CID1990 wrote:JohnStOnge wrote:
I have two lines of thought on that. First I think there have been different takes by different Border Patrol people. Like for instance until early January the Border Patrol Union website had a statement up indicating that a wall would be a waste of money. The previous Union Leadership had that opinion. The new Union Leadership does not.
The other thought is that Border Patrol people are looking at a given situation as it is and thinking about how to address it. Hurd is thinking in more strategic terms. He is thinking that money would be better spent at the source of the problem. He thinks that there are better ways to end up with fewer people coming into the United States illegally than focusing on barriers to stop them once they've made the decision to come here.
It's hard to say. But I would say that I think a former CIA officer could very well be better equipped by experience to think in those terms than a former head of the Border Patrol is.
No, John, neither a former nor an active CIA officer would be better versed on physical border security than a former head of the agency in charge of physical border security.
Your “expert” has an opinion like everybody else, and nothing he has done in his career had anything to do with whether or not Trumps “wall” would play an effective role in border security.
It's not necessarily a matter of physical border security. That's what I was trying to get at but apparently I didn't get the point across. It's a matter of spending the money in a way that achieves the greatest reduction of illegals crossing the border.
Of course I don't know. But I've seen reports of experts on border security going both ways. Like the Border Patrol Union saying a few years ago that a wall would be a waste of money and now saying, after a change in leadership, that it's needed. Or an article like the one at
https://www.revealnews.org/article/850- ... cials-say/.
Benjamin Webb, who until last week was the executive director of the policy and planning office for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said money would be better spent on more technology and incentives to recruit new agents.
“The whole idea of building this big wall is preposterous. We already have fencing where we need it most,” he said. “It would be an incredible waste of taxpayer money.”
What I do know is that Trump said Mexico would pay for the wall. He provided media with a specific plan for how he would do that. He has made no effort to implement that plan and instead is now trying to use some kind of crock about the adjusted trade deal that hasn't been approved yet doing it while trying to get US taxpayers to do it. I also know that the majority of Americans oppose building a wall along the border and, by an overwhelming margin, support what the Democrats want to do to end the partial shutdown.
Finally, I strongly suspect that a solid majority of the People who live in the immediate vicinity of the border with Mexico are opposed to a wall. That's because every Congressperson from the Congressional Districts adjacent to the border opposes it.
Trump and the Republicans should not be doing what they're doing right now.
BTW since I'd never seen it before I checked with the site I like to use to check the source I linked above (Reveal Center for Investigative Reporting). This is what I got:
