From tantrums to shutdowns to border walls to protests to border ports, the U.S. has been through a lot these past few years. Many of those hardships stem from the president himself. The start of his presidency was when the country got slammed with hundreds of problems all at once, many of them crowded news stations for months, that caused colossal confusion and chaos, but who says the U.S. hasn’t survived things like this before?
After the current president was elected, there was no talk a wall for a long while for much of his presidency. Well, that was until Trump caused a massive shutdown and much more in order to finish building the wall even though the wall fails to do certain things. Such as, keeping out illegal immigrants who, as shown by pictures on the Arizona Republic (an Arizona newspaper), have sawed through the wall. The wall also isn’t truly a wall, it’s really metal slats across the border.
As stated before, the president had what many would call a tantrum which afterwards, he saw fit to create a massive government shutdown which led to government workers declaring the president was “holding their paychecks hostage”, as stated by a instagram post from Alexandria Cortez, an american politician. With the shutdown in effect, there were millions protesting nationwide.
Protests occurred in hopes of ending the shutdown. A Lot of these protests occurred in front of Trump Towers. Maryam Alyasiry, an 8th grade middle school student, has an opinion that could be shared by many concerning the wall, “In my opinion, I don’t think that the wall will do a difference, I really doubt it will keep the Mexicans from coming to the U.S.”
Many would call Trump’s actions criminal. On the other hand, Noura Salem believes, “Referring to Trump as a criminal is not necessarily correct.” Little do Trump and his supporters know, their beloved wall fails to do many of the things Trump had promised. (it. wouldn’t be able to stop the illegal drug smuggling from Mexico to the U.S)
(Noura Salem, pictured left)
The border wall in which the president is causing much commotion about, would not be able to stop the smuggling of hard drugs into the country. President Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders both have said the illegal smuggling of hard drugs into the country could be helped to be stopped by the wall.
These points of entry though, wouldn’t be affected by the wall. “A vast majority of illegal drugs enter the U.S. through legal ports of entry, so building a wall would be fruitless to stop the drug trade. Also, illegal immigration has been in a decline over the past decade.”, as stated by Timothy Smedley, a global studies educator and former military officer.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has given statistics of the drugs seized at points of entry to the U.S which include, 90% of heroin, 88% of cocaine, and 87% of methamphetamine. Maryam, like many civilians of the United States, is “surprised that they are not trying to fix that problem, considering the fact that if they fix that problem cause then it will probably stop Mexicans from coming. Even though I don’t see a problem with them coming.”
(Marym Alyasiry, pictured right)
The border wall has caused much chaos across the country. This wall is the reason people lost their paychecks and why many were in danger of going hungry and much more. A wall that is supposed to isolate part of the border that was formed out of discrimination against people trying to survive and escape from terror.
Aleson Coleman
Unis Journalism