>>This clown was just on with Chris Wallace on FOX News. I was screaming at the TV. He is - I’m sorry - full of baloney! I could not believe the nonsense he was spewing and expecting us to believe it.<<
He says he really needs these tools, but without amnesty he won’t ask congress for them. WTF???
WALLACE: Secretary Chertoff, opponents of the bill say that you already have plenty of tools to enforce the border which you don’t use.
CHERTOFF: Well, I just think that’s plain wrong. First of all, in the last couple of years we have overhauled border security strategy.
We have had record numbers of removals. We have seen a significant decrease over the past year in the flow of illegals across the border. We’ve ended catch and release.
We’re on our way to doubling the border patrol. We’re building hundreds of miles of fencing and vehicle barriers. And for the first time, we’re putting integrated high technology at the border.
But there’s one thing we haven’t been able to do. We haven’t been able to require every employer to enter a system in which they check the work status of their employees and determine whether they’re legal.
And without that, we don’t really have the ability to enforce the law with respect to illegal work in this country in a way that’s truly effective. And that would be the single greatest additional weapon we could use if we’re serious about tackling this problem.
WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, let me try and clear up some of the contradictions between you and some of the critics of the administration’s policy.
Congress passed the Secure Fence Act in October of last year, mandating construction of 700 miles of new fence along the southwest border.
Now, Congressman Duncan Hunter, who comes from that part of the world, comes from San Diego, says that, in fact, in the eight months since then, that the government has built only 13 miles of new fencing. Is that true, sir?
CHERTOFF: Well, what we’ve done is we are working on and will complete by September — we’ll be up to about 140 miles to 150 miles of fencing.
As anybody who’s ever built a fence or a wall knows, Chris, you don’t build it one mile at a time. You take a chunk, like, for example, the 35 miles at the Barry Goldwater range in Arizona.
You have to level the ground. You have to put a foundation in. You have to drive in the pillars. And then you put the fencing in. So in that case, for example, we’re going to go from a handful of miles to 35 miles within a couple of months.
We’re on track to get about 370 miles done by the end of ‘08. But I do have to say that for people who believe the answer is just fence, yesterday we discovered a tunnel. So fencing is not the cure- all for the problem at the border.
We’ve got 40 percent of our illegals coming through the ports of entry using legal visas and overstaying. We’ve got people concealing themselves in vehicles coming through the ports of entry. I’ve seen this myself.
I think the fence has come to assume a certain kind of symbolic significance which should not obscure the fact that it is a much more complicated problem than putting up a fence which someone can climb over with a ladder or tunnel under with a shovel.
WALLACE: Mr. Secretary, we have about a minute left. Clearly, what came out of this debate and the failure of immigration reform is that a lot of people in this country don’t trust you, don’t trust the government, to enforce the border.
So why not take the lesson from this failure and go for enforcement first, resubmit the president’s agreement to spend $4.4 billion on new enforcement?
You say you don’t have some tools when it comes to employer verification. Why not resubmit all of those and challenge the Democrats on enforcement first?
CHERTOFF: Well, Chris, first of all, anybody who says we haven’t been enforcing is woefully blind to the facts. We have done more in terms — and unfortunately, it’s been some painful stuff in terms of arrests, 700 criminal cases against employers, raids involving thousands of people, unfortunate pictures of crying children. ...
WALLACE: But, Mr. Secretary, we’re running out of...
CHERTOFF:... whose mothers are being...
WALLACE:I don’t mean to interrupt you. I mean, are you going to submit the $4.4 billion? Are you going to resubmit the tamper- proof card? Are you going to resubmit the employer verification or not?
CHERTOFF: I think we’re going to say to the members of Congress who think they have a better way that they should produce legislation and pass legislation, which they have not done for the past two years.
They’ve tried enforcement only. That didn’t pass. We’ve tried comprehensive. That stalled. I think it’s now time for Congress, which has the power to legislate, to make a determination about how it wants to help us solve this problem.
WALLACE: But the government, the president, is not going to submit his own plan.
CHERTOFF: Well, we’ve submitted a budget. We submitted a comprehensive immigration plan. We agreed on $4.4 billion which was going to be secured by the payments made by the illegals so it would not bust the budget.
In the absence of that plan, I think now those who have a better way ought to come forward with that better way. We’re still going to work on our part to enforce the border using the tools that we have.
WALLACE: Secretary Chertoff, we’re going to have to leave it there. We want to thank you so much for talking with us today and giving us an update on the very latest from Britain.
CHERTOFF: Good to be on, Chris.
This is really interesting...Our government will not secure the border. So what do WE do? At what point in time do we have to do it ourselves?
He was ranting about illegals being ripped from their crying children? Do we let rapists, robbers, and murderers do their crimes because they happen to have kids?
I seriously do feel sorry for the illegals because they are being used as chattel by governments on both sides. We need to so forcefully hit up ALL employers who hire them, willingly or not, that the tide of new illegals is stemmed. Force Mexico to come up with a way to let their poor help their own economy WITHIN MEXICO.