Fencing cut in half in Texas County hard hit by border crisis. Thanks, Democrats

Imagine if the government was still operating on a short-term stopgap budget bill? The president would have the leverage of a funding bill with all the information now available to the public depicting the unprecedented emergency at our border. Yet, that leverage was signed away for an omnibus bill that actually made the policy worse and threw pennies at a partial border fence with a number of limitations. Now, one of those limitations is coming home to roost, and it was done so by design.

To begin with, all new border barrier construction authorized in the February budget bill was limited to the liberal Rio Grande Valley (RGV) sector. Why does the politics of that border sector matter? Section 232(a) of the bill stated, “prior to use of any funds made available by this Act for the construction of physical barriers” the Department of Homeland Security “shall confer and seek to reach mutual agreement regarding the design and alignment of physical barriers within that city.” With whom must the feds consult? “The local elected officials.”

Starr County, Texas, for example, went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a margin of 79 percent to 19 percent. Not only is the RGV a Democrat bastion, sadly, many public officials and even law enforcement in the area have been indicted in recent years on charges of working with dangerous Mexican cartels. As Breitbart Texas reported at the time, several Starr County Sheriffs, among other local leaders, have been sent to prison for working with the cartels. Needless to say, there is not a lot of support among the political leaders of this area to build a wall, as I warned back in February.

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