Building the wall at the Mexican border is important to the United States' security, new Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview airing Thursday, and it bothers her that people in Washington are playing politics to its implementation.
"This is key to the security of our homeland," Nielson told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade who met with her at the border in Mccallum, Texas for an interview for the "Fox & Friends" program.
"I also find it very confusing because as you know in 2006, we had a bill, the Secure Fence Act that was largely bipartisan. That would have done just this. [It's] easy for folks to talk about the benefits of a wall and not a wall. They are not living here and the threats folks face every day."
Hundreds of illegal immigrants are crossing the border, pointed out Nielsen, and "you can't forget it's criminals, it's traffickers, smugglers, [potential] terrorists," and efforts must be made to stop them from crossing the border.
There was an immediate drop in people crossing over at the beginning of the Trump administration, pointed out Kilmeade, but the numbers are again going up with the delay of the wall, and Nielsen agreed with him that there are people waiting to hear what Washington will do.
"We are at such a disadvantage," she said. "They have money, they have time, so they do watch. They watch what's happening in Congress. They watch what's happening as part of our national conversation and they learn as we go along, so we see more and more loopholes being exploited."
There are places where a physical wall can't be erected, because of geographic issues, but Nielsen said when President Donald Trump is calling for a wall, there are actually three components, including a physical barrier, technology, and more personnel to work at the border.
Nielsen admitted that talk of building a "bigger ladder" to get over a larger wall is "difficult to hear," but there is no "silver bullet" that will stop the problem of illegal immigration, so that's why a wall is needed.
"Then you need the technology and people and sensors and monitoring to make sure that wall is as effective as it can be," she added.
Nielsen told Kilmeade that the area of the Rio Grande where they were conducting the interview will see major improvements in the near future, including a new wall.
"We will request congressional funding," she said. "This is the priority area."
Over the next two weeks, when Congress hammers out its spending bill, that could be a "big two weeks" for the wall's future, Nielsen said.
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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