Janet Napolitano: Trump’s ‘Mythological’ Border Wall ‘Does Not Suffice as an Immigration Policy’

Friday at the Brookings Institution forum on immigration policy, former Obama administration Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said President Donald Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border is a “mythological structure” that “does not suffice as an immigration policy.” Napolitano said, “I think the notion of building a wall across the Southwest border—I mean, I just, first of all, just doing it that border from a geography standpoint, you’re talking about going through riverbeds, over mountains. There’s a great deal of private property ownership along the border. When there was money set aside and a Secure Fencing Act a decade and a half ago, a number of the property owners whose property would be used for that sued. Those cases, many of them are still in litigation. So you’ll have those issues. You have Indian reservations that straddle the border in Arizona, the community lives on both sides of the border. They’ve already said they’re not going to have a wall. So, just the pure doing of it, not to mention the actual cost. Which, you know, I think the numbers I’ve seen are low numbers. And I think you’re probably talking in excess of $20 billion to build