JimLur, bottom line Hillary's border security plan incorporating technology in remote areas was better than the physical 'wall all the way' promise of Trump's.
Basically, Donald Trump's Border Wall Already Exists
[...]
Suddenly, there hadn't been a bipartisan government effort over the last quarter-century to put in place an unprecedented array of walls, detection systems, and guards for that southern border. In those years, the number of Border Patrol agents had, in fact, quintupled .. http://ppel.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/ppelwp/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/USBP-numbers.jpg .. from 4,000 to more than 21,000, while Customs and Border Protection became the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country with more than 60,000 agents. The annual budget for border and immigration enforcement ballooned from $1.5 billion to $19.5 billion .. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2016_DHS_Budget_in_Brief.pdf .., a more than twelvefold increase. By 2016, federal funding of border and immigration enforcement added up to $5 billion more than funding for all other federal law enforcement agencies combined.
And at what cost to sea and air, and natural disaster security will Trump's fetish come?
Trump budget borrows from Coast Guard, TSA, to pay for wall
[...]
"It is ignorant of what constitutes national security," said retired Adm. James Loy, a former Coast Guard commandant who served as deputy Homeland Security secretary and TSA administrator under former-President George W. Bush, to Politico. "They simply don’t understand the equation."
According to the draft documents, OMB is seeking a 14 percent cut to the Coast Guard's $9.1 billion budget – a cut that experts say could be detrimental to its role in protecting national security. The Coast Guard interdicted 6,346 undocumented migrants, 201 metric tons of cocaine, and 52,613 pounds of marijuana in 2016, a Coast Guard official told CNN. These seizures, the official said, amount to more than three times the quantity of cocaine seized at US borders and within the country combined.
And, critics note, the construction of a border wall and hiring of additional border agents will likely increase the need for guarding ports and coastlines.
"[A]s preparations are made for a wall on the Southwest border, migrants, smugglers and potential terrorists will look to America’s shores and waterways for entry," writes Rep. Duncan Hunter (R) of California, one of Trump's earliest backers, in an opinion piece for Fox News. "Absent a strong Coast Guard, America will be less safe and President Trump’s ambition to fully reconstitute the military and enhance security will go unmet."
Defenders of the TSA, the budget of which would be cut by 11 percent, cite similar concerns. The cuts would reportedly eliminate four programs that cost the agency $187 million and have been considered, according to The Washington Post, "a vital piece of airport security and for preventing a repetition of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings after planes are aloft."
"This would be a terrible black eye, having gotten the agency well along the path of something they can be proud of," Adm. Loy, who also served as administrator of the TSA when it was established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, told Politico. "Now they would have to figure out how to do their job with significantly less resources."
"This is the amazing reality," he added, "despite the fact that the bad guys have a love affair with commercial aviation as a target."
FEMA, for its part, would also undergo an 11 percent – or $370 million – cut, including a 25 percent ($280 million) reduction in the program for countering violent extremism and preparations for a wide-scale terrorist attack, along with a 40 percent ($80 million) cut for FEMA's port transit security grant program, Politico reports. These cuts, critics say, would undermine progress made in recent years in refining the national response system in local communities throughout the country.
"When you propose not just cuts but draconian cuts, your ability to respond to a disaster can cause lives to be lost and property to be damaged," said Nick Crossley, emergency management director in Hamilton County, Ohio, and first vice president of the International Association of Emergency Managers, to the Post.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
