President Trump has insisted he's not giving up on the border wall he proposed during his campaign last year, and now it appears to be a step closer to reality. This week is the deadline for six companies selected by the Trump Administration to finish their prototypes of a border wall. The companies have built eight different prototypes at a site in Southern California near the Mexico border. Once the prototypes are finished, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will review and test them, with a final version of the wall to be selected at a future date.
The border wall was a popular promise among Trump supporters and anti-illegal immigration advocates, but one such advocate isn't celebrating the latest progress on the wall. "We know the border can only be secured through comprehensive immigration enforcement--we need all of our immigration laws enforced, and not further undermined by amnesty," says William Gheen with the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC). He is particularly wary of President Trump's recent overtures to Democrats on legalizing the so-called "Dreamers" who are part of the Obama-era DACA program. "Instead of focusing on the wall, the Trump Administration has focused on trying to pass DACA amnesty for illegal immigrants, which was not part of the 'Make America Great Again' promise," says Gheen.
While Gheen and his organization still support the idea of building a border wall, he warns it won't mean much without the proper amount of manpower. "You've got to have people and you've got to have force, to be able to repel the paramilitary drug cartels that are bringing in the drugs and the illegal immigrants," he says.
Ultimately, Gheen doesn't trust anyone in Washington D.C. right now when it comes to immigration policy, including the President. "They all have no intention of doing anything except bringing more and more people into this country to hyper-inflate our labor market and consumer market," he says. "So, we have to stop them from passing amnesty, or a wall just won't matter."