BORDER FENCE IS VITAL TO NATIONAL SECURITY

By Michael Giorgino

Our inability to control our borders is America's Trojan horse.

Our inability to control our borders is America's Trojan horse.

There are between 8 and 12 million illegal aliens already in this county--one quarter of them here in California. Illegal immigration overwhelms our social services and diminishes respect for our laws. Far more dangerous is the threat of more 9/11-type terrorists crossing the border--waiting for another chance to strike.

As Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Congressman Duncan Hunter is keenly aware of the danger posed by the close proximity of San Diego's twelve military bases to the international border. We are homeport for two of America's twelve aircraft carriers, much of our dwindling surface and submarine fleet, and a Marine Division.

Congressman Hunter has been the driving force behind construction of a 14-mile long secondary and tertiary fence, roads, and other enhancements to border security authorized by Congress in 1996. These improvements are intended to prevent "backpackers" from bringing weapons or drugs into the United States. Illegal crossing in the completed areas has fallen to practically zero--no one has been able to climb the new 12-foot fence.

Rather than working to clean up the huge budget deficit she created for us in Sacramento, State Senator Denise Ducheny is now obstructing completion of the last 3.5 miles of the enhanced border fence--an issue she obviously knows little about. (Union Tribune Feb. 12)

Ducheny says completing the triple fence is a "bad idea." She thinks it will "set back relations with Mexico," a country who's uniformed officers are under investigation by the San Diego Police Department for rape and extortion of American tourists. She says it damages the environment, even though it affects only a narrow, remote area along the international border, and will end illegal foot traffic in the estuary. She also calls the fence "unsightly," a term more appropriate to shopping for shoes than protecting our children from terrorist attack.

And Ducheny is not alone. The Staff of the California Coastal Commission (CCC) also opposes completion of the secondary fence. Here we are, more than two years after September 11th, and their report states: "The [border fence] project raises fundamental policy conflicts in that it is not an allowable use under three Coastal Act policies."

What are the "allowable uses?" Protecting sensitive habitat, restoring water-dependant habitat, and "channelizing" rivers for flood control. Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Quida terrorists obviously did not make that list.

The Coastal Commission's old rules may have seemed proper before 9/11. They make absolutely no sense in a frightening new world where chemical, biological, or even tactical nuclear weapons can be carried into our communities in a backpack. Anyone who thinks what happened at the World Trade Center can't happen again and can't happen here is living in a dream world.

Congressman Bob Filner is just as blind. He wrote Asa Hutchinson, Under Secretary of Border and Transportation Security, complaining of cost overruns in the project.

Isn't it odd that Filner is only a fiscal conservative when it comes to defending America?

Filner is against military spending, against the Patriot Act, against the War on Terror, and now he thinks three and a half more miles of fence are just too darn expensive. By some estimates, 9/11 cost this county one trillion dollars. Can anyone name one thing Bob Filner has accomplished in Congress since September 11, 2001 to protect the families of the 51st Congressional District from further attack?

If Filner and Ducheny have demonstrated one thing in their political opposition to strengthening our border, it is that they cannot be trusted with the nation's security. Like the Coastal Commission, they lack the tough-minded realism necessary to make policy decisions in a post-9/11 world.

The time has come to stop humoring these obstructionists. The blood of our 3,000 fallen countrymen cries out from the ground: "Defend America--before it's too late!"

• Mike Giorgino is a retired Naval Officer who was Ducheny's 2002 State Senate opponent and who is the Republican nominee for Congress against Filner in 2004.