Tornado Alley (PROG)

[JimLur]

Obama's wall . What a joke



Obama says the border fence is 'now basically complete'



In his speech in El Paso on immigration reform on May 10, 2011, President Obama declared that the fence along the border with Mexico is "now basically complete."

Still, he predicted that many Republican opponents won't be satisfied.

"We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," Obama said. "All the stuff they asked for, we’ve done. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I’ve got to say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time."

"They'll want want a higher fence," Obama said. "Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics."

Fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border has long been a thorny political issue, so with Obama declaring mission accomplished, we decided to check it out.

Department of Homeland Security officials told us they have finished 649 out of 652 miles of fencing (99.5 percent), which includes 299 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fence.

But the same day as Obama's speech, Sen. Jim DeMint penned an op-ed for National Review in which he countered that the Obama administration has "not done its job to finish the border fence that is a critical part of keeping Americans safe and stopping illegal immigration."

"Five years ago, legislation was passed to build a 700-mile double-layer border fence along the southwest border," DeMint wrote. "This is a promise that has not been kept. Today, according to staff at the Department of Homeland Security, just 5 percent of the double-layer fencing is complete, only 36.3 miles."

So what gives? Is the border fence "now basically complete" or not?

Not to go all Clinton on you, but it largely depends on how you define "fence."

You need to go back to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President George W. Bush. It authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing along the border with Mexico. The act specified "at least two layers of reinforced fencing."

But the law was quietly altered in a significant way the following year.

Responding to urging from the Department of Homeland Security -- which argued that different border terrains required different types of fencing, that a one-size-fits-all approach across the entire border didn't make sense -- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, proposed an amendment to give DHS the discretion to decide what type of fence was appropriate in different areas. The law was amended to read, "nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location."