Industry Focus

Border Security: At What Price?

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Jan 01, 2015

Aside from security on campus or in the K-12 environment, there is nothing more passionate than border security. Border security elicits conversation about immigration, and about today’s White House initiative to protect 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

At the root of this conversation should be the fact that there are rules and means to enter this country legally to gain citizenship and work opportunities. There is security at the border for a reason: that being to halt undocumented immigrants from entering this country illegally.

Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) said that the president’s unilateral plan on immigration reform to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants is both “misguided” and it is “clearly an overreach of the office.”

To me, this type of thinking on the part of the president flies in the face of security at the border. These millions of people made it past the secure southern border, and now, years later could be part of an amnesty program that flaunts security. We should not be rewarding people who break the law. There are legal means to enter this country, and those laws must be respected, especially with regards to the Constitution.

While we are a nation of immigrants, we should remain welcoming to those people who want to come here under the legal and appropriate circumstances. My ancestors were immigrants who came to this country from Denmark. They came here knowing the law and what it would take to become citizens of this country.

How do immigration issues stack up against border security?

By granting amnesty before reforming the system and strengthening security at our borders, the White House is creating problems, not fixing them. The Constitution charges the president with the responsibility to ensure the laws that Congress makes are faithfully executed.

Voters during the mid-term elections sent a strong and sincere message to the president and to Congress. That mandate was that we want Washington to listen to us. Acting with a personal agenda is not what the American people want.

Securing our borders requires that we allocate the resources, surveillance technology and manpower necessary to ensure that those people crossing our borders are doing so legally. By starting here, millions of unlawful immigrants will not be able to infringe upon every legal citizen’s right to pursue the American dream.

You can’t talk about border security without mentioning Texas Gov. Rick Perry. I live in Texas as well, and believe that the governor has been a leader on border security while the federal government has faltered. Perry has put more boots on the ground to secure the border, and has been more willing to use the latest technology and targeted operations to dramatically reduce all crime along the border.

“We cannot have homeland security without border security,” Perry said. “Texas’ increased law enforcement presence in the border region is all the more necessary as the federal government continues to ignore the very real issue of border security in favor of political posturing on immigration.”

Without border security, immigration reform is a fruitless exercise.

The governor said that the president’s announcement of executive action granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in the United States makes a mass migration scenario more likely than ever before. The Lone Star State has a state-led operation— dubbed Operation Strong Safety—in the Rio Grande Valley. Since its beginning, federal authorities’ weekly apprehensions of illegal aliens have dropped dramatically; nearly 73 percent.

“The problem at our border is much greater than the current crisis involving unaccompanied children illegally entering the United States,” Boozman said. “Our borders are far too porous. We must secure out borders. We must stop allowing individuals to enter the country illegally without recourse. We must hold those who break the law accountable.” “No immigration reform policies we pass will be effective until we secure the border.”

History has proven that amnesty only perpetuates a cycle of illegal entry into this county. This was true in the 1980s, and has proven true under this administration’s decision to prosecute lawbreakers, and when not to. Last summer, because of the administration’s refusal to enforce the United States’ immigration laws, at least 60,000 unaccompanied children made a perilous journey through our borders.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who is the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said that the administration has increasingly lax enforcement policies and a perception of amnesty that has become a powerful magnet that encourages more illegal immigration.

“This year (2014), the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 479,000 individuals along the Southern Border but less than half were deported,” McCaul said. “Those who remained were given notices to appear before an immigration judges, with a court date years away, and released into the country. We know that the majority will never check back in with authorities.”

Border security needs an actionable plan to include the use of drones, wide-area surveillance systems, sensors and other technologies that can monitor the border and given Border Patrol agents better, faster and critical information to help them secure the border.

This article originally appeared in the issue of .