Most Americans are grateful to have a president who will "stand up for the rule of law" and do the job of protecting the border of the United States, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who fought for several years to secure her state's border with Mexico, said Thursday, and she is grateful as well.
"It's the federal government's responsibility to secure our borders and you know, I was whistling in the wind for so long to finally have somebody in D.C. that is going to get it done," Brewer told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" of President Donald Trump and his executive order authorizing the construction of a wall at the Mexican border. "It's almost unbelievable but I'm so encouraged."
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday announced through Twitter that he will not attend a planned meeting on Jan. 31 with Trump, hours after Trump tweeted the meeting should be canceled if Mexico won't pay for the wall.
But Brewer said there are many ways to collect the money from Mexico, including through Visa application or border use fees.
"In fact, here in Arizona in 2006, we did a report where $1.1 billion dollars were confiscated of illegal dollars that could be included in helping to build the wall, and that's just Arizona alone," said Brewer "If we took in California and Texas and New Mexico, we would have it paid in a minute. But I believe Donald Trump, I believe the president knows what he is saying and I know that he gets done what he says he is going to do. So we're totally encouraged."
And even if money has to be appropriated in advance, it would be "well worth it" to secure the border, said Brewer, "taking into consideration certainly what we have spent in Arizona."
Brewer noted that out of a $9 billion budget, she was spending $2 billion on "illegal immigration, taking the services, education, the health, incarceration, dealing with the drop houses, the prostitution, the trafficking, the sex trafficking, the drug cartels. I mean, it just is impossible to keep up with it."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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