As former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pointed out, if you build a 50-foot wall, you’ll soon be confronted with a 51-foot ladder.
ALAN BERSINThere have been enormous advances since 9/11 to build a very robust set of targeting procedures and watch lists to screen travelers coming to the United States.
More Alan Bersin Quotes
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That’s the way in which they get entry into a system that will eventually release them into the country.
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Trust and confidence that have been built is not something that should be abandoned without great consideration for the potentially grave consequences to the United States.
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In today’s digital online world, those who don’t share information will be isolated and left behind. We need the data of other countries to connect the dots.
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This is true despite the significant poverty, and the class and geographic inequality that have deep historical roots.
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And we have to work together to secure the continent in order to keep dangerous people and dangerous things out and strengthen perimeter security on a continental basis.
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But in fact as Secretary of Homeland Security General John Kelly acknowledged at his confirmation hearing, walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.
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And they seek out Border Patrol agents or Customs and Border Protection officials to surrender to them and request political asylum.
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In the last generation we’ve moved past a U.S.-Mexico relationship that while friendly on the surface, and demilitarized for the most part, really was not a genuinely cooperative relationship.
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And there are places on the border, such as the Arizona desert or the open terrain around the Big Bend in South Texas, where Mother Nature has created her own barrier that is not easily passable. Or if you do pass through it, you are easily detected.
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Twenty-nine US states depend on Mexico as their primary export market.
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We have a combined population of half a billion people; peaceful trade-friendly borders that are the envy of the world.
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Until we have a legitimate labor market between Mexico and the United States, people will attempt to come here to work.
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To the extent that President Trump means strengthened border security, I am fully in favor of the idea that the rule of the law, secure borders and public safety should prevail. Drugs should not enter illegally.
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The image and the costs of a Berlin-like wall or a Great Wall of China is something that the American people have not accepted to date.
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There are plainclothes US officers stationed at airports in Mexico working with Mexican immigration officials to protect the United States.
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