A few nearsighted naysayers in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley may not like it, but a border wall will be good for public safety and their communities. The wall-bangers’ problem is in failing to see both sides of a dangerous picture.
While much of the conversation about the wall is rightly focused on the ease by which illegal aliens break into the U.S., there should be equivalent concern about the return trips to Mexico.
Texas sheriffs regularly respond to residential burglaries by criminals headed back south. It would be difficult, to say the least, to drive stolen cars or carry loot over a ladder on the way home.
A border wall saves lives by stanching weaponry, drugs and human trafficking, while protecting the environment. A hardened barrier, better than any type of reactive technology, blocks vehicles that transport trouble in bulk.
Whether wall critics admit it or not, anyone with eyes to see knows the borderlands are extremely dangerous.
Two Mexican border cities rank among the most dangerous in the world. One Mexican state bordering the United States is subject to the strictest travel warnings the State Department issues, due to criminal activity and violence.
Noting that nearly half of all federal crimes prosecuted in the United States are committed within miles of the southern border, Texan Benjamin Dierker wrote in the Federalist last month:
“It is only rational to construct a barrier between dangerous places and safe ones. The wall would reduce the spillover of violence, drugs, and burglary that plague so many along the border.”
Which side of the wall would you rather be on?