According to President Donald Trump, the only way the United States will ever be safe is if we build a wall on the border with Mexico. If we do, he claims, we will greatly reduce violent crime, drug smuggling, and human trafficking.
But according to the former acting director of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) in the Obama administration, even if Trump builds a wall a mile high and 10,000 miles long, it’s doomed to be a failure.
John Sandweg was a guest on the MSNBC program “Andrea Mitchell Reports” Friday and he laid out exactly what’s happening at the border and why a wall will solve nothing:
“You know, the funny thing, Andrea, the wall is not going to be effective for what the president is calling the crisis. What we’re facing today, we have a total lower number of people crossing that border unlawfully. The total is much lower than historically, 15 years ago. More importantly, the composition is changed. Fully, a third of the people are families. Parents with children or just the children themselves fleeing violence in Central America.”
The vast majority of the people currently seeking asylum in the U.S are not coming here seeking employment, so Trump’s message of economic fear to lower-income American workers is invalid. They’re also not coming to smuggle drugs. They’re families, and they’re leaving the horror of their home countries where they feel their lives and the lives of their children are in constant jeopardy.
Sandweg then explained why the wall is not going to stop the flood of refugees to this country:
“All the people want to do is get their foot on American soil. They don’t need to infiltrate their way into the United States. They just need to get their foot on the soil to make an asylum claim. The problem with the wall is not there. It’s not going to prevent them from entering the United States. Especially the area where the president was yesterday, that’s The Rio Grande Valley. If you look at that river, it snakes its way, that’s our border. It’s not like the wall is going to be on that border. It will be inland. If it could be built tomorrow — it can’t — it will prevent those Central Americans from getting their feet on American soil, which is what they want to do.”
The wall is part of Trump’s larger plan of white nationalism, the same noxious mix of racism, anger, and willful ignorance that has long been spouted by one of his former top White House aides, Steve Bannon.
Make no mistake. Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn about crime, drugs, or human trafficking. He simply wants to try and guarantee that white people with large sums of money are allowed to control this country for as long as possible. This isn’t about a wall. It’s about skin color and and greed.
Here’s Joe Sandweg on MSNBC:
The former acting director of ICE explains why Trump’s wall will fail. https://t.co/z41rdCOqzY pic.twitter.com/1fAYlJJLZY
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 11, 2019
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