Trump to tout border wall — well, fence — in Yuma visit

President Donald Trump will travel Tuesday afternoon to Yuma, Arizona, which he’ll say demonstrates the benefits of a border wall — or, at least, border fencing.

The visit could set the table for a legislative battle next month over whether to include border wall money in a spending bill that Congress must pass by Sept. 30 to keep the federal government funded.

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On a phone call with reporters Tuesday morning, several Department of Homeland Security officials said in the years after Congress passed a law in 2006 authorizing construction of roughly 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, border arrests in the Yuma sector — a 126-mile stretch from California to Arizona — dropped significantly. From fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2016, arrests fell 88 percent, according to Border Patrol statistics.

“What was once one of the least secure border areas in America is now one of the most secure areas because of those investments in border security,” said one Department of Homeland Security official speaking on background.

The officials blurred the distinction between Trump’s campaign vision of a border wall — big, beautiful and concrete — and the sort of fencing and other technologies that DHS relies on currently.

“We’re looking at different types of barrier. Wall is certainly a prominent part of that,” the first official said. “What is along the border in [the] Yuma sector and other areas is fence. So we sort of use those two interchangeably.”

A second DHS official stressed that the department’s border security plan goes beyond physical infrastructure. “A wall in and of itself will not give the agents the protection that they need to work safely in that space, and it won’t necessarily protect the border any better,” the second official said. The official listed sensors, physical barriers, roads, equipment and intelligence as key factors to securing the border.

Trump, himself, coonceded, in a January phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, that the wall — and getting Mexico to pay for it — was “the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically, his might be the most important.” At that time, Trump’s estimate of the wall’s cost was well under half of DHS’ ultimate estimate.

Trump will visit a Marine base in Yuma, where he’ll get a tour of U.S. Customs and Border Protection equipment, including a Predator drone and a Border Patrol boat and surveillance truck.

The president will then head into a closed-door briefing and later meet with Marines, according to an administration official.

In the evening, Trump will hold a campaign-style rally in Phoenix, part of a broader effort to reinvigorate his base. The rally comes one week after Trump drew fire for blaming “both sides” for violence at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that attracted white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis, and where one counter-demonstrator was killed.

Critics warn that tonight’s Arizona rally may further inflame tensions, and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat, urged Trump to delay it.

The president recently said he’s “seriously considering” a pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted in July of criminal contempt in a racial-profiling case. There’s been speculation Trump might announce a pardon for Arpaio at the Phoenix rally. But CNN reported that no such pardon has been cleared by the Justice Department, and Arpaio told a local news outlet Monday night that he didn’t plan to attend the rally, making an announcement in Phoenix less likely.

The DHS officials on Tuesday morning’s call said an investment in border security could help federal immigration officers make arrests in the country’s interior by freeing them up to pursue undocumented immigrants who are already here.

“An individual who crosses the border illegally and gets past the Border Patrol should no longer feel secure that they are immune from any future enforcement,” one official said.

While the rate of deportations has slowed significantly under the Trump administration — partly due to a drop in people crossing the border illegally — the number of deportations that stem from an arrest far from the border has increased.

According to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, removal of people arrested in the interior by Immigration and Customs Enforcement rose 31 percent from Jan. 22 to Aug. 5 from the same period the year earlier.