Biden is facing high hopes, tough choices on border wall

Three things have long bothered me about this wall building. Number one is the taking of land from farming and ranching families on the border often leaving land divided by a wall and cut off from its rightful owner. The whole way the Federal Government treats the land owners is atrocious and has to stop. No respect for private property! The second is how destructive it is to the land. I love the desert southwest and hate to see it destroyed this way with massive scars from border roads and fencing. The third thing I dislike intensely are the stadium lights. It seems to me night vision systems are advanced to a point where stadium lighting isn't necessary.

I agree with artist at large, end the wall building, return lands confiscated by the Federal Government, stop the lawsuits to take more land and rely on high tech surveillance systems including large UASs with long loiter times and high powered optical systems along with smaller quadcopters with cameras and ground based equipment to find smugglers/border crossers and direct arrests.

There is already a wall in the places where one is needed. Trump spent billions to add four miles of wall, hardly a cost-effective way to secure the border.

Trump learnt how to do that from Netanyahu

The US in the past two decades has been frighteningly willing to copy too many of the policies employed by Israel.

The wall is a boondoogle and benefits no one but contractors. It should be abandoned and high tech survielence put in place instead.

Many undocumented people in the US came in legally and just overstayed their Visas

The majority of undocumented aliens enter the US that way. A border wall doesn't do a thing to prevent this from happening. I'm not sure what would short of requiring all visitors to wear a tracking device at all times.

A border wall doesn't do a thing to prevent this from happening.

Yes, it does, ever single CBP agent has stated as such and again, I trust the people that work that job every single day over some lobbyist Washington establishment hack thousands of miles away that’s never been there trying to dispute trying in futile to make a bogus counter argument.

If the border wall gets completed the Salamanca brothers will find it tough to make it into New Mexico.

On a serious note, US should do something about legal immigration reform as well.

The wall is a boondoogle and benefits no one but contractors. It should be abandoned and high tech survielence put in place instead.

More than 500 children were separated from their parents at the borders and now they don't even know where those parents are.

I certainly agree with bass4funk that walls do work. CBP and Border Patrol do a good job at our borders and a wall would make it even more efficient. Surely the wall's effectiveness would be compounded with technology that detects movement around the wall and drones to watch over areas. Even technology to detect underground tunnels being constructed would be of immense use. But besides, the wall won't only help to keep out illegal immigrants, but also drugs and potential terrorists. CBP controls the ports of entry/border crossings and Border Patrol between the ports of entry. A wall would also save lives by forcing more smugglers to bring the people they smuggle (or the people themselves trying it alone) through ports of entry. They try this with fake documents, altered documents (such as substituting a picture in a valid passport, usually a passport that was stolen), or by other means. When people are smuggled in between ports of entry many die during the trip or women are raped along the way. Think about this, a female can pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to be smuggled in by coyotes only to be raped and left alone to die in the desert along the way. What a deal! I won't even get into the billions of dollars in health care costs incurred by US hospitals (ultimately the tax payers) to treat people brought to the hospitals that have no right to be in the USA in the first place. In the meantime US citizens could not afford the health care and thus don't get it. Those billions of dollars should be spent on US citizens. Sure , these people are fleeing less than desirable countries, to be kind in my words. But that is something for those countries to fix.

As for the children separated from their parents, what the media does not tell you is that very often the adults with the children are not their actual parents. They claim to be parents in the hope of gaining entry to the USA on the grounds of family reasons. The children are then brought to relatives (or the relatives come and get them) that already live in the US. The children have contact information with them to facilitate this. The hope is that these children will eventually become US citizens and can petition for their immediate relatives south of the border, even if it takes many years. Some parents that are actual parents of the children have criminal records, thus they are separated from their children. Of course mistakes can be made, and nothing is done perfectly, but to think all the people being smuggled are totally innocent (of course the children are) would be foolish. By the way, does anyone wonder who helps to organize the migrant caravans of people that rush the US southern border? How do women and children (the majority of these migrants are male, however) travel hundreds of miles from Central America to the USA? They don't walk that distance. The answer is they are aided by the drug cartels in Mexico. Why? Because when thousands of people converge at the port of entry, personnel and resources are shifted to the port of entry, thus less enforcement between the ports. This is not a secret. The cartels know this well.

Finally, for those that don't think walls work, I have a question for you? Wherever you or family members or friends live, is there a fence around the property? Do you lock your doors at all (home and auto)? These are walls in their own way. Why do you do it? The answer is, because it works!

Many undocumented people in the US came in legally and just overstayed their Visas. A lot of contraband enters the country through legal portals disguised as something else. Look no further than the Great Wall of China to find out how effective walls are at keeping out undesirables.

The wall is a boondoogle and benefits no one but contractors. It should be abandoned and high tech survielence put in place instead.

Being born and raised in a border State, a wall does work and while NO wall is 100% stoppable, this wall massively slows potential illegals from entering into the country and even if they manage to climb and scale the first wall, there is a secondary wall they have to get over and by that time the HWBP will have intercepted them. It doesn’t matter what some Washington politician thinks in DC, what matters is what the CBP and the people working along the border think and do, these people never go there, live or work or even talk to these people. At this point they’re trying to finish before one of these men are inaugurated at 10 miles per day, so they’re working 24/7 on this.