President Trump visited the border where the prototype walls are and he was told by a border patrol officer how he and his fellow agents managed to cut illegal immigration in the San Diego area by 95%.
The agent told the president that it was chaos in San Diego. Using scrap metal, the agents constructed a crude structure to prevent people from just walking in from Mexico. The wall was successful and illegal immigration in the area dropped by 95%.
If a short wall made of scrap metal can be this effective, imagine what a full-sized wall with modern surveillance equipment could do.
In the New York Post on Sunday, columnist Paul Sperry recounted how a two-story barrier of corrugated iron built during the George W. Bush administration cut illegal immigration in the area by 89 percent.
“When the project first started in 2006, illegal crossings totaled 122,261, but by 2010, when the 131-mile fence was completed from one end of El Paso out into the New Mexico desert, immigrant crossings shrank to just 12,251,” Sperry wrote.
“They hit a low of 9,678 in 2012, before slowly ticking back up to a total of 25,193 last year. But they’re still well below pre-fence levels, and the Border Patrol credits the fortified barrier dividing El Paso from Mexico for the reduction in illegal flows.”
The effect on crime in El Paso was just as eye-opening as the numbers. Before the fence went up, according to Sperry, the sixth largest city in Texas was “mired in violent crime and drug smuggling.”
Sperry pointed out that after that barrier went up, property crimes dropped by 37% and violent crimes dropped by 6%.
The left has been trying to paint the picture that a border wall is ineffective and thus a total waste of money but examples of much shorter barriers made from scrap have indeed been highly successful.
I would be in favor of building a wall along the California border with neighboring states.