U.S. Customs and Border Protection area chiefs said that border walls do stop people from crossing the border illegally and give police a better chance of arresting them.
The Biden administration stated it would build 20 miles of border wall in Texas with money left over from Trump’s presidency. This made the president say that he doesn’t think border walls work.
“The funds were set aside for the construction of the border wall. I tried to get them to take it back, to change where that money was going. They did not. They wouldn’t,” Biden said.
As a part of the House’s probe into Alejandro Mayorkas’s performance as Homeland Security Secretary, oversight groups talked to Border Patrol sector heads and asked them if walls help stop people from coming into the country illegally.
“When used correctly and in the right place, any type of infrastructure—we’ll use the barrier as an example—can increase the force. I would like to use different kinds of force boosters in other situations.” According to Townhall, retired Del Rio Sector Chief Jason Owens, “A physical barrier is most helpful for us in places where we’ve got what we like to identify as short vanishing points.”
“That is where a person can get close, crossover the border, and then swiftly disappear.” Owens, who is now head of the Border Patrol, said, “That physical barrier gives me and my team more time to take action and interdict, and it makes arrest more likely.”
“The wall slows down these individuals as they come across,” said Aaron Heitke, who was Chief Patrol Agent for the San Diego Sector at that time. “This gives us additional time to take action and actually make an arrest. Barriers make it harder to get through, so they go to other places where barriers aren’t as strong, where we can focus our efforts. All-weather roads are also a part of the barriers, allowing us quicker and better access to such places.”
According to Dustin Caudle, Deputy Chief of the Yuma Sector, 14 holes are “exploited almost every day.”
“Again, rather than merely having a recognized weakness, we could shift men, resources, and assets far more easily if all of the holes were addressed. The door is usually used if it’s open,” he said.
Also, California’s El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino is in charge of 60 miles of border wall and seems to want more.
“As early as 1996, there was no wall along the border in the El Centro Sector where I worked. There are currently fewer vehicle incursions over the desert between the ports of entry in many of the locations where border walls are present, and there are fewer pedestrian crossings at the border, particularly in regions where the 33-foot wall is present,” according to Bovino.
After seeing the border both with and without a wall, Bovino came to the conclusion that a wall “provides the agents a tool as well as an advantage when dealing with the border.”
