Department of Homeland Security John Kelly's call to complete a wall at the Mexican border within two years is encouraging, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Wednesday, because now drug cartels come into her state like there is an open invitation to them.
"They just walk across the desert whenever they please, it seems," Brewer said in a Fox News' "America's Newsroom" interview. "They have been told in the past to stand down. But if we get the wall there will be that protection there. For once our Immigration and Customs Enforcement patrol, immigration people, and Border Patrol can do their job. That's what we need done. We need to have them move forward to do the job they're trained to do and not to be told to stand down, to enforce the law."
Brewer said she has certainly believed work will move forward to build a wall, but she acknowledged that there may be trouble building the wall in places in Arizona, as there is some "terrible terrain" both there and in Texas.
However, she said, the bottom line is, "we want our borders secured. [President] Donald Trump said we'd build our border wall. I think they'll get it done."
There will also need to be "boots on the ground, and we do need technology," Brewer continued. "Director Kelly is awesome, absolutely awesome, straight forward, a straight shooter and he will for once respond to the people of the United States of America and carry out the directive of President Trump, so I'm very, very encouraged. We need our borders secure."
The price tag on the wall has been estimated at anywhere between $12 billion and $38 billion, but Brewer said the wall will be very effective in stopping crime from coming into her state.
"When you take into account all the illegal immigration coming in through our state, and crime and cartels and drugs and the cost individually to the states and to the federal government, it probably just completely washes it out," Brewer said. "So whatever it takes, we want to be safe."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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