Welcome to Byron York's Daily Memo newsletter.Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to receive the newsletter. WHAT IF DEL RIO HAD A WALL? We've all seen video of thousands of illegal border crossers going back and forth across the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas. They originally crossed into the United States, then crossed back into Mexico to buy food and charge their phones, and then crossed back into the U.S. to keep their place in line for admission into the country. It was an insane scene. Most were originally from Haiti but had lived for years in other countries, especially in Chile and Brazil, and had no claim, zero, to asylum status in the U.S. And yet, the Biden administration admitted the majority of them while deporting some of the single men. All of which raises the question: What if there had been a wall at that easily crossed section of the U.S.-Mexico border? And what if there had also been a wall at other easily crossed points the migrants might have tried? What then? It is safe to say the Del Rio debacle would have been avoided. Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what's going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue! At least that was the plan in the Trump administration. "The Border Patrol Del Rio Sector was identified through the Border Security Improvement Plan published in 2019 and updated in 2020 as one of several geographical areas along the southwest border in need of several miles of new wall system construction," Mark Morgan, a former top border official in the Trump years, said in a text exchange. A wall, as critics will certainly point out, would not stop every single illegal crosser from entering the U.S. But it would make entry much more difficult, and it would redirect would-be crossers away from what had been the easiest places to cross and, in the end, greatly reduce their numbers. "Rather than the smuggling organizations and illegal aliens dictating the behavior and response of the Border Patrol, the wall system assists agents in shaping theirs," Morgan noted. But of course, President Joe Biden promised to put an end to former President Donald Trump's wall. And that, mostly, is what he has done. And thus the scene in Del Rio. "Had it not been for the Biden administration stopping construction of the wall system, Del Rio more than likely would have had active wall construction currently ongoing," Morgan said. "I have absolute confidence that had the Del Rio Sector had additional tools such as a wall system — including access roads, lighting, and state of the art technology — their capacity to address the massive incursion of illegal aliens they have recently experienced would have been exponentially improved." Yes, it would have. But why is there no wall there today? In the big picture, the fault is not really Biden's. The failure to complete a wall, the showcase promise of Trump's 2016 campaign, was the greatest policy failure of the Trump presidency. If a president wants to accomplish something big, he has to start early. He has to use his recently won political capital, and he has to push and push and push toward his goal. Trump did not do that with the wall. There was a deal to be had in Trump's early months in office — $25 billion for the wall — and Trump rejected it. He knew, or should have known, that some top Republican leaders on Capitol Hill did not really want a wall, and thus he would have to push his allies as well as Democrats. But he didn't. In the end, the tax cut and reform bill that then-Speaker Paul Ryan wanted was passed, while Trump's wall legislation remained undone. Trump embraced the idea that the wall could be done after the 2018 midterm elections, which was, of course, a joke. The idea that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would allow any progress on a wall was beyond far-fetched. So Trump managed to reprogram a few billion dollars and build a real barrier in areas that had dilapidated or inadequate barriers. He also built a couple of hundred miles of new wall. But not in Del Rio. And not in other places that could be easily overrun. With reports that there are other groups of would-be illegal crossers massing in Mexico, ready to come to the U.S., it could happen again, soon. For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.
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