In the News

A wall backer, U.S. Rep. French Hill takes 6th tour of border

3/2/2020
Arkansas Democrat Gazette

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. French Hill toured the southern border of the country again last month, his sixth trip to the region since taking office in January 2015.

The Republican from Little Rock focused this time on stretches separating Arizona from Mexico. Some of the land abutting the border, in the rugged Sonora Desert, belongs to the Tohono O'odham Nation; members of the tribe are working with border agents but have opposed massive wall projects.

The area has "unique circumstance," Hill said, including "large, private-sector leases on federal lands that extend along the border for ranching, and a 2.3-million-acre Indian reservation that covers about 67 or 68 miles of the border."

The terrain, southwest of Tucson, is rural and sometimes rugged, with mammoth saguaro cactuses dotting the landscape. The federal government is destroying some of the plants in order to make way for President Donald Trump's wall project.

Since coming to Congress, Hill said he's familiarized himself with the terrain.

"I've been to urban areas, small towns and now, sort of desert, open country," he said Thursday, pausing to list some of his destinations: greater El Paso and Juarez; San Diego and Tijuana, Laredo and Del Rio, Texas, as well as Big Bend National Park.

Whether separated by rivers, walls or wires, the area is constantly monitored, he noted, with the barriers adopted and the strategies employed sometimes varying.

"I see a big increase in technology when we were in Nogales, Ariz., compared to Del Rio, compared to Laredo, compared to McAllen [Texas]," he said.
Things are increasingly sophisticated.

"I've seen the technology of lighting, cameras, towers and sensors expand over the five years I've been in Congress," he said.

"The wall is being expanded in new places as the president promised and older sections of fencing that have been up since 1990 are being replaced and modernized," he said. "In my view, so many Americans believe that border fencing, physical border barriers, are somehow something new, but we've been constructing border fence, parallel roadways, trying to enhance lighting and camera technology and manpower technology since 1990," he added.

The number of people apprehended or declared inadmissible along the Southwest border soared during Trump's first term, from 521,090 in fiscal 2018 to 977,509 in fiscal 2019, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

During the first four months of fiscal 2020, the numbers have fallen somewhat.

As a member of Congress, Hill has backed Trump's efforts to erect more walls along the border. He also supported last year's southern border emergency declaration, which enabled the administration to shift funds from military projects to border security enhancement.

Hill's Democratic opponent, state Sen. Joyce Elliott of Little Rock, has portrayed Trump's border policy as misguided.

"Border policies that do not include thoughtful, comprehensive immigration reform are compromised and disingenuous from the outset," she said in a text message.

"Building a wall is conceptually a simplistic response, easily a tool of demagoguery to instill fear, stoke division and give the pretense of effective policy," she wrote in a text message. "We deserve a leader who appreciates the complexities of border security and who will share those complexities [with] the people."