Todd J. Gillman Gromer Jeffers Jr.
Updated at 5:15 p.m.: Revised to include details on the charity.

FORT WORTH — Sen. Ted Cruz accused Rep. Beto O'Rourke on Friday of allowing aides to use campaign donations to help Central American migrants moving north through Mexico in a caravan.

O'Rourke's campaign said that the money was given legally to an El Paso charity that has nothing to do with the caravan and that it amounted to less than $300 for supplies such as diapers and granola bars. The campaign also said the donation will be reported on federal campaign filings, just as a prior donation was reported.

"Ted Cruz pushes fear and paranoia because he wants to divide and mislead Texans four days before this election," O'Rourke said in a statement issued by his campaign.

Cruz based his allegation on undercover video from Project Veritas, a right-wing group with a checkered history of infiltrating liberal organizations and campaigns and using dubiously-edited video to claim wrongdoing.

Cruz referred to the video while campaigning in Fort Worth, telling a crowd of about 300 that "a video broke this morning of his campaign staffers taking campaign money and apparently using it to give it to people coming here illegally."

The O'Rourke campaign said Cruz "shamefully and falsely suggested" that campaign donations were diverted to fund the caravan, which is still hundreds of miles from the U.S. border.

"Staff members took it upon themselves to use prepaid cards from one of our more than 700 field offices to buy baby wipes, diapers, water, fruit and granola bars, and donate them to a local humanitarian nonprofit named Annunciation House that helps mothers and children in the community. The value was under $300 and it will be appropriately reported to the FEC," said O'Rourke spokesman Chris Evans.

A federal disclosure report shows that the O'Rourke campaign donated $4,000 on June 29 to Annunciation House. The organization provides shelter to families reunited after children were taken from parents under the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy calling for criminal prosecution of all adults caught entering the country without permission.

Cruz, asked after his Fort Worth rally about his views of the activist group's video, said, "I don't know. I watched the video this morning. It certainly looks concerning. It appears to be multiple members of the O'Rourke campaign staff admitting to using campaign funds to in some ways support illegal immigrants. And on the face of it they're describing filing false reports with the FEC and claiming that the money is being used for campaign events, for volunteers, and indeed they're laughing about how no one will know that it wasn't for volunteers or for campaign staffers but instead it was diverted to other uses.

"I would certainly assume that this video is going to raise a lot of questions, and questions that I expect the O'Rourke campaign should answer," he said.

After a rally in Lewisville, O'Rourke called the attacks unfounded and a scare tactic.

"This is part of an effort to try to stoke fear and anxiety about immigrants, about asylum-seekers," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, and we're looking at this, some money was spent on baby wipes, diapers and water for women and children who desperately needed them."

"We're looking at this, but anyone who is trying to politicize this is trying to win an election based on fear. I want to make sure that we're focused on the issues that matters most to Texas," he said.

"I am comfortable that the campaign is aboveboard, that everything is being reported to the FEC, and I'm going to also make sure that I understand that's going on, but from everything I've heard, that's the sum of it," he said.

Allies rallied to O'Rourke's defense.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, hit Cruz for "stupidity." State Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, called the senator's allegation desperate.

This is the stupidity of our Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Yes, Beto’s vans drove 1,000 miles to the Mexico/Guatemala border where the caravan is located and brought everyone through customs just in time to vote. Get lost! https://t.co/DLk024M8Gt

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) November 2, 2018

Senator Ted Cruz signs a cutout of his head following a campaign rally at Cendera Center in Fort Worth on Friday, November 2, 2018. (Shaban Athuman/The Dallas Morning News) (Shaban Athuman/Staff Photographer)

Senator Ted Cruz campaigns at Cendera Center in Fort Worth on Friday, November 2, 2018. (Shaban Athuman/The Dallas Morning News)

(Shaban Athuman/Staff Photographer)

Ayden Kirby 7, Ft. Worth Senator, cheers as Senator Ted Cruz campaigns at Cendera Center in Fort Worth on Friday, November 2, 2018. (Shaban Athuman/The Dallas Morning News) (Shaban Athuman/Staff Photographer)
Cruz has portrayed his Democratic challenger as soft on immigration, supporting "open borders," opposing construction of more border wall, and advocating abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"He wants to abolish ICE. I want to abolish the IRS," Cruz said.

O'Rourke did say once that he is open to scrapping ICE, but only if its duties are fulfilled by other federal agencies.

Cruz, whose father was the subject of a Trump conspiracy theory re JFK, desperately pushes one of his own before Tuesday that rivals crackpot stuff like Jade Helm, Pizza Gate & Spirit Cooking. #Desperate #VoteBeto #Beto4Texas https://t.co/JufM98ijU7

— Rafael Anchía (@RafaelAnchia) November 2, 2018
When Cruz turned to immigration during his speech in Fort Worth, a man in the crowd shouted: "He wants to open the borders for everybody! Send him across the border!"

Cruz has linked O'Rourke's views on immigration to the caravan, a group of impoverished migrants from Honduras and elsewhere in Central America. President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he will send up to 15,000 active-duty military to the border to block the caravan. On Thursday he declined to rule out the possibility that soldiers would fire on unarmed migrants.

O'Rourke and many others see no national security threat that would justify such a deployment.

Said Cruz: "I joked a week or two ago, I said on the caravan, breaking news, Beto has flown down to Mexico to lead the caravan. And then I had to tell the reporters OK, that's what's called a joke. I'm not actually saying it's true. But what is true is he's gone down to the border with welcome baskets and foot massages. That also I had to say was a joke, or at least I thought it was a joke. So maybe the welcome baskets, the joke was exactly what they were doing."

He continued: "By the way, Beto has not answered the simple question, 'should we allow this caravan to cross illegally into the state of Texas?' My answer and the answer of millions of Texans is absolutely not. And Beto's answer is, 'hey, have you seen me skateboard?'"

Cruz seized on the video released by O'Keefe, who was convicted in 2010 of using a fake identity to get on to federal property for one of his projects.

O'Keefe boasted Friday that he had exposed "secrets and lies" by the O'Rourke campaign and that his video was "damning."

USA Today reported Thursday night that O'Keefe's Project Veritas embedded with Democratic campaigns across the country ahead of the midterms. In most cases, candidates didn't know they were a target until they saw the finished videos.

Besides O'Rourke, the targets were Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, Tennessee Senate nominee Phil Bredesen, Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, Florida gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Virginia congressional candidate Abigail Spanberger.

O'Keefe has been accused of editing videos to misrepresent the context of conversations. Last year, The Washington Post said it was approached by a woman who worked for Project Veritas who tried to make false accusations against then-Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. Moore had already been accused of sexual misconduct and eventually lost the Alabama special election to Democrat Doug Jones.

O'Keefe wouldn't tell USA Today how the footage was captured in the races, but the newspaper reported that in at least three instances, a Project Veritas employee offered a fake name and posed as a campaign employee to gain access.

O'Keefe said his organization uses a "variety of different methods and sources" to get the footage.