Build the Wall

 
By: Gov. Kristi Noem  
August 16, 2024  

“We don’t complain about things – we fix them.” When my dad taught me that, he was talking about cows, horses, fences, and ranch chores, not the wide-open Southern Border. But the lesson holds true.

The truth is, we could complain about President Joe Biden and Vice President (and Border Czar) Kamala Harris’s failures at the Southern Border until the cows come home. Instead of complaining, South Dakota is doing our part to fix it.

We recently welcomed home our seventh detachment of South Dakota National Guard troops to the border. The last few groups have all had the mission of working with Texas to construct the border wall. We sent an engineering company – we sent builders.

South Dakota guardsmen constructed more than five miles of border wall. They fortified 20 miles-worth of wall with concertina wire. And they repaired 46 breaches in the crucial area between Del Rio and Eagle Pass, TX.

I spent a day with them helping them build the wall – it wasn’t easy work. They had to clear miles of rough ground in 100-degree heat and Texas humidity before they could get to work on barrier construction. But they were glad to do it in service to our country.

These brave soldiers were more than 1,000 miles from home. Their work was crucial to keep South Dakota – and every other state – safe. The sad reality is that due to the incompetence and mismanagement of our border, every state is now a border state.

When we control the border with physical barriers, we make it tougher for cartels to facilitate their drugs and human trafficking into our country. We funnel the traffickers towards areas where we have a stronger presence. And if anyone does try to breach the barrier, we give law enforcement and Border Patrol precious time to respond. That’s just common sense – but the Biden Administration abandoned common sense when they stopped constructing the wall.

South Dakota will continue to do this work – but we shouldn’t have to. President Biden and Vice President Harris are leaving the border wide open on purpose. Texas is working with South Dakota and other states to pick up the slack.

We will continue to do our part. We have another group of South Dakota National Guard soldiers scheduled to deploy to the Southern Border on a federal activation later this Fall. And we will continue to do everything we can to mitigate the cartels’ influence here at home.

I have seen such incredible patriotism and leadership from the South Dakota National Guard troops that we’ve deployed to the border over the years. The commander of the most recent detachments was a young female lieutenant who is working on her PhD in Animal Science at SDSU, meanwhile she is also an ROTC instructor. She’s a leader. She’s getting results. I wish that I could say the same about our current “leadership” in the White House.

In the meantime, we won’t complain about things. We’ll continue to fix them. If the Biden-Harris Administration won’t build the wall, we will. We will continue to do everything we can to keep our people safe.