Donald Trump's idea for building a giant wall at the Mexican border would be the least-effective way to secure the region, Texas Rep. William Hurd said Tuesday, as criminals would still be able to come over.
"You can't build a wall from sea to shining sea," the Texas Republican told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show. "It doesn't work. It's the most expensive way to do border security and the least-effective."
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Already with the existing wall, narcotics traffickers have still been able to build ramps "and they've driven a one-ton truck over," Hurd continued, conceding that a wall "makes sense" in heavily populated regions.
But instead of a comprehensive, multi-billion dollar wall, the Texas lawmaker said, provisions should be allowed for Border Patrol agents to adjust their procedures as they see fit, as "you can't have a one-size fits all solution" that works in all areas along the border.
Hurd told the show that as a CIA undercover officer for nine years, one of his jobs was to stamp visas by day and collect intelligence by night.
"I can talk until you all are blue in the face about our broken visa system," he said. "We fix that and create incentives to come here legally and punishments of coming here illegally, you do those the things, you will solve 89 to 92 percent of the problem."
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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