Borderline Security For The Border

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, March 25, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Homeland Safety: Terrorists and other criminals crossing into America are at least as threatening as our economic woes. If we can spend a trillion on stimulus, we shouldn't skimp on fixing the border.



In an age of terrorism, America's borders should be (in effect, if not in physical appearance) impenetrable walls. Not a single person should be able to enter U.S. territory without the government knowing exactly who he or she is, and having given express permission for such entry.

Establishing that kind of foolproof system over an area spanning nearly 2,000 miles should have been one of our chief national priorities in the years since 9/11. Instead, both Republican and Democratic politicians wasted opportunities in fear of offending ethnic voting blocs — as they kept those very same voters, and all Americans, less safe than they should expect to be from a terrorist sleeper cell or visiting Latin American drug trafficker.

Earlier this month, the president declared in a meeting with several reporters:

"We've got a very big border with Mexico. And so I'm not interested in militarizing the border."

That shrug of the shoulders will be of little solace to future victims of the violent crimes of thugs and fanatics who shouldn't be here.

Making the border into a border is not "militarizing" it. Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Jan Brewer of Arizona are more than justified in their demands for as many as 1,000 more National Guard troops.

Phoenix, 180 miles into the U.S., now outrageously ranks second in the world for kidnappings, with more than 560 of them in 2007 and the first half of 2008 as drug lords from south of the border use ransoms to help finance their operations.

With much fanfare, the Obama administration this week announced details of its program to fight this crisis and secure the border. At a cost of $700 million, Homeland Security Secretary and former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano laid out a plan for the U.S. and Mexican governments to destroy Mexico's drug cartels.

It includes giving Mexico five new helicopters to patrol the border and, as described by Attorney General Eric Holder, possibly reviving the assault weapons ban that ended in 2004. (There are disputed claims that the cartels get much of their firepower from the U.S.)

The president would also triple the intelligence operatives working the border, double the border enforcement security task force personnel, increase the 1,000 Drug Enforcement Administration positions in the southwest region by 16, transfer 100 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employees to the area, and establish a new FBI intelligence operation focused on Mexico.

He will also reportedly quadruple the number of U.S. border liaison officers working with Mexican law enforcement.

But is this just a wall of bureaucracy that America is building to keep the killers out?

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas expressed support for the increased resources and personnel but worried that "the administration appears to be using border violence as an excuse to reduce interior enforcement of our immigration laws and enact gun restrictions."

Relocating hundreds of federal law enforcement officers to the border might "undercut our national security and immigration enforcement responsibilities," Smith fretted.

What's more, the president is at the same time planning a White House immigration summit before the end of May aimed at finding a way to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently appeared at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus forum on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's workplace raids to track down illegals, raids she has called "un-American." Under Obama, the Department of Homeland Security recently imposed a "partial moratorium" on immigration enforcement workplace raids.

All the paper pushers in the world sent down to the Rio Grande and Nogales will mean little if we don't have the stomach to let authorities catch those already here in violation of our laws — some of whom most certainly are violent criminals, even terrorists-in-waiting.

A single illegal border crossing can mean the presence of a professional killer walking the streets of an American city, seeking prey. Yet we continue to wait for the Department of Homeland Security to finish the 700-mile fence along our southern border commissioned by law in 2006. In January, Congress' nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported only 32 miles of new double-layered barrier had been completed.

"Fortress America" may be a much-maligned concept, but walls and barbed-wire fences keep killers inside penitentiaries. They'll keep killers outside America too.

My suggestion:

1. Let Department of Homeland Security/Immigration and Customs Enforcement man the official border crossing points and continue to round up illegal aliens inside the country. If Nancy Pelosi doesn't like that, she can resign in protest or cast an evil spell on the economy or something.

2. Militarize the border. We don't need law enforcement on the border, we need blunt force, stop the invasion, HOOAH! Active, Reserve and National Guard units continue to train in the US between deployments to Southwest Asia. Each branch of the service has highly capable civil engineer units who could erect a dandy fortified wall along the border, complete with booby traps, sensors, sniper positions or whatever was required. The wall could be patrolled and backed up by combat units such as mechanized or airmobile infantry, armor, Army or Air Force gunships, whatever level of lethal force was required to protect the border.