Republican presidential candidate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee declared, “if I were president, I would deploy the director of Homeland Security to Laredo, Texas, and tell him he and his family would be living there, and wouldn’t get to leave until the fence was constructed” on Friday’s “O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.

Huckabee stated, “if I were president, I would deploy the director of Homeland Security to Laredo, Texas, and tell him he and his family would be living there, and wouldn’t get to leave until the fence was constructed, and Bill, we could do it in less than a year, because we’ve built a road between British Columbia and Alaska 73 years ago. It was a 1,700 mile road, and it was done under arctic conditions. There’s no way this country, if it wanted to doesn’t have the capacity to take care of this border.”

After the discussion turned Kate’s Law, Huckabee argued, “the best way to handle it is a standalone.” He pointed out that there are some fiscal concerns over the bill, but it would save lives.

Huckabee further stated that the lack of a standalone vote is “corruption. It’s all about donors. It’s all about following the corporate class, the donor class, and that’s why a lot of things don’t happen. It’s why Americans are so frustrated.”

He added, when discussing the Democratic Party’s opposition to the bill, “Well, the Democratic Party of today is a very different Democratic Party than when you had John Kennedy, who believed in a very strong America, and a visionary America. It’s a very different, even from the Democrats — you had the southern Blue Dog Democrats. They’re all gone. every one of them [has] been voted out because there is no room in the Democratic Party for anyone other than a far left wing liberal. That’s the only [place] that [is] left in the party.

Huckabee concluded, “if you had the law, what would happen, people who thought that they might just sneak back in wouldn’t do it for fear of a five-year prison sentence. I mean, it’s as simple as that. A lot of times, the very thing that is the deterrent is the fear that if they get caught, there’s going to be a mandatory time in prison, and it is not going to be pleasant, and I don’t think many of the felons would say, ‘Let’s just take the risk.’ Right now, they know what’s going to happen, catch and release. That’s got to stop. There needs to be some real penalties”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett