1/I worked on Obama's DHS Human Smuggling Cell, we regularly documented migrants transiting up the southwest smuggling corridor to the US from countries with terror ties. ISSUE: if they have never been encountered by the IC or LE, how can you tell they have no terror ties?
2/These migrants may have legitimate documents, may have a great "cover" story, but if the intel community or law enforcement can't tie them to any records, then they can claim asylum (be detained or released) and see a immigration judge.
3/Most discussion of the southwest border is from critics that do not grasp the border reality; it is a smuggling/trafficking highway for billions$ & billions$ a year in illicit business. Criminals, cartels, smugglers, want open borders.
4/You cannot take a field trip or photo-op at the border and grasp what is really going on around you. As a Border Patrol agent I didn't know there were tunnels under my feet, not until I was a special agent working on tunnels did I know that..
5/Want to know the reality? Talk to the @CBP agents on the ground, talk to an agent that just tracked a group of narco-backpackers for 8 hours and lost them, talk to the HSI special agent that followed a load of cocaine from San Ysidro to NYC or a rural house outside Hope, NJ
6/Speak to the police officer that pulled over a tractor trailer on I-35N on its way to Minnesota with 100 economic migrants for cargo. Talk to the Vice cop in Austin, TX that saved a teenage undocumented female from a sex trafficker.
7/Politicians, critics, MSM, etc may have an idea of what the border is, but its the people affected by the border that know it. We need tech, barriers, personnel, bi-partisan LAWS!, and compromise to secure our border and protect victims of trafficking/smuggling.
