NPR: Begging for More Barriers, US Border Patrol Arrested 2,500 Caravan Migrants For Illegal Crossings

As the longest-ever partial government shutdown stretches on, President Trump is facing significant political headwinds across an array of new polling, some of which we'll mention below.  I've argued all along that shutdown brinksmanship is a deeply flawed strategy that rarely works out well for the party that's perceived as precipitating the showdown -- a lesson that the Democrats had to re-learn just a few months ago.  According to a Washington Post article, senior Republican leaders warned the president late last year that this was a fight that wouldn't end well, yet here we are.  

But my argument that Democrats enjoy the political high ground in this impasse does not discount Trump's policy case in favor of additional barriers -- which many Democrats have gone on the record to support, both in the past, and even in recent days.  National Public Radio, hardly a right-wing outfit, aired and published an illuminating report on this debate from the perspective of the US Border Patrol.  The White House should share some of these quotes as widely as possible:  

Senior Border Patrol officials are taking up President Trump's call for more miles of border barrier, pushing back against congressional Democrats who say additional fencing is unnecessary. During a ride-along with the Border Patrol on Wednesday in its San Diego sector, agents made it clear that the fence deters illegal crossers. "I started in the San Diego sector in 1992 and it didn't matter how many agents we lined up," said Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott. "We could not make a measurable impact on the flow [of undocumented immigrants] across the border. It wasn't until we installed barriers along the border that gave us the upper hand that we started to get control."  Forty-six of the 60 miles of border in the San Diego sector are currently protected by some type of barrier. Scott says in the places where he has two levels of fencing he achieves 90 percent operational control.