DEBATENATE

Topics / Immigration

The challenge

“The border wall doesn't work”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

It works the way a lock works. A wall doesn't have to stop everybody. It has to slow people down and funnel them to where agents can respond. The Secure Fence Act of two thousand six passed the Senate with yes votes from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. You'll say most fentanyl is seized at ports of entry. True. That's an argument for stronger ports and a wall, not ports instead of a wall. A country has the right to decide who comes in, and it owes that to everyone waiting in line to do it legally. So build it high, build it fast, and put a big door in it for legal entry. Let me ask you this: if barriers don't work, why do airports, stadiums and embassies all have them? A lock doesn't fail because a burglar can break a window.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Physical barriers used to be a bipartisan idea. The votes are on the record.

    The Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorized hundreds of miles of fencing on the southwest border and passed the Senate with yes votes from Senators Obama, Clinton and Biden.

  2. No barrier is supposed to stop everyone by itself. It delays crossers and channels traffic so agents, cameras and sensors can do their jobs. Every security system on earth works that way.

  3. Drugs coming through the ports means the ports need better inspection too. It doesn't mean miles of open desert should stay open.

    CBP seizure data show that most fentanyl seized by CBP is caught at official ports of entry.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Even the government's own auditors said CBP couldn't show what the fencing actually accomplished, so the wall is billions of dollars spent on faith.

Nate: The GAO did say that in two thousand seventeen. But failing to measure the wall isn't proof the wall fails. It's a reason to measure it. You audit a security system. You don't rip it out because the paperwork was sloppy.

What he grants the other side

Most fentanyl is seized at ports of entry, and auditors found CBP never measured the fence's results well.

The lines

Sources

  1. U.S. Congress, Secure Fence Act of 2006, Public Law 109-367 (2006)
  2. U.S. Senate, Roll Call Vote on H.R. 6061, Secure Fence Act of 2006 (2006)
  3. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Southwest Border Security: Additional Actions Needed to Better Assess Fencing's Contributions to Operations and Provide Guidance for Identifying Capability Gaps, GAO-17-331 (2017)
  4. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Drug Seizure Statistics (2024)

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