A fenceless border is defenseless

There must be numerous Democratic officials who are aware that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have crossed the line into the absurd regarding their anti-border wall fiasco but remain silent. Such cannot be said about the growing number of newly elected and "converted" Democrat radicals who echo extreme views without the slightest understanding of the facts. Reuters on February 6 published a piece titled "U.S. Border Officials Don't Share Trump's Zeal for Border Wall." The article reported on a classified briefing given by Customs and Border Protection agents to lawmakers, including Democratic senator Dick Durbin, who emerged from that briefing and reiterated what agents had told him. "What they said over again was technology," Durbin said. "They don't rule out barriers, they don't rule out fences. But that isn't the first priority."

Durbin's statement is troubling because it reveals that he and other Democrats are missing the main point, which is that Pelosi and Schumer do rule out barriers and fences. It is by far the central obstacle regarding moving forward on a national security issue, and he didn't have a clue. The Reuters headline would have been significant if it instead read, "U.S. Border Officials Say They Don't Need a Border Wall." By attesting to how rational border officials' thoughts and ideas are, what Durbin unwittingly did was show how unreasonable Pelosi and Schumer's demands are. When taken one by one, and examined in detail, the flawed opinions embraced by Pelosi and Schumer that the wall is immoral, obsolete, or a waste of financial resources are shown for what they are — political obstructionism. Take the left's view that walls and fences are "medieval" and a thing of the past, and we find, as with many statements made by the left, that the complete opposite is true. According to a February 2018 American Renaissance article, between 1945 and 1961, over 3.5 million East Germans walked across the unguarded border. When the wall was built, it cut defections by more than 90 percent. When Israel in January 2017 completed improvements to the fence on its border with Egypt to keep out terrorists and African immigrants, it cut illegal immigration to zero. In 2015, The Telegraph reported on the construction of a 600-mile "great wall" border by Saudi Arabia with Iraq to stop Islamic State militants from entering the country. The wall included five layers of fencing with watchtowers, night-vision cameras, and radar cameras. Finally, a September 2016 article in the Washington Post reported on the new construction of a mile-long wall at Calais. "[A]ttacks have considerably changed the climate in France," said Bruno Cautrès, a political analyst at the Center for Political Research at Paris's Sciences Po. "The desire for many is to have a president who can bring security back." The United States has that kind of president in Trump. So the current trend among modern nations demanding safer environments for their people is not abandoning walls and fences in place of sophisticated surveillance and detection technology, but quite the opposite. In a May 2018 USA Today article, border walls since World War II have increased from 7 to 77. In 2016, the Economist asserted that, as a result of the refugee crisis and the conflict in Ukraine, "Europe will soon have more physical barriers on its national borders than it did during the Cold War." It becomes unmistakably clear that President Trump, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan and others, understands the need for border walls and fences. There is a time for politics and a time for urgent action, and Pelosi and Schumer have seriously miscalculated the gravity of the border crisis. Trump has relied on historical life-saving data, the measurable benefits that physical barriers are offering other nations, as well as common sense, to conclude that a physical barrier is immediately needed on America's southern border. It is beyond outrageous that Pelosi and Schumer have chosen political ambition over American lives.