AZ Sheriff: ‘All Manner of Transnational Crime Threats’ Come In Through ‘Porous’ Border – A Wall Has ‘Real Problems’

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Pima County, AZ Sheriff Mark Napier (R), whose county is on the US-Mexico border argued that “The porous nature of our border is a national security problem. It’s a public safety problem. It’s a human rights problem. All manner of transnational crime threats are coming in” through the border, but that a wall “doesn’t seem credible.” And “there are just some real problems” with a wall.

Napier said that cost is one reason a wall wouldn’t work. He continued that with technology and human resources, there are better solutions than a wall.

He added, “I am absolutely a proponent of securing the border. My fear is that we’re continuing this dialogue of a wall, a wall, a wall, which, to many of us, just doesn’t seem credible. And in that discourse, we’re losing the more serious discussions about how to better secure our border, at a lower cost point, perhaps more effectively. And that’s my real concern. The porous nature of our border is a national security problem. It’s a public safety problem. It’s a human rights problem. All manner of transnational crime threats are coming in over the border, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and about 150 people a year die in the deserts of western Pima County, where I was at a community event last night.”

Napier further argued that there “are many reasons” not to build a wall, “One is that, there isn’t even infrastructure near the ports of the border that we would want to construct a wall to transport the things and the workforce that we would need to secure a wall in a traditional sense. I would much rather that we change the discourse to looking at a wall as an analogous term, of an impenetrable barrier, that might be in places, technology, it might be fixed barriers in other places, it might be human resources, or a blend of all of the above in other places. But there’s land use things, typography, we have a Native American reservation here that transcends the international border, and there are just some real problems. There’s some environmental issues also, with respect to a wall.”

He also lamented the lack of discussion of increased funding for border sheriffs and communities.

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