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You see one cannot make assumptions with this administrations. You'd have the damage control dept. out in full force saying this or that was or wasn't said and/or you know exactly what the President means. You have to be crystal clear or else the spin masters will strike and try to drown out your argument.
Great big wall and Mexico will pay for it. Who will pay for it? (crowd yells) Mexico. <-- I'm all for this deal.
I don't give a crap who pays for it as long as it gets done.
I'd consider it a much better use of my tax dollars than most.
That whole Mexico paying for it narrative is pretty much diversion and sour grapes from those who are really against any meaningful border security no matter who pays for it.
Who said "all" drugs come through legal ports of entry?
No one.
However, the majority of drugs come into this country through legal points of entry, including through those many thousands of miles from the southern border.
Might want to take the blinders off and deal with that particular reality.
"TUCSON — As President Donald Trump pushes Congress to set aside more money to build additional barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, he frequently, and falsely, claims that his promised wall would help stem the flow of illegal narcotics into the country.
But data from his own administration repeatedly show that a rising number of smuggled drugs, especially more potent ones like heroin and cocaine, are increasingly seized at legal ports of entry, which are not impacted by a wall."
"Generally, the DEA says, fentanyl is shipped to the U.S. in packages directly from China or from China through Canada. Fentanyl is also smuggled across the southern border’s ports of entry."
"Transnational criminal organizations “generally route larger drug shipments destined for the Northeast through the Bahamas and/or South Florida by using a variety of maritime conveyance methods, to include speedboats, fishing vessels, sailboats, yachts, and containerized sea cargo,” the reports reads. “In some cases, Dominican Republic-based traffickers will also transport cocaine into Haiti for subsequent shipment to the United States via the Bahamas and/or South Florida corridor using maritime and air transport.”
... The DEA report does not address the wall but details how drugs enter the country, and many of the examples illustrate that it is not through land routes. “According to DEA reporting, the majority of the heroin available in New Jersey originates in Colombia and is primarily smuggled into the United States by Colombian and Dominican groups via human couriers on commercial flights to the Newark International Airport,” the document states."
""[Now] well over 95% of the drugs are moving on the water via container ships, non-commercial vessels, pleasure boats, sail boats, fishing boats. They also have fast boats which try to outrun our law enforcement assets.
"We've seen growing use of self-propelled semi-submersibles (SPSSs) - low-profile vessels made out of marine-grade plywood [and] fibreglass with commercial engines. The smugglers spend up to a $1m (£665,000) to build one of these SPSSs for what is often just a one-way voyage."
...
"The cartels are always looking for a guaranteed way to cross narcotics into the US, and a sophisticated tunnel can allow them to cross large-scale loads. Last month we interdicted a tunnel in San Diego and seized more than 10 tonnes of marijuana.
"Compare that to sending four guys across with 30 pounds of marijuana on their backs, who have to navigate the mountains, evade Border Patrols and arrange delivery, and you can see the difference in profit."
Sure there are still poor people forced into being low level drug mules, but these highly sophisticated organizations are way past risking millions of dollars in goods on individuals more likely to die alone in the desert than to make it across the border successfully.
Time to accept that we are now in the 21st century.
We don't have many thousands of miles of border to the south of us. Our southern border is less that 2,000 miles. Why wouldn't a good barrier help to stem the flow of drugs? It would for those that are not coming through a legal port of entry. Geesh!
My main concern is the number of illegals coming here raping our country economically. They make up the largest number of illegals entering our country.
I applaud the effort to insist on quoting verbatim, understanding quotes in their proper context, getting the facts right in any case......
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
Though that effort was sorely lacking back when Obama was the one being misquoted or misrepresented, I find this all the more humorous now after Trump HAS been quoted verbatim, so many times, "caught on tape" with so many falsehoods and half-truths, all of no matter to Trump supporters. Now we're suddenly going to get serious about what was actually said or meant? ...
Are you talking strictly here on CD? Because if not, then you were not watching the news...when the right would catch and twist something, the news would go for days saying, that's not what he said or meant.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
Okay, but again the dynamic of partisan hypocrisy rules the day, and quite frankly, I really have to wonder how much of what Trump says here -- verbatim -- is actually true. How many vehicles are we talking about?...
I've called trump a liar, here on CD.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
How many of these "unbelievable vehicles" are "stronger, bigger, and faster vehicles than our police have, and than ICE has, and than Border Patrol has?"...
Again, was not quoting for that portion.
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Originally Posted by LearnMe
I really have to wonder, but why bother with the actual facts and numbers when it's the rhetoric that matters most! Believe what Trump says here too and maybe what we ought to be doing is spending $5 billion on "stronger, bigger and faster vehicles" for all our border patrol agents! Might even get some support from our auto makers for that! ...
Fact is, he lies so often, doing so in the same sentence shouldn't be a big deal, but it is so clearly Trump being Trump that it deserved to be highlighted.
Why should we accept him saying "obviously he didn't mean..." when he repeated it ad nauseam during his campaign?
What was so "obvious" when he/his campaign published a paper detailing exactly how Mexico would pay for the wall?
He needs to stop playing fast and loose with the truth and people need to stop enabling him.
There is nothing essentially wrong with a bloody fence to deal (in part) with illegal immigration and the drug trade. There was, after all, the Secure Fence Act of 2006 passed to do just that.
Democrats (some immigration activists aside) are opposed to illegal immigration. Sure many may not find it problematic in numbers or impact but that does not equate to supporting open borders. Many Democrats did vote for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Votes (on both sides of the aisle) may have been driven by an expectation that the Act would set the ground for immigration reform.
That aside, one of the results of the Act were that South Texans soon became unhappy campers upset that decisions not taking actual border conditions into consideration were being made from Washington. This backlash resulted in the Hutchinson amendments (Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas) that many now believe gutted the Act by allowing for a variety of mechanisms to achieve border security not just double fencing.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) co-sponsored the Hutchison amendment along with three Democratic senators from border states.
Here's a local news story - Dallas News from May 2011.
Quote:
At the time, her aides explained that Hutchison didn’t oppose the fence. She was responding to complaints from South Texans who thought their concerns about it were ignored. Local politicians, ranchers and business groups argued that the double-layered fence would carve up private property, hurt commercial ties with Mexico, and disrupt wildlife habitats. ... Whether an expensive border fence was the right policy is another issue. It’s fair to say there is disagreement about that. Texas’ own homeland security director, Steve McCraw, told a border security panel in October 2007: “A fence isn’t going to work. It’s not the solution.” Even Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was an early skeptic. He told this newspaper in early 2006 that the fence was “a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem.”
I've no problem listening to those concerned about illegal immigration. The same courtesy, however, should be extended to those who find some proposed solutions problematic. There is no reason not to look to proposals that are data-driven and solution-driven. Closing the very government that would prepare these analyses sure does not help.
I get that this should be about the issue and not about Trump. But to have him start off with a proposal that was out-of-the-box ridiculous (trying to seal the entire border with concrete walls) that Mexico would pay for was far from helpful. At a minimum, Mexican cooperation has to be a major part of real border security. Credibility lost can be hard to regain.
Trump eyes emergency powers to pay for border wall, end shutdown
Let the lawsuits begin. The reality star better stockpile attorneys!
Quote:
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to use emergency powers to bypass Congress and get billions of dollars to pay for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, as a partial U.S. government shutdown over the issue stretched into its 20th day.
As he departed Washington for a trip to the Texas border with Mexico for wall-related events, Trump attacked the Democratic congressional leaders, who oppose his wall-funding demand, as less "honorable" than China, a rival power.
“Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around it, but get to the other side of that wall.”
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Why wouldn't a good barrier help to stem the flow of drugs? It would for those that are not coming through a legal port of entry. Geesh!
Trump eyes emergency powers to pay for border wall, end shutdown
