[4Freedom]

Your over-exaggerations aren't even close to reality. Your estimates are based on Coast Guard boats being lashed to each other, fore to aft, from one end of the Great Lakes to another. That's just as crazy as the 188,000 man 'human daisy chain' that you said we'd need along our Southern border.

Get real.

[Poohbah]

Your estimates are based on Coast Guard boats being lashed to each other, fore to aft, from one end of the Great Lakes to another.

No, they're based on the requirement to check every damn lumber barge coming from Canada BEFORE they dock--or even get close to shore, for that matter (Canada has the world's worst immigration enforcement--they make our border look like the old Berlin Wall), establish a surveillance grid covering the lakes, keep a sailing plan for every boat on the US side of the lakes, track every boat and intercept any of them behaving suspiciously (the Great Lakes have a LOT of small boat traffic), the need for multiple patrol boats per patrol station (patrol boats do not have long-term crew accomodations or self-repair facilities; they must come into port frequently for upkeep and crew rest), the need to maintain their boats and aircraft (for every boat in the water, there's at least one in drydock), PLUS perform the other Coast Guard missions in the area.

Of course, if you just make it a 9-to-5 Monday-to-Friday mission that involves sailing around the Great Lakes and not doing anything useful...yeah, no need for greatly enlarging the Coast Guard.

Either come to a solution for the problem (invade Mexico and replace their government with something more to our liking) or admit that you don't have a clue.