to die," she said. "The fact that the president really did not want to pay attention to science — and he hasn’t still — I mean, he’s essentially dismissed the leading scientist in the world and he’s brought on a man from Northern California, who’s a radiologist, who knows absolutely nothing about pandemics, and what I’m deeply afraid of is that the president might be buying into the notion of herd immunity, which means that you’re just going to let the virus spread and see what happens."

Rep. Bass stressed that there should be a shift to informing the public of health official recommendations, now that masks have been politicized.

“We need to do public education," she said. "We need to make sure people wear masks. We need to be guided by science and we need to have a vaccine, but we don’t want to rush a vaccine. We want to make sure that the vaccine is safe.”

Regardless of who wins the elections, Walters hopes the Republican Party can work on connecting with minority groups and show them what the GOP stands for going forward.

“I’ve always been a big believer that we get our best policy when you have two different parties in charge of each house, so that they can come together and create the best policy for the people of California or the American people, and so that’s part of the reason why you see a divided government so often, whether it's on a federal level or on a state level, because I think, by and large, most people believe that,” she said. “But the Republican party is continuing to reach out to different minority groups, and we have to do a better job of connecting with them and making sure that they understand who we are and what our morals and values are, and what we stand for.”

Rep. Bass shared the same sentiments, saying she hopes the Republican Party can regain their party post-Trump.

“I hope that they are able to get it back because, right now, I think he has really destroyed the party — impacted it very negatively,” she said. “But I do believe that once he’s off the stage, everybody will hopefully begin to go back to normal. The Republicans need their party back.”

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