Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions says building a border wall is “essential” to defending American sovereignty and is the “right thing” to do in order to “make clear to the whole world… that the border is not open and we mean it.”
Sessions—who has emerged as the leader of the conservative nation-state movement—rejected the narrative of corporate media and donor-class lawmakers who suggest that simple proposals to protect the nation’s borders are “impossible.”
On today’s program of Breitbart News Daily, host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon asked Sessions what he makes of the media’s narrative that central pillars of Trump’s campaign platform—i.e. building a wall to protect the border, bringing 10 million jobs back from China, and imposing a temporary pause on Muslim migration—are “impossible.”
Bannon said:
Do you believe for a country that cured polio and for a country that put a man on the moon… and for a country that’s been the beacon of freedom– freed more people, created more wealth, been a bedrock of the good in this world– do you believe any of these things are beyond the will of the American people if they put their shoulder to it?
Sessions was unequivocal:
No, no, no, no, no, you’re exactly right. Look, we can fix this situation on the Mexican border. It is fixable. And a wall, a barrier, is an essential part of that. And it will be the right thing once we make clear to the whole world, including our neighbors to the South, that the border is not open and we mean it and we’re going to enforce it, and if you attempt to come, you’ll be apprehended and promptly deported, the numbers will drop dramatically—as a government witness acknowledged to me in a hearing couple of days ago. Obviously, this is true.
“We are eviscerating the rule of law,” Sessions explained. “Law enforcement officers and border patrol have the lowest moral in the government because they’re being denied the right to enforce the law.”
Indeed, just last week Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Council President Chris Crane—an ICE officer of 13 years and a former U.S. Marine—detailed how “ICE was ranked 314th—or dead last— in morale among 314 federal agencies surveyed by the Office of Personnel Management. Survey data for this year indicates morale at ICE continued to drop this year, even though ICE ranked 318 out of 320 agencies surveyed.”
Crane noted that recent efforts put before Congress—including the immigration plan of donor-class favorite Marco Rubio—would have exacerbated the situation greatly. “ICE is literally crumbling from within, but efforts by Sen. Rubio and the Gang of Eight were clearly more focused on legalizing criminals than assisting this agency in turmoil,” Crane wrote. “Sen. Rubio has never done anything to help ICE officers do their jobs,” Crane explained, “Law enforcement was treated like absolute trash,” by the Gang of Eight.
Sessions said that our current policies are “a disgrace to a great nation.” Sessions also made a veiled reference to the influence Party donors may perhaps wield over a candidate’s positions. “I don’t care where the next president is getting their money or their support, they need to end this lawlessness. It’s a disgrace to a great nation.”
Many of Sen. Rubio’s biggest financial boosters are the same people who funded, in 2013, the border-opening immigration bill.
“This election,” Sessions concluded, “the American people are on top of this. There’s a movement out there. Whatever happens, we need to be sure that the message is clear that this matter has got to be fixed.”