SECURE FENCE ACT OF 2006
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said last week that she and other Democrats consider a border wall “immoral.” But some of the same Democrats who decry President Donald J. Trump’s proposed concrete wall as a 30-foot-tall human-rights violation actually approved 700 miles of steel barriers under the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (SFA).
Meanwhile, these current, former, and then-ascendant Senate Democrats all voted for SFA, which President George W. Bush signed into law. On September 26, 2006, the Senate passed SFA 80–19, with 26 Democrats voting Yea. Among them:
- Joseph Biden of Delaware (“I voted for the fence related to drugs,” he explained in a 2007 debate. “A fence will stop 20 kilos of cocaine coming through that fence.”)
- Sherrod Brown of Ohio (while still in the House, Brown voted Yea that September 14.)
- Tom Carper of Delaware
- Hillary Clinton of New York (the Halloween after voting for SFA, she told the Council on Foreign Relations that America should “secure our borders with technology, personnel, physical barriers if necessary in some places.”)
- Dianne Feinstein of California (“Democrats are solidly behind controlling the border, and we support the border fence,” she told the Los Angeles Daily News. “We’ve got to get tough on the border. There’s no question the border is a sieve.”)
- Bill Nelson of Florida (freshly defeated by Republican Rick Scott)
- Barack Obama of Illinois (“The bill before us certainly will do some good,” Obama argued on the Senate floor. “It will authorize badly needed funding for better fences and better security along our borders, and that should help stem some of the tide of illegal immigration in this country.” He added that SFA would stymie “immigrants sneaking in through unguarded holes in our border. . .”)
- Chuck Schumer of New York
- Debbie Stabenow of Michigan
- Ron Wyden of Oregon
Illegal immigrants from the so-called caravan lately have been caught on camera burrowing under and vaulting over the steel fence. One of these barricade climbers, Honduran Maryury Elizabeth Serrano-Hernandez, 19, soon went into labor and delivered an American-citizen anchor baby in a San Diego hospital on November 27. Border Patrol officers told Fox News that the mother, the father (age 20), their newborn son, and another boy (age 2) all were “placed into immigration proceedings and released on their own recognizance on December 2.” Let’s see if they eventually attend their asylum hearing or simply dissolve into the American landscape.
This column is adapted from a column that first appeared in the National Review. Keep reading here.
