Security, immigration controls fraying as impasse over Trump's wall stretches into its fourth week

[DonViejo]

Rick Jervis, Bart Jansen, Alan Gomez and Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY Published 7:35 a.m. ET Jan. 17, 2019 | Updated 7:57 a.m. ET Jan. 17, 2019

WASHINGTON – As the government shutdown stretched toward a month, the security and immigration controls that President Donald Trump says he's fighting to improve are instead starting to fracture as a result of the impasse.

In all, an estimated 800,000 federal employees from nine shuttered federal agencies, many charged with border and national security, have been furloughed or are working without pay. Lines at some airports lengthened as Transportation Security Administration agents failed to show for work. More than four in five Coast Guard employees stands watch without pay.

Nine in 10 of the 60,000 employees at Customs and Border Patrol must report to work, checking passports and manning the existing pieces of border wall. But they're not being paid. Immigration courts, as of Tuesday, had postponed more than 40,000 hearings, including many of the deportation cases Trump is trying to speed up.

Meanwhile, the impasse over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a wall at the border and the Democrats’ refusal to fund it showed no sign of resolution in the longest-ever shutdown. From the high seas and airport terminals to desert border crossings and immigration courtrooms, concerns about security and those responsible for maintaining it continued to mount.

Border security could snap, all at once, in a matter of weeks without a resolution, said Robert Pape, political science professor and director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

more
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/17/trump-wall-shutdown-immigration-controls-border-security/2581368002/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatodaycomwashington-topstories

[Achilleaze]

1. KGOP republicans are making America less safe and secure

Deplorable.

[tanyev]

2. Nice little county you got here...be a shame if anything happened to it.

[lark]

3. Hmm, wonder if this is being done in prep for his version of a Reichstag fire?

He'll say without a wall these xx terrorists came over the southern border and killed xx # of people because of the Democrats hatred for our country. I sure hope not, but with him and PUtin, anything bad is possible.