Poor border security costs us

The lack of adequate security on the southern border and the Flores Settlement are enticements to cartels, family groups and human traffickers to storm the border and create a humanitarian crisis.

I winter in Yuma, Arizona, and have seen the difference a barrier can make. Apprehension of illegal entrants dropped 95 percent over the last nine years since a wall was built in the Yuma Sector, Sheriff Leon Wilmot, chairman of the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition, told the Yuma Sun. “We are not experiencing the deaths and abandonment in the desert, the rapes, the robberies, the homicides, burglaries and vehicle thefts that we use to before the infrastructure was put into place,” Wilmot told the Sun.

But what about the rest of the border?

Under the 1997 Flores settlement, children can’t be held in custody longer than 20 days.

Consequently, some adults using minors as false family units are released into the community before their asylum claim can be processed, knowing only one-tenth of the cases turn out to be valid. The Yuma Sector alone has already spent over $300,000 this year for uninvited immigrants, the Sun reported, 90 percent coming from countries other than Mexico.

Build the wall and secure our borders on humanitarian, economic and safety concerns!

Penny Lancaster

Spokane