Mission, Texas — Democrats show no interest in solving illegal immigration, and they downplay the drug and humanitarian problems it causes, yet liberals in the media never ask them to explain why.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has so far said she’s unwilling to do anything on immigration, so long as the White House refuses to sign a bill funding the small portion of the government that’s been shut down for a month.

As agents here at the southernmost point of Texas will tell you, the way to deter smugglers from bringing in drugs and undocumented immigrants from Mexico is to install cameras, strategically place personnel, and build a physical barrier.

In the Rio Grande Valley Sector, where illegal crossing apprehensions are tens of thousands higher than anywhere else, they have pieces of all three of these. But what they’re asking for first and foremost is more wall.

“This area used to be almost unmanageable, a lot worse,” border agent Hermann Rivera told me Friday. I asked him what made the difference. “The wall,” he said.

Division chief John Morris said the same thing. When they say “wall,” they’re referring to a 25-foot-high barrier that was first built around 2005. It acts as a reinforcement for levies that help prevent flooding from the Rio Grande.

There is about 12 feet of concrete that comes up, vertical with the levee. Atop that is another 13 feet of steel slats, placed side by side.

Agents at the border say they want more of it. The White House says they can have it. Democrats say they can’t. Why?

When the border patrol took me on a tour of the area here Friday, we saw a riverbank where smugglers simply load up a small raft or boat with people or drugs, push it across the river, and dump them onto U.S. soil.



People congregate on Mexican side of the U.S. border. (Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)

If the cargo is people, Morris told me that they’re instructed by smugglers (who often rape the women they’re carting) to simply walk up the path away from the river and an agent will greet them — as if the border patrol were a welcoming committee.

So far, this is what Democrats have indicated they support. Border agents want wall. Democrats want free daycare for immigrants here illegally.

On our tour, we came across a family unit of eight: one woman and seven children. They told Morris that a person on the other side of the river carried them across into the U.S.

“We walked to the river, and they put us on a raft and pushed us across and said just to walk this way and then that’s how we got lost,” the woman told Morris. “And we walked around the brush all night and we just decided to sit down because we’re hungry and we’re tired.”

Morris called an agent who specializes in paramedics to care for the family, and then we kept moving to the riverbank.

Looking just across the Rio Grande, I saw yet another group of people who Morris was certain had been brought there by smugglers, ready to cross.

They looked back at us and then one of them, likely their smuggler, started cursing at us from across the river in Spanish. He made signs at us and then began slingshotting rocks at us, one of which hit a tree about 10 feet from me. We had to leave the spot.



One man seen on Mexican side of southern border yells obscenities and makes hand signs across Rio Grande. (Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)

Agents say more wall won’t stop illegal immigration, but that it will make it easier for them to apprehend anyone trying to make their way into the country outside of a legal port of entry.

Democrats don’t support a wall. They also don’t support changing the asylum law, which Morris repeatedly referred to as a “loophole.” They don’t support anything that deters the influx of people making their way into the U.S. without anyone knowing who they are.

Border agents have told us what they want and why they want it. Why won’t Democrats give it to them?