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There truly are legal ways of becoming a citizen here. The maid who cleans our house recently received her citizenship, as did her sons, who work in the oil patch. My former boss from Canada, who has done multiple millions of dollars worth of business in America and paid millions in taxes, on the other hand, despite also being married to an American citizen and having American kids, can't seem to get his American citizenship to save his life. There's no doubt our entire immigration system is royally screwed up, but that's what we have right now and if you want to be a citizen, then that's the process you go through, like it or not.
As far as immigration enforcement is concerned, if our neighbors to the south would do a little bit better job of taking care of their own people and policing their own borders, we wouldn't have nearly so severe a problem to begin with. It's the criminals (here, south of the border, and elsewhere) that spoil life for everyone else, especially the people who are just coming here in search of a better life.
We're asking people to identify themselves and work with our government, yet so many of them won't do that. Shipping all of them back to where they came from, wherever that was, and building walls, was always a last resort. I'd rather we simply identify and get rid of the criminals and that the law abiding not create safe havens for them. Apparently even that's too much to ask. So now we're at where we're at.
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Kbd512:
Please take the political glasses off. They are really blinders.
Point 1: You said “… the party you vote for … ”. Unwarranted conclusion on your part.
I have previously (and truthfully) said that I do NOT vote for party, I vote independent. I look for someone I think will prioritize doing the people’s business over party advantage. Failing that knowledge, I usually vote against long-time incumbents. There is just too much risk of corruption because of all the lobby money (bribery). Party doesn’t enter into it.
In point of fact, over the decades, I have voted for more Republican candidates for various offices than Democrat candidates.
But in recent years my voting trend has reversed, as the Republicans have lurched sharply far right, and in the last 2 years added various extremists to their voting base. Meanwhile the Democrats edged largely centrist. Extremism breeds damage.
Point 2: Your remarks about extremists in general imply you think there are more extremists among the Democrats than the Republicans. That’s not what I saw in the Charlottesville, VA, incident, which was on every TV channel that carried any sort of news.
There were, at most, as many antifa extremists as there were nazis and white supremacists, they certainly did NOT outnumber the nazis/supremacists 100:1. They were far outnumbered, yes, but not all those opposing them were the antifa extremists we both detest. (My own impression was there were fewer antifa extremists than right-wing extremists.)
They may have tried to beat each other up, in the streets, but ultimately the right winger is the one who killed, with his car. I would have a very hard time believing that you did not see that on TV. Millions of us saw it.
That being said, I don’t see such behavior generally here in Texas, Houston included. I tend to hope we Texans were raised better than that, by and large.
Point 3: you said the Democrats were more likely to be taken over by anarchists and socialists than the Republicans by neo-nazis and kkk members. Really?
I’ve noticed a handful of socialists among the Democrats, and no real anarchists. The most extreme example of a socialist is probably that idiotic incompetent Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders says he is a socialist, but he is certainly not extreme about it. What little I have uncovered so far about Beto O’Rourke says he is mostly centrist in his views and voting.
I see what might be termed “policy extremists” among the Republicans, most recently with the “tea party” crowd (meaning those that want to tear down the system rather than work within it), plus a growing recent overlap with the white supremacist population. Plus a voting base that does appear to attract the alt-right (the wackos, the kkk’ers, and the nazis), and the “evangelicals” (actually fundamentalists determined to inflict their beliefs on others as law).
That influx of white supremacists began with the move of racist southern conservatives from the Democrats to the Republicans, after the 1965 Civil Rights Act got signed. The cultural heritage exemplified by Jeff Sessions derives from that. They were in the minority among Republicans.
The “policy extremists” actually derive from the Newt Gingrich, et al, group who devised the strategy of “the party of no” after the election of Bill Clinton. So that behavior is not new. The “et al” includes Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, and one more whose name I no longer remember.
The bulk of the Democrats in outlook and policies seem today to resemble the “mainstream” or “moderate” Republicans, more than any extreme leftists. Too bad “mainstream” or “moderate” Republicans are enough of an endangered species that they no longer control that party.
That being said, I really did grossly detest HRC, for being so egomaniacal and corrupt, and for using her position and vast money to get away with what would have jailed you and me (mishandling classified information). I just detested Trump more, for the narcissistic, unable to self-control, chronically-lying charlatan that he was, is, and is continuing to be revealed to be. Out of his own mouth. Thumbs, actually.
I think both party’s primaries were deliberately rigged to give us a rock-and-a-hard-place choice like that. The rigging on the Democrat side is already publicly known. The rigging on the Republican side will eventually be revealed. We will eventually see who did this and why.
Point 4: not only do I despise ideologies, I despise the Orwellian Newspeak usage/abuse of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” in recent years. It all gets back to extremized belief systems and litmus tests to belong. That sort of thing is anathema to me.
Before the political hacks corrupted all the definitions, a “conservative” was most simply understood as one who says “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Likewise, a “liberal” was most simply understood as one who says “if it is broke, then do fix it”.
My point: we should all be both conservative and liberal as the needs arise. The trick to good government is just making the judgement about whether something is “broke or not” a non-political, objective decision. It may take using the tools of good government to enforce that kind of responsible decision-making (those tools are tar, feathers, guns, and ropes).
I hope that attitude and approach in the previous two paragraphs show up to you, in what I suggested for the illegal alien problem. It really is what I try to do.
Finally: You should not mistake my failure to follow all the tenets of the modern Republican belief system as evidence that I adhere to the modern Democrat belief system. Because I do not. Not by a long shot.
I do not adhere to either of them. I go my own way.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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Point #1: Explain how you think Republicans have lurched sharply to the right. Is enforcing the laws on the books moving sharply to the right?
Point #2: Yes, I think there are more extremists voting for Democrats than Republicans. I can count; both the number of idiots wearing swastikas (white supremacist street thugs) and the idiots dressed in all black with bandanas and ski masks covering their faces (antifa, communists, anarchists, and other assorted street thugs). That's why I think that. Thankfully, Houston and most of Texas sees far fewer of these clowns parading around in our streets.
Point #3: Yes, really. The Democrats have recently elected people to office who outright self-identified as being socialists. How did that happen if there weren't a lot of closet socialists and communists voting for them? There have been no nazis that the Republicans have elected to office. If there were, the media would be all over it. Calling President Trump a nazi because he enforces the edicts of the Obama Administration doesn't make it so. If he had a "D" next to his name, he'd be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Point #4: Agreed.
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Half truths from biased eyes:
They're made of concrete, steel, and other materials, and designed to withstand even the most persistent breaching tools and intrepid climbers. The breaching scenarios included teams physically penetrating the walls or scaling them in timed climbing scenarios.
The eight border wall prototypes were not and cannot be designed to be indestructible as we have tried to tell others..
Unbiased reporting but The report shows 13 figures labeled “breached,” but it’s unclear which figures belong to which prototype because the photos were redacted from the release
Some Border Wall Prototypes Able to Be Breached: CBP Repor
Border Wall Nearly Collapses During Testing, 13 Prototypes 'Breached' Along Mexican Border
So as we have said walls do not work and Mexico will not pay for them.....
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President Trump makes the claim that he has begun to build the wall but
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/04/has-t … all-begun/
Actually is replacement sections and not like the prototypes...
Border Patrol breaks ground on Trump's wall: 'This project is underway'
Not really....
The 20-mile Santa Teresa project will replace three-foot-tall posts and a taller mesh fence with 18- to 30-foot walls made primarily of concrete.
The wall's steel structure will stretch six feet under ground and be fastened into two feet of concrete beneath. The portion of the wall that is above ground and visible will have a five-foot plate at the top that will deter people from scaling it.
"We've got a 1.3-mile section of this bollard wall that we put in last year. We are very pleased with the outcome. It is safer, and it's durable. The proximity to the highway has resulted in this wall being run into on a couple of occasions by vehicles, and in one case, a five-ton truck. The capability of that bollard wall to sustain that impact is a testament to the money well spent to secure the border," he said.
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Article is not really just this border but is a general knee jerk reaction to immigration.
Trump Administration Aims to Sharply Restrict New Green Cards for Those on Public Aid who legally use public benefits like food assistance and Section 8 housing vouchers could be denied green cards under new rules.
The government has traditionally considered someone who relies on government cash assistance for more than half of his or her income a public charge.
The move could force millions of poor immigrants who rely on public assistance for food and shelter to make a difficult choice between accepting financial help and seeking a green card to live and work legally in the United States.
Older immigrants, many of whom get low-cost prescription drugs through the Medicare Part D program, could also be forced to stop participating in the popular benefits program or risk being deemed a “public charge” who is ineligible for legal resident status.
“This is an attack on immigrant families and an attempt to make our immigration system a pay-to-play system where only the wealthy need apply,” said Jackie Vimo, a policy analyst with the National Immigration Law Center, a Washington-based group that defends low-income immigrants. “This is a radical transformation of our immigration, and does a runaround on Congress.”
“Self-sufficiency has been a basic principle of United States immigration law since this country’s earliest immigration statutes,” the proposal says. It remains United States policy that “the availability of public benefits not constitute an incentive for immigration to the United States.”
Nearly 20 million children in immigrant families could be affected by the policy changes with nine in 10 of those children are United States citizens. Such as to not be deported but leaving your children behind....
It is a Catch-22, said Shawn Fremstad, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Poor immigrants with health conditions must prove that they are insured, but they cannot use the available benefits to enroll.
“It’s a bit like the creation of a castelike system,” Mr. Fremstad said. “Unless you’ve had an ‘American dream’ going for you in your home country, you’re going to have a hard time earning it here. It’s really screening those people.”
Mr. Krikorian does not contest that view.
“This isn’t a moral issue,” he said. “A Honduran with a sixth-grade education level isn’t morally flawed, but he works three jobs and still can’t feed his family. Immigrants with low levels of skill are a mismatch for a modern society like ours.”
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Ha. They should try moving to a country with a less generous immigration system. Canada, say, or most European countries.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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I have homeless that could care less about the assistance living in the cold and heat all year round whether it rains or snows out in the open and only seek shelter under the extreme cold of late winter. These american deserve the help that they are not getting.
If you are not american and hold legal citizenship status then you do not qualify for this help.
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It appears that the border agents were not doing there job from the past to current if this can happen since Despite repeated deportations, suspect in homeless beating deaths cut a bloody swath across L.A., police say
So just a fence and deportation will not work there needs to be something else.
Just days after his aunt and uncle were reported missing in Houston, Ramon Escobar got in his Honda CR-V and drove west.
The 47-year-old native of El Salvador traveled more than 1,500 miles along Interstate 10, stopping when he hit the Pacific Ocean on Sept. 5.
So how does an illegal get a license...
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The Texas tent city has suddenly begun to grow. More than 1,600 kids so far have been quietly moved to the camp. There are an estimated 13,000 migrant kids currently in detention. More than 100 of them were separated from their families as part of the Trump administration’s policy of criminally prosecuting those who cross the border without documentation. The Trump administration is using the Tornillo tent facility to house immigrant children separated from their parents after they were caught entering the U.S. under the administration’s zero tolerance policy.
Hundreds of Migrant Children Quietly Moved to a Tent Camp on the Texas Border
shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas.
Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases.
But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.
These midnight voyages are playing out across the country, as the federal government struggles to find room for more than 13,000 detained migrant children — the largest population ever — whose numbers have increased more than fivefold since last year.
The average length of time that migrant children spend in custody has nearly doubled over the same period, from 34 days to 59, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees their care.
If I recall this was to be with there parents and not single children.
The tent city in Tornillo, on the other hand, is unregulated, except for guidelines created by the Department of Health and Human Services. For example, schooling is not required there, as it is in regular migrant children shelters. onditions in facilities like the one at Tornillo would mirror those in regular shelters, “but there are some ways in which that’s difficult or impossible to do.”
Several shelter workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, described what they said has become standard practice for moving the children: In order to avoid escape attempts, the moves are carried out late at night because children will be less likely to try to run away. For the same reason, children are generally given little advance warning that they will be moved.
At one shelter in the Midwest whose occupants were among those recently transferred to Tornillo, about two dozen children were given just a few hours’ notice last week before they were loaded onto buses — any longer than that, according to one of the shelter workers, and the children may have panicked or tried to flee.
This one give a more complete image of where they really are...
A prison camp on a military base....
This is the Texas tent camp meant as shelter for migrant children
In September, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Tornillo detention center for migrant children will expand to 3,800 beds and will stay open at least through the end of the year.
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I agree that it's terrible. They should hurry up and send them home.
Use what is abundant and build to last
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How long before someone starts advocating a final solution?
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These are the unaccompanied children that were captured for the most part with some seperated under the zero tolerance where the parent was ruled unfit for return or was deported before being reunified with them.
The facted that they are not getting any education either in spanish for eventual deportation to mexico when they come of legal age to be brought back is one thing that is being ignored as if they will be prosperous once they were to be returned. The other way to look at them is to teach them english and cover them under a DACA replacement to become eventual citizens. They are at the age where it could come back to haunt the US in the future.
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SpaceNut,
1. Unless you've been in the military, I very much doubt you know what a military prison camp actually looks like. I noticed that the guards there appear to be armed with food and water. We stood sentry duty with M14's in the Navy. If you can't figure out how a guard armed with water bottles differs from a guard armed with a rifle, then we need not further discuss the point. Given the difference between the two, how anyone could mistake a military-run camp for illegal immigrant children with a military prison camp is beyond my understanding.
2. Those children weren't getting any education before they walked across our border, either, but I agree with the premise that they should be taught English and should now belong to us. The Japanese came here legally, rather than illegally as these children have, yet they were forced to live in tent cities by order of a Democrat President in WWII. I suppose that's just another point of history studiously ignored by our Democrats.
3. In some of the classrooms I was educated in, basically all of the portables, we never had AC. My grand parents in Fort Worth never had AC, either. You get used to it. I spent nearly all of my free time outside, anyway. What kid wants to be confined to a house when you can play football with your friends?
4. Since illegal aliens are streaming in by the thousands, it's difficult to erect permanent structures fast enough. Democrats who believe otherwise are welcome to volunteer their own time and their own dime to construct schools and dormitories for the illegals.
5. Have you offered to adopt or educate any of these illegal alien children?
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I have some idea as the station I work on does have the armed guards to protect the naval assets. You must have missed the tall fence that circles the tents to keep them in and the second fence that is around the base where there are armed personnel. Of course the children will follow what they are told to do as they are fearful for what might happen to them if they do not.
The illegals that were elsewhere are being brought there to be in this temporary tent city. We are not at war with Mexico...
Instruction is as simple as playing educational videos for most of them with simple interaction to fill in the rest with paper and pens to follow the instruction with to take notes on. With follow up retention of knowledge where these could be looked at to see if they are getting the information.
You are right about not needing AC to survive the temperatures but try that in the dead of winter when you will want some heat for your tent....
If I could I would but being on the poor side of things its not something I can do. But then again we have heard of those that do not pass the age test which were adopted being deported.
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SpaceNut,
1. The armed guards on the military bases are there to keep people out who don't belong there. That's what protecting our naval assets means. Is that just an argument for the sake of being argumentative? We use fences to slow people down to permit guards in vehicles enough time to catch up to those who approach the fence. As a member of the Navy, there were places on base, and even aboard my own ship, that I wasn't permitted to go without permission.
If you think we're going to shoot a bunch of children, then you need to de-program your brain. We never shot any unarmed kids running around or climbing fences, we didn't even point guns at them, nor would anyone I knew in the military ever do so, even if ordered to do so.
Do you think we never had any kids climb the fences on our military bases?
Wearing a military uniform is not equivalent to being an unthinking, unfeeling terminator robot. Why do you think our military is constantly trying to create terminator robots? It couldn't be because the robots will follow orders without question, could it?
2. The Mexican government needs to quit helping foreign invaders illegally cross over our border, unless they want a war. If you're going to contend that those kids from South America traveled thousands of miles through Mexico without help from adults who knew or should have known that they were both breaking the law and also putting those children in imminent danger, then I'm going to call BS on that.
3. There is no absolute right to come and do as you please in America. There is no absolute right to come to Mexico and do as you please, either. Make an effort to let that fact sink in. Nations have borders, whether you agree with that fact or not. America is a nation and we have borders.
Whether you respect our borders or not, whether they respect or borders or not, our government will enforce our laws. Our laws say no one may come and do as they please in America. They say anyone who comes here requires the permission of our government. Nearly all other nations on the planet have very similar laws and are far less accommodating to people who break those laws than our government has been and continues to be.
4. The winter in Texas and New Hampshire are entirely different things. I've slept on the ground in winter in our parks here in Houston with just a jacket, T-shirt, and a pair of blue jeans. It's not what I would call fun, but I'm still here. The military gives people wool blankets in winter.
5. All of those kids should be flown back to the countries they claim to be from before some snowflake starts falsely accusing our government of kidnapping illegal alien children.
We can ask all of them a real simple question: "What country are you from?"
If they say they're American, then they can stay because they "get it" and clearly want to be Americans. If they want to claim allegiance to some other country, then back to that country they shall go. That's as fair a system as any other we could possibly devise.
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The Trump wall where its going to start will not do anything more than the current whole sections which are already in place. Officials mapped the 31-foot-deep, 627-foot-long tunnel and found that it reached 336 feet into the country.
Major Drug Tunnel Found on California-Mexico Border
Authorities arrested six people and seized more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine and more than 14,000 pounds of marijuana. The cocaine is valued at around $22 million.
"We believe this to be the largest single seizure of cocaine related to a tunnel in the California-Mexico border," Duffy said.
At about 3-feet wide, the tunnel measured the length of more than eight football fields (nearly a half-mile) and was equipped with lights, ventilation, a rail system and a motorized freight elevator capable of carrying up to 10 people, according to federal officials.
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"8. Resolved, That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to this nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy. [Applause.]"
Republican Party Platform 1864
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Of course we do have many laws on the books which are there but not used or enforced in any way but what really is an issue are the ones which are distorted to fore fill there own version of what they are truely saying.
The one thing that we should be doing is what we are not doing as yet another Arizona shelter shut in latest case of alleged migrant child abuse
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It also starts out with "We the People" not I Trump the President.....dictator of all forms of governement...weilding control over each of the three branches.....
Colin Powell on Trump: It’s now ‘Me the president’ instead of ‘We the People’
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It also starts out with "We the People" not I Trump the President.....dictator of all forms of governement...weilding control over each of the three branches.....
The more intellectually bankrupt leftist ideology becomes, the greater the level of rejection that can be expected by people who compare objective reality against empty or divisive, and sadly, increasingly evil rhetoric. The Democrat Party needs to cease and desist their incessant hate-fueled personal attacks against people they have political disagreements with and start formulating reasoned intellectual arguments indicating why their governance policies have greater merit than the governance policies of the Republican Party.
Our country desperately needs adequate representation for everyone, to include the minority. The narrative that President Trump doesn't have the support of the majority is objectively false. The results of the last election are prima facie for that assertion. No matter what opinions exist to the contrary, he won that election by obtaining the majority of the votes in a plurality of voting districts in America.
If America had just two cities, one with a million citizens and the other with one million and one citizens, and all of them vote straight along political party lines, the party voted for by the city with one million and one citizens does not constitute a representative government. Rather than simply substituting their own ideation about our system of governance, our leftists should start applying a healthy dose of objective reality to their politics. Other people clearly disagree with what the left is currently doing and it'd be far less intellectually lazy to try to figure out why.
If Democrats want to start winning elections again, they need to do the following:
1. stop defaming people who don't share their political beliefs
2. stop misrepresenting contentious issues for theatric effect
3. stop trying to divide Americans using race, gender, and religion
4. denounce the use of violence to achieve political agendas
5. "I hate Trump" is not a governance policy, so start formulating real policy plans and objectives
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Who has defamed whom when it is U.S. Border Agency Says Hundreds of Employees Have Been Arrested Over 2 Years
More than 500 employees of the United States’ primary border security agency were charged with drug trafficking, accepting bribes and a range of other crimes over a two-year period,
Customs and Border Protection has a budget of over $15 billion and is the parent agency of the Border Patrol. It employs more than 60,000 people, making it the largest single law enforcement agency in the United States.
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A new wave is coming as Honduran migrant group treks north as U.S. calls for tighter borders
More than 1,000 people, including families and women carrying babies, set off from Honduras toward the United States on Saturday, days after the United States urged Honduras' president to halt mass migration.
Recent attempts at group crossings from Central America to the United States have tested U.S. President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" stance on illegal immigration, as people fleeing violence and poverty defy threats of deportation.
"I believe we'll get to the United States. There's no work in Honduras, and you live in fear that they're going to kill you or your children," said Fanny Barahona, 35, an unemployed teacher who walked with her nine-year-old son and carried a two-year-old daughter.
The crossing will press the strength to do what is right this time and thats not seperating children and not doing delay tactecs for getting them before courts for real hearings as to there specific cases. Not whole sale kangaroo processing as before....
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Who has defamed whom when it is U.S. Border Agency Says Hundreds of Employees Have Been Arrested Over 2 Years
More than 500 employees of the United States’ primary border security agency were charged with drug trafficking, accepting bribes and a range of other crimes over a two-year period,
Customs and Border Protection has a budget of over $15 billion and is the parent agency of the Border Patrol. It employs more than 60,000 people, making it the largest single law enforcement agency in the United States.
They are just corrupt thugs. Anti-American, anti-Jesus.
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By the way the 25 billion for the walls construction is off as proven by how much money and how little wall has been built thus far.
Then there is the whom wants it that is an issue as Trump's push to accelerate Texas-Mexico border wall project inflames Rio Grande Valley residents
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