Huckabee, at border, says extend fence
By Greg Moran | 2:25 p.m. Oct. 10, 2015
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Legislative and political action coordinator of the National Border Patrol Council Christopher Harris gives a tour of the border to presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee along Border Field State Park Saturday. — Misael Virgen
SAN DIEGO — Here’s a pro tip for anyone who might be considering a job as the leader of the Department of Homeland Security if former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee becomes president: Start looking at homes in Laredo, Texas.
That’s where Huckabee, in San Diego Saturday for a tour of the U.S.-Mexico border, said he would dispatch the cabinet-level official in charge of border security agencies, to send a message that the entire 1,900-mile southern border has to be more secure.
“One thing I would do is deploy the director of Homeland Security to Laredo, Texas, with his family and say, ‘This is where you are going to be stationed until this border is secure,’” Huckabee said after the two-hour tour along the heavily fortified border between San Diego and Tijuana. “So get with it. Let’s get it secure. And when it’s secure, then you can move somewhere else.”
Realtors in Laredo, a city of about 250,00 in south Texas on the Rio Grande, might want to tamp down the excitement of a pending sale to a cabinet official. Huckabee’s candidacy is a long shot bid; he currently stands in eighth place out of 14 active Republican candidates, polling 2.9 percent of the vote, according to the website RealClear Politics’ average of all presidential polls.
He was given a tour of the border in San Diego by officials with the union representing Border Patrol agents, and was accompanied by former San Diego Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter. When Hunter was in Congress he was a leader behind the move to spend billions on fencing, electronic surveillance and more agents to beef up the southwest border.
Huckabee acknowledged that work and said the added measures had dropped apprehensions of illegal crossing in San Diego from more than 400,000 annually two decades ago to around 30,000 per year now. He said he would support extending the fence along the 1,900-mile southwest border — and do it within the first year of his administration.
Later, though, he added that in some areas the kind of double line of fencing topped with concertina wire in San Diego might not be the solution. Those areas would use more agents, or electronic fencing that uses sensors and other high-tech measures.
In the past decade the government has spent an estimated $100 billion on border security equipment and manpower. Huckabee didn’t say how an extended fence would be funded, but said “it is the cost of not protecting our homeland that is expensive.”
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