Tag

Border Patrol

Browsing

Podcast featuring Glynn Cosker, Managing Editor, Edge and
Sylvia Longmire, author and border security expert

One of President Trump’s campaign promises was to “Build the Wall” along the U.S. and Mexico border. Glynn Cosker interviews border security expert Sylvia Longmire about the status of the border wall, how much has been built, and the many controversies surrounding the project. Also learn how the upcoming presidential election could shift the country’s immigration policy and strategy.

Listen to the Episode:

Subscribe to Protect and Secure
Apple Podcasts | Spotify  | Google Podcasts | Stitcher

Read the Transcript:

Glynn Cosker: Hello. I’m your host, Glynn Cosker, and welcome to the podcast. On this podcast, I regularly welcome a guest to explore issues related to homeland security, immigration, border control, and a lot more.

And joining me today is Sylvia Longmire, an expert in border security, immigration, Mexico’s drug wars and a whole lot more. She is also the author of two books, Cartel and Border Insecurity. She frequently appears on national news outlets as a subject matter expert on the Latin American drug cartels among other things. So how are you today, Sylvia?

Sylvia Longmire: I’m wonderful. Thank you for having me.

Glynn Cosker: Awesome. Great. It’s always great to have you. And today we’re going to talk about our border with Mexico. It’s a great topic and it was front and center four years ago. It still is today, but four years ago, all we kept hearing was that chant, “build the wall, build the wall.” I’m not doing it right, but that’s what it was. And of course that was then-candidate Donald Trump’s rallying cry and the major policy promise that he touted for his successful run for the White House four years ago. But Sylvia, it’s 2020 right now. And how complete is President Trump’s wall?

Sylvia Longmire: It is not. We have really not seen much progress at all as far as new border wall construction. And that is where the messaging has been getting complicated. Now we have existing wall that’s almost 700 miles, and that goes back to the Secure Fence Act of 2006. So we’re at, I think roughly 679 miles, something around there. And the Secure Fence Act of 2006 calls for 700 miles.

Now when President Trump talks about all of the border wall, which it really isn’t a wall, it’s a border fence, but wall sounds more, I don’t know, commanding or imposing, I suppose. He’s talking about the roughly 140 miles of replacement fence and anybody who goes down to the border and sees the fence, there’s at least five different kinds of fence. And I’ve seen pieces of almost all the sections and it’s a long border — 2,000 miles.

And some of it is rusting out. It’s got holes in it. It’s falling based on just rains that have washed away some of the foundations. So it needs to be maintained. And some of it is just in really bad shape. It needs to be replaced.

And so the Trump administration has replaced about 140 miles of that. However, they’re promoting it as new construction and that’s not the case. To date, only three miles and I have to check my sources just to make sure, but that’s my understanding. Only three miles of brand spanking new fence have been built since Trump was inaugurated in 2017.

Glynn Cosker: Just three miles?

Sylvia Longmire: Just three miles. Yes.

Glynn Cosker: Yes. And there was already how many miles you said? 600 and something?

Sylvia Longmire: Around 680. Yeah. Approximately.

Glynn Cosker: 680. And you were saying how they’re all different-looking. I think it’s because there’s different contractors that are assigned to each segment of the wall, right?

Sylvia Longmire: That’s part of it. And also part of it are the needs on each sector. Part of it has to do with the terrain and what they’re dealing with as far as the ground and the soil and the rock that they’re building on. Construction methods have changed and evolved since then. So what type of fence might work best in San Diego sector is totally different than what will work in the Rio Grande Valley in Southern Texas.

Glynn Cosker: How well do you think the base support for President Trump in 2020? How well do you think that they know about the fact that there’s only been three miles of actual construction?

Sylvia Longmire: Well, there’s a difference between hearing something and absorbing it. And they will perceive that in however it aligns to what their beliefs are. So if they hear their president saying that, “Oh, we’ll, we’ve built 140 miles or 150 miles,” it’s not really in their best interest to dig deeper into that, to realize it’s only replacement fence.

Now don’t get me wrong. The fence needs to be replaced in many spots. I think that’s definitely a good thing, but they’re going to absorb that message in whatever way kind of reinforces their existing support of President Trump. So three miles of new fence versus 140 miles of existing fence. I don’t really think that it makes that much of a difference and they’ll find a way to make it sound as amazing as possible.

Glynn Cosker: Right. Yeah, no, I agree. And of course you say big chunks of the fence or the wall they’re in disrepair, so they have to be replaced. But of course, President Trump four years ago, and today he wasn’t yelling “build the wall” because hey, it needs to be rebuilt. It’s in disrepair.

Sylvia Longmire: Renovate the wall doesn’t have the same ring.

Glynn Cosker: No, I want to fix up the wall. But no, of course the wall, the main point of the “build the wall” concept was to do with immigration, of course, illegal immigration. But we’ll get to that later.

Let’s talk now about We Build the Wall, which was the GoFundMe page set up by Brian Kolfage to privately raise cash to help build Trump’s wall. And I got to be honest with you. When I first saw this back in 2018, I was kind of skeptical about the whole thing. And of course we’ve learned recently that Kolfage and President Trump’s former advisor, Steve Bannon, allegedly gave some of that $20-odd million dollars that was raised to themselves.

Sylvia Longmire: Allegedly.

Glynn Cosker: Allegedly. Yeah, I think I worked allegedly in there. So what’s your take on all of that?

Sylvia Longmire: I’ll admit I had a good laugh when I saw this story. Now this is my job. So I’ve been following this “We Build the Wall” for some time and writing about it for In Homeland Security, as you well know, and this is not the first attempt to privately fund wall construction. This was going on back in 2014, because I wrote about it in Border Insecurity, in my second book.

And it’s been met with mixed reviews and the first time that somebody tried to privately fund the wall, it didn’t go anywhere. They raised about maybe, I don’t know, $200, $300,000 and they weren’t able to do anything with it. So they ended up either having to donate it to some nonprofits or give it back to some of the donors. So it’s not reinventing the wheel. But Brian Kolfage is more well-known because he’s a Wounded Warrior.

So he’s the kind of personality and has the kind of story that is more likely to generate donations. And he generated a lot, a lot of donations, millions and millions of dollars. And, not only that, but he managed to secure some very high-profile names for the board, including Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s former senior advisor and Kris Kobach. He was a candidate, I believe in Kansas for Secretary of State and he was part of Trump’s Voter Security Commission, which is somewhat ironic.

So he was raising all this money and all this money, and they contracted out because they had to find somebody to build this. Fisher Industries is run by Tommy Fisher, and that’s where the drama continues. So Tommy Fisher has been running this construction company for some time, but he’s also a very huge supporter of President Trump. He hasn’t donated, relatively speaking, a ton of money. I think it’s roughly $24,000 to Trump’s political campaign.

But what’s interesting is that the Army Corps of Engineers has repeatedly denied Fisher Industries applications for contracting projects, for building the wall and other things. However, President Trump started lobbying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on behalf of Fisher Industries. This has never happened before.

We’ve been building along the border for a long time, and we have spent billions and billions of dollars on both physical wall construction on the virtual border fence, which wasted over a billion dollars in money. And there’ve been contractors all over the place that had been involved in border construction, but never has a U.S. president lobbied on behalf of one of these companies to another government agency to try to push this person forward.

Well, they finally did get one of the government contracts. It was for a pretty small portion of the wall, but everybody was like, this is kind of is a little fishy, no pun intended, but something just doesn’t smell right here.

So then comes in this Build the Wall, which started a couple of years ago, and Fisher Industries was chosen to build these sections. Now, when it first kicked off, Customs and Border Protection was made aware of it. And at first they were in support of it. But as the construction continued, particularly in Texas, CBP started to back away from it.

Now Kris Kobach went on the record to say that he had many conversations with President Trump saying that President Trump supported the construction and thought it was great, but this is all hearsay. There’s no recordings or anything on paper saying this.

Then in July of this past year, President Trump did go on the record in interviews and on Twitter saying that it’s a vanity project, it’s just for show. I think it’s ridiculous and basically backing away from it. So there’s no way to prove that he supported it at one point and changed his mind later on, but it was pretty smart of him to back away from it because they started having serious problems.

And the biggest reason that CBP backed away from it is because they were building the We Build the Wall section on parts nowhere near where the actual border fence goes, because it was just a bad location choice based on the soil. It was very unstable, and it was just poor construction process.

And Fisher Industries has been dinged several times in the past for other projects that have been poor quality and poor workmanship. So it was just a disaster anyway. Where they picked to build it and the method they choose to build that it was just poor workmanship.

And then this whole scandal comes out about Steve Bannon and Brian Kolfage just taking money out and using it for personal stuff. And it’s not just a few thousand dollars here, a few thousand dollars there. We were talking six figures.

And on top of that, two days ago, the Washington Post comes out with an article titled “He Builds the Wall, How North Dakota’s Tommy Fisher Scored $2 illion in Trump Border Contracts.” So this just dirty all the way around, Glynn. I don’t know how else to put it.

Glynn Cosker: And all of that lobbying that President Trump did, you said it was something that a President has never done before, right?

Sylvia Longmire: No. It’s very uncharacteristic and shady all the way around to have the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, as we have generally called that office, lobbying on behalf of one little construction company in North Dakota is just shady as all get-out.

Glynn Cosker: So I read that Bannon took about allegedly $1 million from this thing, is that right?

Sylvia Longmire: It was a huge chunk. It was like $1.2. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was a lot of money. It’s more money than you and I make in over several years, I’m sure.

Glynn Cosker: So it’s a mess. What do you think the outcome of all of this is going to be for Brian Kolfage? And there were two other defendants along with Kolfage and Steve Bannon.

Sylvia Longmire: Yes. Board members. Well, I don’t know if anybody’s going to see any jail time, but I’m pretty sure that they’re going to get some sort of financial sanction, that’s for sure. I do know that Brian Kolfage has to pay all the money back for the donations. It was like, I think it’s like, oh gosh, it’s a lot of money. I can’t remember the exact dollar figure, but he has to pay it all back. So there’s that.

So I don’t know that anybody will see jail time. It’s a white-collar crime and I’m sure they have very, very good attorneys. So they’ll probably be fined, and I don’t know, maybe get some probation or something like that. But yeah, we’ll see. I’m sure their lawyers will get them out of anything serious.

Glynn Cosker: True. And, of course, regardless of what President Trump says about any relation to all of this, it’s still damaging to his campaign because obviously anything entitled “We Build the Wall” is associated with his platform and the Republican side of the policy to do with border security, of course.

Sylvia Longmire: I don’t think it’s going to be damaging to him at all. I really don’t. I think that his supporters will see it as some type of effort to make him look bad or to ruin an attempt to improve border security, and that there is some sort of conspiracy or deep state or somebody plotting against him and his overall effort and the effort of these very good citizens and patriots to stop illegal immigration. I don’t think it’s going to hurt him at all, personally.

Glynn Cosker: That’s very true. Of course, what I should have said it would have hurt in normal times, it would hurt a campaign, but nothing seems to hurt President Trump. In fact, if anything, he’ll probably go up in the estimation of some of his base.

So let’s just dig a little deeper into it, though. If I’m not wrong, they did start to build, you mentioned it, that they started to build the wall. I believe they built it on private property. Is that correct?

Sylvia Longmire: They did.

Glynn Cosker: But how far away was it from where they were supposed to be, or President Trump wanted to build the wall?

Sylvia Longmire: I believe it was a good distance away. However, it was in one of the areas that was designated for additional fence sections.

Glynn Cosker: Okay. Just to get my brain around the whole fence/wall thing, you mentioned it at the beginning of the podcast, that there are so many different contractors, builders, each section costs a different amount of money, and it’s a different length, and it looks different from the other. It seems a little strange to me that when Ford makes a car, they all look pretty much the same. Right? Maybe I’m being a little bit too, um…

Sylvia Longmire: If you’re a Lamborghini driver, probably.

Glynn Cosker: Right. But you know, I mean, a Ford Fusion looks the same. Pretty much every time a Ford Fusion rolled off the line, it looked the same as the one behind it. Because Ford had a template that they would stick to. It just seems very strange. And I suppose it’s because there’s been so many different administrations and such, but it does seem strange that there could be some sort of uniformity. Do you want to talk about that?

Sylvia Longmire: Sure. And kind of like what I mentioned earlier is that they have to take into account the topography and the geography and what they’re working with as far as materials.

So they’re using in Texas and in parts of Arizona bollard fencing. That seems to be the standard for the most part, which is just the metal poles. And they’re like 30 feet high. And I don’t know how many feet they go into the ground, but it’s pretty deep into concrete. And they have gates that open and close at allow cars to go in and out.

Now in San Diego sector, it’s more of a traditional fence that you can actually see through. It’s 20 feet high, it’s got concertina wire and similar, it has gates that open and close, but you can see through it. And the bollard fence, the bollards are spaced apart far enough where you can see what’s going on the other side.

And that was one of the problems with the original fence in San Diego sector, where it was just a landing-mat aluminum, and it was solid. And you couldn’t see what was going on on the other side, and it’s all rusted out. So that’s a lot of what has been replaced in the last several years.

So the costs are different and based on what the president wants, based on what DHS and the Border Patrol, what they want and what their operational needs are, they’re going to get several bids from several different contractors, offering them several different options.

Now, when Trump first came into office, he wanted to get a couple of different samples. I think it was five or six different contractors built a prototype section of an actual wall. And they really went all out as far as testing it. They had some special operations guys go in there with like grappling hooks and ropes and all this other stuff to see if they could scale it.

And there was one where nobody could get over it and they were thrilled about that one. The only problem is, is that it was an actual concrete wall and it was way too expensive for the scope of work. And just logistically speaking, it would take too long and way too much money to build. So even though it was impenetrable, it just wasn’t going to work out. And plus it was bad for Border Patrol because they couldn’t see what was going on on the other side.

So because of that, then you had to add the extra expense of putting cameras on top of the wall and how they would fare in the really harsh weather conditions, and it was a total mess. So then after about maybe, I guess it was about a year, President Trump said, okay, it’s really not going to be a wall so much as a fence and we’re going with stainless steel, but it’s still a wall.

Okay. Then after that, he said he wanted to paint it black. Now black absorbs heat. If you’ve ever worn black in Florida, nobody wears black in Florida because black gets really, really hot, just as anybody with a black car will know as well in the summer.

So he wanted to paint it black to help deter people from climbing the wall because they would get burned. But the cost of the paint, again, and the time it would take to not only initially paint the wall, but maintain that paint on the wall over an extended period of time, again, the cost was just way too much. Then he wanted to put spikes on top of the fence. He just went through so many different iterations, and that’s really one of the big reasons for the delay.

And I know we’ll talk about this probably later, as far as Congressional funding and that whole mess with the National Emergency Declaration. But one of the biggest reasons for the delay is not politics in so much as President Trump couldn’t make up his mind and what he wanted. And then when he did make up his mind, then he changed his mind later on, and he would keep having go back, back and back to the contractors.

And the contractors would have to start all over again or modify the existing plans to try to make him happy for what he wanted, but then he changed his mind again. So that really caused a lot of delays.

Glynn Cosker: So yeah, it’s not so much politics, but paint was the issue with President Trump’s delay. And of course the idea of painting it black to make it hot to touch, I mean that whole concept is sort of strange to begin with because if the idea of building it is to prevent people from crossing the border, then it should be impenetrable regardless of how hot it is when you feel it. If it’s cold, then you can climb it and get over it. But if it’s hot, you can’t. I’m not quite sure I understand the reasoning. I never did understand the reasoning behind that.

Sylvia Longmire: Yeah. And that’s the funny thing, because that was the first thing that came to mind is that yes, in the middle of the day, it’s going to get very hot. First of all, the immigration flows across the border are slower in the summer because of the heat. Second of all, in the desert, it gets pretty cold at night and most border crossings are at night.

So logistically and logically speaking, the black paint I don’t think it was going to be much of a deterrent because it eventually does cool off.

Glynn Cosker: So, Sylvia, you mentioned it just before the break, how there’s been some unwillingness on Capitol Hill to provide any extra funding for the wall. And of course that prompted, well was one of the reasons that President Trump issued a National Emergency Declaration early last year. Let’s talk about that. Why do you think Congress is so unwilling to provide extra funding? And do you think that National Emergency Declaration was merited?

Sylvia Longmire: Well, part of the reason is politics. Of course, you have a Democrat-controlled House, and they’re not interested in additional wall construction. They are interested in border security, but they feel that there are other ways to accomplish that.

Not only that, but there has already been a lot of money budgeted for border wall construction and it hasn’t been spent yet. So the way that the Democrats look at it is why don’t you spend what you’ve already got and show us the results before we give you even more money on top of that.

So I believe that the final figure that was agreed upon was $1.375 billion. Initially, Trump was asking for $3 billion, then he upped it to $5.7 billion. And then later on, he was considering after the National Emergency Declaration, I believe the total came up to $8 billion that he wanted to move out of the Department of Defense to help pay for his vision.

Now, when I started looking into how the money was going to be spent, one of the reasons that the Democrats refused to sign off on his request for more money is that they had no idea exactly how the money was going to be spent.

Now, if I had a kid, I do, I have two kids, but let’s say that one of them was dumb enough to come up to me and say, “Hey mom, I want a million dollars.” And I would ask him, “How are you going to spend it?” And he’s like, “Oh, just trust me. I’m going to spend it on this and it’ll be great.” And I’m going to tell him you’re crazy.

So that’s essentially what happened with Congress, is that they requested from OMB, who happened to be at the time, was being run by Mick Mulvaney, who ended up becoming Trump’s chief of staff until relatively recently, when he was replaced with Mark Meadows.

So Mick Mulvaney just kind of wrote a letter back saying we’re requesting this much money and that’s it. And they never provided a line-item report for exactly how and exactly where all that money was going to be spent.

So I’m sure that a lot of people can understand the reluctance of Congress to pony up $5 billion when they didn’t know where it was going to go or how it was going to be spent. So that was part of it.

Then once the National Emergency Declaration went out, the money started moving and it came out from places that some might say was controversial. It came out of some pockets for rebuilding housing, fixing up housing for training programs, nothing major that you would see, like research and development and construction for fighter jet projects or whatever, but it was some things that people would consider critical. And also it came out from some counter-drug funding, which I would say is critical, but I’m biased because this is my line of work.

Then the courts got involved and lawyers started getting into the legality or lack thereof for the President moving around that money in order to fund something that had nothing to do with basically military projects.

So finally it got through the courts and some of the courts finally said, it’s okay to use this money. And that was, it’s not like that was yesterday. This was several, several months ago where the money was finally being released. But here we are in the third quarter of 2020, and we really still haven’t seen line-item budget or how exactly how and exactly where the money’s being spent. And considering we only have three new miles of border wall, there can’t be that much that has been laid out after all that trouble.

And there’s been four years to get this accomplished. In the first two years of office, there was a Republican President, a Republican Senate and a Republican House. And none of that got accomplished then either. So this is just kind of adding on to all the obstacles in front of the president, as far as moving forward with this plan for the border fence.

Glynn Cosker: Absolutely. And three miles, four years. Is there a date somewhere in the future where the wall will be completed? I mean, will it take Trump being reelected followed by another Republican in the White House from 2025 onwards? Or what do you see happening? Will it ever be built?

Sylvia Longmire: Well, completed is a very subjective word. Is completed when we get to 700 miles? During the campaign, I think that President Trump wanted to get the message across that he wanted the entire 2,000 miles fenced off. And I’m sure there are plenty of Americans who would love to see that, but there’s no reason for it.

Glynn Cosker: I think there’s plenty of people in America who still think that’s an option. They haven’t been told otherwise.

Sylvia Longmire: Yes. Just do it, throw money at it, it’ll be fine, but it’s not practical and it’s not necessary for millions of reasons. And we don’t really have to go into that, but let’s just say that is never going to happen. You’re never going to fence off the whole border.

So it’s a matter of picking and choosing what makes the most sense and what can we afford as a country. So we haven’t even gotten to the 700 miles that goes back 14 years to the Secure Fence Act. So will it be complete when we reached 700 miles? Well, that depends on whom you ask. So for some people, it won’t be complete until the whole thing is done. Most of it is going to depend on politics. Most of it is also going to depend on the flows of immigration across the border and how effective they think a fence is going to be to stop it.

Now, what’s interesting is taking a look at how the immigration flows have changed because of COVID-19. Now it’s slowed down significantly. Partly I think because of the virus and we talked about this in our last podcast, but also because of the migration protocols and how we’ve cut back dramatically on who we allow in to request asylum.

Now, I believe these policies are harsh and inhumane, and that’s just my personal opinion because we really haven’t addressed the fundamental problem in that our asylum laws are outdated and need to be revamped. And we need to take a look at how we work with immigrants to better affect our economy in a positive way.

So, again, with only three new miles of fence, and we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration because of policies. Not saying the policies are good, but I think it’s an example of how policy changes have a bigger impact on immigration flows across the border than an actual physical barrier.

Glynn Cosker: Right. And you said, of course, that COVID-19 is affecting immigration. But before that we had all of 2017, all the 2018 and all of 2019. Was there any decrease in illegal immigration during that time because of anything that was done during the administration?

Sylvia Longmire: I think the biggest decrease was in 2019 after the family separation and zero tolerance policy. Once that word started getting out, you saw a little bit of a decrease, but it’s hard to prove that the decrease was directly related because the number of people illegally crossing the border always drops in the summer because of the weather.

So it’s really hard to have a causal relationship that correlates, but it’s hard to say that one caused the other, unless you start interviewing tens of thousands of migrants and ask them, hey, why didn’t you come? Or why didn’t you cross? Which is obviously never going to happen.

We saw a huge increase in illegal immigration in the first year or two of Trump’s presidency. So I think that the perception of the message coming from the United States and how it filters its way down to Mexico and Central America has a bigger impact.

So even if people are getting the message that, “Hey, if you cross the border illegally, you’re going to go to jail and your kid’s going to be taken away from you.” So if people are under the impression that that is going to happen soon, or it’s in the works, people will rush even faster to get in the country before that law is enacted.

But we have seen that it hasn’t been a deterrent because that zero tolerance policy was in effect for two full months before people realized that it was a disaster and they finally got rid of it, but people were still coming.

So it’s really hard to say, but they fluctuate for so many different reasons. And it’s really hard to nail down just one definitive, specific reason why they go up or why they go down.

Glynn Cosker: Right. When one thinks about it, building an entire wall, the entire 2,000 miles is only real way of achieving 100% security of nobody crossing that. And that is unrealistic, of course.

Sylvia Longmire: And even that won’t stop 100%. It can reduce it, of course, but we’ve seen with drug smugglers and they’re very creative. And we’ve seen that with the Berlin Wall, even though significantly fewer people got across, but people still got out of East Germany despite the Berlin Wall, and people will still get out of any country or any situation where you have that.

I mean, just take a look at Israel and Palestine and the surrounding countries. I’ve seen the wall in Jerusalem with my own two eyes and it is significantly more imposing than anything we have here. But the tunnels, from what I hear, underground there, are ridiculous. So you still have people coming and going no matter what barrier you put up, somebody or something is always going to get through.

Glynn Cosker: Let’s talk about the election that’s coming up because there’s an election in November.

Sylvia Longmire: There is?

Glynn Cosker: Yes, there is.

Sylvia Longmire: I’m so glad you let me know.

Glynn Cosker: I know it’s like, but the thing is, though, four years ago, it was all we saw and heard every day forever and ever. And this time it’s there, but it’s definitely doesn’t feel like an election year. Does it? I mean, it just feels, I mean, this is a COVID-19 year. It’s no other year. This is always going to be COVID-19 year, even though it’s an election year.

But anyway, if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected president in November, how will his immigration and border security policy differ from President Trump’s?

Sylvia Longmire: That’s a good question because he really has not made that part of really the forefront of his policy platform. We’re hearing what most voters are caring about and you take a look at the polls and they care about COVID-19. They care about the economy. They care about jobs and they care about healthcare. So those are the top three things right now.

So I personally, and I don’t have cable TV, and I don’t really see too many ads and I don’t go online really looking into what the platform is. So, to be perfectly honest, I’m not exactly sure what his policy will be.

But if I had to guess, just based on the Democratic platform as a whole, I think that he would probably be more interested in immigration reform, our comprehensive immigration reform while not focusing so much on physical barriers.

I don’t know if he wants to take a look at revamping asylum policy. I’m not sure, I would guess that he would be against expanding the border wall. I don’t think he’d want to tear it down. And I’m certainly confident that he would not be in favor of open borders as some people would like to say. I don’t think that the Democratic party as a whole is interested in open borders, although it’s a really great attack point and talking point for the GOP.

But I don’t think he would be interested at all in wasting money on additional sections of fence. Just repairing and repairing and replacing, sure because the fence does serve a purpose, but not tearing it down and not expanding it. Just kind of leaving it as is and focusing more on humanitarian and logical approach to revamping what our current immigration and asylum policies are.

Glynn Cosker: I think that’s all we have time for today. I’d like to thank my guest Sylvia Longmire. Thank you, Sylvia. It’s always a pleasure.

Sylvia Longmire: Always fun.

Glynn Cosker: And we will be back next time for another episode. Until then, stay safe.