“Walls work!” I keep hearing this from conservatives and Trump supporters with regard to the border wall. They point to the voices of Border Patrol agents who say that a wall is necessary for them to do their job effectively.
I get that, and I do not deny that a wall will help them do their jobs. But the thing about saying, “Walls work”, is that it stops short of the truth, which is that, “Walls work, but they do not work by themselves.”
This truth was absolutely solidified for me as I watched an interview with a quartet of Federal Prison workers during the January 7, 2019 episode of HBO’s Vice News Tonight. The men were Trump voters and some military veterans, with all being proponents of the idea of a walls being used to boost security. The interview was mostly about how the shutdown impacted them (something worthy of discussion), but when they asked whether they thought a wall was necessary they stated this idea clearly – as guards in a prison they know that walls serve a strong purpose in keeping what is inside the walls from reaching other side, but it is not just the walls that do this alone but the people, technology, and other factors that are a constant presence and expense that make the walls effective.
In other words, a wall is a barrier that can be easily overcome unless you are prepared to invest in the things that actively enforce the security provided by those walls.
And this is where the idea of $5 billion for a wall falls apart. For even as it falls short by a factor of 4-6x when you ask conservative experts about the cost of building such a structure, it does not include a penny of investment in the things that make a wall effective.
What are those things?
When asked, John Kostelnik, Federal corrections officer and president of their Union, said, “We work in a prison and I’ll say this much, a wall is a tool. If you don’t have the staff inside of it, if you’re not paying that staff, walls don’t mean shit. Period. So if this is all about a wall it’s going to fail. But if he’s going to staff and pay the people, and put the right equipment on the walls – cameras and whatever we have inside the prisons – then it could be a tool that could be effective.”
Ignoring the parts that allude to the shutdown, how much have we heard about the people and the, “cameras and whatever we have inside the prisons”? Nothing!! Truthfully, we don’t even know that we have a wall any more, it could just be some form of “steel slats, artistically designed”.
Regardless the $5 billion that is being asked for is not just woefully short of the amount required to actually build it, the money that would be required to equip, staff, and maintain it has never been openly presented by this administration, but it will likely be exponentially greater on an annual basis than the amount for which this president has shut down our government.
I do not echo the sentiments of officer, veteran, Trump voter and supporter Edward Canales when he says, “You can have the tallest wall in the world but if you don’t have the staff (pause), why not try to compromise? Why not say, ‘You know what, let’s increase border patrol, let’s rotate national guard units it, and let’s see if that works.’”, but I do believe that all reasonable options that would also be necessary to make the wall effective once built have not been discussed nor considered as factors in increasing border security on their own by this administration, his party, and his supporters, and they really must be.
If there truly is an emergency on the border (there isn’t, and the people there will tell you as much) then why not first look to fund additional agents with access to modern technology, like drones with thermal imaging cameras that can monitor movement remotely and send units to where they are needed?
Walls may work, but would the things that allow them to be effective work on their own? I believe they would.