Page:Remarks by President Trump on the National Security and Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border.djvu/4

2/17/2019 I asked them. I said, “Let me ask you, as a crowd: When the wall went up, was it better?” You were there, some of you. It was not only better; it was like 100 percent better. You know what they did.

But that’s only one example. There are so many examples. In El Paso, they have close to 2,000 murders right on the other side of the wall. And they had 23 murders. It’s a lot of murders, but it’s not close to 2,000 murders right on the other side of the wall, in Mexico.

So everyone knows that walls work. And there are better examples than El Paso, frankly. You just take a look. Almost everywhere. Take a look at Israel. They’re building another wall. Their wall is 99.9 percent effective, they told me — 99.9 percent. That’s what it would be with us, too.

The only weakness is they go to a wall and then they go around the wall. They go around the wall and in. Okay? That’s what it is. It’s very simple. And a big majority of the big drugs — the big drug loads — don’t go through ports of entry. They can’t go through ports of entry. You can’t take big loads because you have people — we have some very capable people; the Border Patrol, law enforcement — looking.

You can’t take human traffic — women and girls — you can’t take them through ports of entry. You can’t have them tied up in the backseat of a car or a truck or a van. They open the door. They look. They can’t see three women with tape on their mouth or three women whose hands are tied.

They go through areas where you have no wall. Everybody knows that. Nancy knows it. Chuck knows it. They all know it. It’s all a big lie. It’s a big con game.

You don’t have to be very smart to know: You put up a barrier, the people come in, and that’s it. They can’t do anything unless they walk left or right, and they find an area where there’s no barrier, and they come into the United States. Welcome.

We’ve detained more people. Our border agents are doing such incredible work. Our military has been incredible. We put up barbed wire on top of certain old walls that were there. We fixed the wall and we loaded it up with barbed wire. It’s very successful.

But our military has been fantastic, and I want to thank them. And it’s very necessary. We’ve broken up two caravans that are on their way. They just are breaking. They’re in the process of breaking up. We have another one that we haven’t been able to break up yet. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-national-security-humanitarian-crisis-southern-border/