The former head of Customs and Border Protection predicts Trump won’t be able to build a barrier 'from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico,' but there’s a lot he can do in between.

Congress reached a $1 trillion dollar budget deal this week, but there was no funding for President Trump’s signature campaign promise: a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. Instead, he got what he spun as a “down payment” on the wall—a sizeable increase in border security and defense spending.

“Make no mistake, we are beginning to build the wall, and we will keep out the gang members, criminals, drug and human traffickers that threaten our citizens and that threaten security,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The president’s remarks are just the latest attempt to redefine the specifics of how wall-like, exactly, the wall will be. “It’s a code word for better border security,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said last week.

So what’s going on here? Politico Magazine spoke with Jay Ahern, former acting head of Customs and Border Protection. Ahern has worked in border enforcement for three decades, and he was at CBP during the last big ballooning of those efforts, under George W. Bush after 9/11. We talked about Trump’s wall plan, what all of us aren’t getting about the border and what he’s seen firsthand—how Colombian drug traffickers simply went around the obstacles his agency put in their way in the 70s and 80s, for instance—that worry him about the future of Trump’s immigration enforcement push. Excerpts:

Politico Magazine: One of the big issues with this as a national story is that the vast majority of people living in the United States don’t understand the complexity of building a border wall, and especially these divisions between rural, urban and remote areas, which complicate a big project like his. So what do you think all of us don’t get about it that someone on the border might get?

Jay Ahern: What a lot of people don’t realize is that the environment along the border is very different, and the risk is very different at different parts of the border. As you’re constructing a wall, how does that fit into the overall strategy, and can you actually build tactical infrastructure, which is what we called walls and fencing in the past? You don’t want to build a wall that’s going to have an impact on water flow along the border. You have to be concerned about wildlife—there are different kinds of wildlife you need to understand. You have to thoughtfully consider first and foremost where do you need it and what kind of infrastructure that’s needed, whether it’s more of a concrete wall or whether it’s more of a steel fence that goes 12 or 14 feet high. It’s really got to be a more a more thoughtful approach.

Politico: So do you think ultimately it will look like some wall-fence mash-up, and then in some areas, there will just be beefed-up security…?

Ahern: I think it’s not reasonable to assume nor is it doable to have a wall that will go from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. You’re not going to build it through the mountains of Arizona and you’re not going to build it in the middle of the Rio Grande River. And so I think also when you take a look at the risk, you also take a look at where you put the right solution in place—and that’s not a wall solely. And I think a lot of people are under the belief that you build a wall, or you build a big fence, and that’s going to keep the bad people out. And that’s just not true—it just kind of moves it around. And so again, you have to have that right combination of infrastructure, technology and personnel. And so as funding gets made available for the border security plan, there will be certainly some additional miles of fence. Not sure how much that would be but I don’t believe it will be more than 150 or 200 more miles. There’s currently 654 miles already built on the border. Some of that will need to be replaced, some of that will need to be repaired and some of that will need to be upgraded. And there are also new pathways that have emerged—so to use some of that money to build new areas where it’s needed right away, that makes perfect sense.

And there’s going to be some areas—urban areas, particularly—where you do need that persistent presence to be able to impede the flow coming across the border. But it’s doubtful in my experienced opinion that there will be a considerable amount of additional wall or fence of built on the border over the next few years.

In urban areas—in different parts of Arizona or Texas where you have high populations on either side of the border—a lot of that has been built over the years. And a lot of that 654 miles put in place 8 years ago, those were some of the high-threat areas that needed to have more modern infrastructure. They will certainly take a look at that, and say, ‘Is what is in place sufficient or not? Or do we need to ahead and replace and improve and remodel what’s there?’

Politico: Trump wants to hire additional employees at CBP and ICE. Is that a realistic number?

Ahern: I think the numbers were 5,000 for the Border Patrol, and 10,000 for ICE. I think [in ICE] the split’s going to be around 8,500 for enforcement and removal operations, and 1,500 for HSI [Homeland Security Investigations]. So I think those additional resources will be welcomed and needed. It’s going to take years to bring them on board, but I think clearly additional measures are necessary, because you need to have the appropriate level of personnel.

Politico: Do you see a downside to all these new hires? There was a big hiring surge under George W. Bush, which led to a lot of problems. There have been some internal memos that suggest they may look at getting rid of the lie detector test.

Ahern: When you’re going to be adding significant numbers of people to an organization, you’re going to have some mistakes. That’s not a flaw, necessarily, in the hiring process; it’s just going to happen. When you’re hiring 10,000 additional people for ICE and 5,500 for Border Patrol, you’re going to make some mistakes along the way. You’re going to have some individuals who are going to try to infiltrate an organization for bad reasons, whether it’s criminal organizations or others. You need to realize that and put as many measures as you can to prevent that, but there will be thousands of people coming on board.

Politico: Do you think you learned any lessons last time about the measures that could be adopted to prevent that?

Ahern: Yeah, well we brought on the polygraph toward the end of that process, and we thought it was important that we had that polygraph in place. A polygraph is just one—there are other technologies that could be suitable as well. Right now, there is a piece of legislation called the Border Corruption Act that requires CBP to do polygraphs, so it’s really kind of a moot point until Congress either amends that language or provides a waiver provision. But I wouldn’t be one to say you should eliminate some kind of technology. Technologies are there to make that decision if someone is trying to gain access to your organization for bad reasons.

Politico: Trump wants to re-negotiate NAFTA; he was tweeting about it recently. How will that affect some of these border issues, like smuggling for instance?

Ahern: We’ll see what actually does get re-negotiated, but I think having a strong economic base in a country is critical for security and stability. So I think we need to be careful about looking for unintended consequences. We want Mexico to be a prosperous and stable nation. We want Canada to remain a strong partner, too. When you look at the amount of cross-border travel and country, you want that to continue to happen. That’s good for all three countries. When you look at supply chains in this country, things that originate in Mexico move through the United States to go to Canada. This pretty delicately linked supply chain needs to be maintained. You have to be careful about disrupting that too much.

Politico: How effective do you think a new border wall will be in stopping the flow of illegal drugs?

Ahern: It will certainly help the flow of illegal drugs that happens between the ports of entry. But it might have a funneling effect, which occurs in the legitimate passage of travel and trade into the ports of entry. So pedestrians, vehicles and truck traffic—commercial goods coming across the border—they are frequently used as conveyances to introduce drugs into the country and perhaps might actually have more amounts of drugs coming in. So I’d be very careful about making sure they don’t disregard the need for additional personnel and technology at legitimate land border crossings and the ports of entry. Because that’s where the natural flow will move to as you shore up between the ports of entry.

Politico: Has that happened before? Some kind of increase in border enforcement moving that flow to more legitimate channels?

Ahern: Sure, as you trace back the history of narcotics trafficking. I spent a lot of time in the 70s and 80s in South Florida, where we had the low-flying aircraft and we have the boats coming in from the motherships, a lot of stuff coming in from the Bahamas from small boats and planes. The transportation networks for supply, transit and arrivals were coming into South Florida, and then distribution throughout the United States was based out of South Florida. So as it moved from small planes to go-fast boats, it then moved into commercial traffic, whether it be large container ships … you know, hidden and concealed inside cargo containers and the like. That’s the funnel effect that actually occurred, because the transportation networks that the Colombians had in South Florida were still pretty much in place. It did move based on the defenses we had in place. Again, we had a very adaptive adversary, that are still gonna go ahead and try to move their goods to market, and if you change one aspect of it, they will adapt. So I think Florida is a good example. And then when that finally got shored up, it moved to Mexico.



[POLITICO]