A Manufactured Crisis

“The irony of the wall is it works best the further you are from the border.”

Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico

Indicted Trump advisor, Roger Stone, is given credit for suggesting the notion of building a wall along the Mexican border that Mexico would pay for as a one of Donald Trump’s core campaign platform. It was a bad idea then and a much worse idea today. A fourth century castle wall is an inane waste of U.S. taxpayer money – since Mexico is not paying for it – and among the least effective strategies for border security in the 21^st century. Sure, a few barriers well-placed might be appropriate (much of that already exists), but lugging drugs and terrorists seeking easy entry are not reinforced by spending days crossing harsh freezing/broiling waterless deserts; there are a lot of human bones out there from those who failed.

Listening to Trump’s Rose Garden January 25^th concession speech – approving a bill that would reopen all of the federal government for three weeks with no money pledged for a wall – I listened to his repeated argument of drugs pouring across an open border, murderers and gang members entering the United States to wreak mayhem on innocent Americans and terrorists blending in to mount horrific attacks against civilian targets. Statistically false, every claim. That 90% of illicit drugs flow through traditional ports of entry, that undocumented emigres commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born citizens, that undocumented crossings are at an all-time low and that terrorists tend to enter the U.S. legitimately with visas – statistically-supported facts – were simply ignored. 

Trump has to be planning to reinvent the Constitution and move appropriations to the White House as he hinted that if Congress won’t vote for his wall, he might finally declare a national emergency to divert military or disaster relief money to building his wall. At least if he lost in the courts, he could explain to his slogan-eating base that he did everything he could, but the swamp ate his homework. He decries the “humanitarian crisis” at the border, one that his reversal of policies actually created, as a major justification for a national emergency, but no one has explained exactly how beginning to build a long concrete wall has anything to do with fixing that sad reality.

Trump claims his victory in the 2016 elections was his mandate to build the wall. Perhaps he missed the subsequent 2018 mid-terms that sent a decidedly different message. Folks seem to have changed their minds, noting that there has not been a single neutral poll conducted in the last few months that did not reflect that the majority of voting Americans simply don’t want that monolithic wall, just safe and sane border security. The above NY Times map (1/25) reflects the post-mid-term configuration of Republican and Democrat districts along our border with Mexico. Ah, you say, but a very long section of our border is Republican; so that should count for something in support of building that wall. Not remotely.

There is not one single congressional district along that proposed border wall – there are nine of them – where the elected congressperson is in favor of the wall. Sure, voters in South Dakota or Wyoming are gung-ho for that wall. It’s a catchy slogan, and they do not have to live with the consequences. But the closer you are to Mexico… people living on or near that border don’t want it, and they are the most impacted. The surest way to lose a congressional race along that border is to champion Donald Trump’s wall. Democrat… or Republican.

“Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican who represents more of the southern border than any other member of Congress, was one of a handful of Republicans to side with Democrats … on the [earlier] funding bill [without money for the wall]… Hurd, who is the only black Republican in the 116th House of Representatives, won a second term in Congress during the midterms while campaigning against the wall, narrowly winning his re-election. Political strategists have said that Mr. Trump's last-minute, hardline rhetoric around what he called the ‘border crisis’ nearly cost Hurd his seat in Congress…  Prior to the government shutdown, Hurd — a former undercover CIA agent — had introduced another idea: legislation for a ‘smart border wall,’ a technology-focused initiative that he claimed would cost less than $1 billion.” CBSNews.com, January 8^th.

We know the wall, if built, will take several years under the best of circumstances. So future seatings of Congress will have to deal with additional allocations to keep that wall under construction. New Mexico has moved from purple to blue, and Latino voters in Texas and Arizona are beginning to push their states into purple. California… well… you know! As the entire American electorate is shifting younger very fast (a bad sign for the GOP), future sessions of Congress will decreasingly be willing to keep funding a wall, even if Trump manages to force the issue in the immediate future. At best, that wall will only be very partially built, reinforcing the waste of taxpayer money.

Trump’s rhetoric, his manufactured crisis at the border, has become a major turn-off to recruiting new border agents. “Two years after President Trump signed orders to hire 15,000 new border agents and immigration officers, the administration has spent tens of millions of dollars in the effort — but has thousands more vacancies than when it began… In a sign of the difficulties, Customs and Border Protection allocated $60.7 million to Accenture Federal Services, a management consulting firm, as part of a $297-million contract to recruit, vet and hire 7,500 border officers over five years, but the company has produced only 33 new hires so far.

“The president’s promised hiring surge steadily lost ground even as he publicly hammered away at the need for stiffer border security, warned of a looming migrant ‘invasion’ and shut down parts of the government for five weeks over his demands for $5.7 billion from Congress for a border wall… The Border Patrol gained a total of 120 agents in 2018, the first net gain in five years… But the agency has come nowhere close to adding more than 2,700 agents annually, the rate that Kevin McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, has said is necessary to meet Trump’s mandated 26,370 border agents by the end of 2021…

“For its part, Customs and Border Protection requested $330 million to hire 1,250 Border Patrol agents and build capacity to ultimately hire 5,000, according to [a Government Accounting Office] report… Congress gave the agency about $65 million in 2017 to improve hiring practices and to offer incentives for agents to transfer to understaffed sites. In 2018, it provided $20 million more than the agency sought for recruitment and retention.

“‘CBP faced high attrition rates even before the Trump administration made it a polarizing organization,’ said [Bernie] Thompson, the House Homeland Security chairman.” Los Angeles Times, January 27^th. Those who matter clearly know Trump’s numbers are false and that both his expectations and solutions won’t work. Trump cannot even manage his own prior border-solution directives.

Stupid is stupid. Ill-conceived and now reflecting little more than a bruised ego that must cater to an illogical base, the wall does not remotely provide the border security Trump promises. “‘It's a 4th-century solution to a 21st century problem,’ said [Texas] Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat and one of the lawmakers along the southern border who voted against funding the wall.

“Gonzalez doesn't oppose border security. He said, ‘Nobody wants stronger border control than me.’ But he's against adding to the existing border wall because he doesn't ‘think it brings real border security and it comes at a major cost to taxpayers,’ the lawmaker… in a telephone interview with CBS News.

‘During a private dinner with Mr. Trump last year, the congressman suggested a ‘virtual border wall,’ one that would use technology and existing military surveillance equipment currently not in use. But Mr. Trump wasn't interested in non-physical alternatives, Gonzalez said… ‘At the time I thought we were going to be able to have a reasonable conversation,’ Gonzalez said. ‘I had no idea it was going to get this crazy.’” CBSNews.

“To James Kolbe, a Republican who in the 1990s and 2000s represented the Arizona congressional seat that flipped in the midterms, south and east of Tucson, the president’s rhetoric about illegal immigrants was reminiscent of the white-hot anger he heard at town hall events in the mid-2000s. But that talk is out of date, he said, because the reality on the southern border is far different.

“With illegal immigration near a 50-year low, more Mexicans are leaving the United States than entering. Meanwhile, there is a spike in families and children from Central America turning themselves in to border agents… Critics of the Trump administration say the actual border crisis is one of its own making because it has failed to allocate resources to process asylum seekers and humanely house children and families.” New York Times, January 25^th.

Outlasting and out-politicking the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made it very clear that while the Democrats are quite willing to support funding for enhanced border security, they will never allocate any money to Trump’s archaic wall. Welcome to the beginning of the battle between a Democratic House and a GOP presidency. Democracy can get very sticky.

              I’m Peter Dekom, from a simple practical analysis, the Trump wall is a rather obvious non-starter.