The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
There’s also little debate that border walls are needed: about a third of the frontier is already fenced off.
But Trump has turned his single-minded push for more walls into a political crusade seen by opponents as a stunt to stoke xenophobia in his right-wing voter base, while wilfully ignoring the border’s complex realities.
For Trump, who visited the Texas border with Mexico on Thursday, the border situation amounts to an invasion by criminals that can only be solved by more walls.
“We have a country that’s under siege,” he told the local officials in the White House.
Some studies show that illegal immigrants generally commit fewer crimes than people born in the United States, although not everyone agrees on this.
More certain is that while narcotics do enter the country across remote sections of the border, most are sneaked through heavily guarded checkpoints in vehicles, the government’s own Drug Enforcement Administration said in a 2017 report.
It said that most smuggling is done “through US ports of entry (POEs) in passenger vehicles with concealed compartments or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers.”
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives and a key figure in opposing Trump’s agenda, said money should be spent in many areas of border security, but not on walls.
“We need to look at the facts,” she said.
But Trump accused the Democrats of only wanting to score points against him with a view to the 2020 presidential elections.
“They think, ‘Gee, we can hurt Trump,'” he said. “The Democrats are just following politics.”
