One of the main purposes of government, whether a government abides by it or not, is to protect its people. It would be absurd for the government not to take action in a time like this where illegal immigration has created issues with national security like, threat of terrorists entering the country, increased crime, and the American image of immigrants. In order for the government to protect its citizens, secure borders need to be in place. Many people believe that our Southern border between Mexico and the United States should be secured with a physical wall or fence.

During his campaign, President Donald Trump really hit the point of stopping illegal immigration from the South with a wall. Most illegal immigrants enter the country through the Southern border, and the illegal immigrant population has been on the rise for years until about 2009 when the population began to stay more steady with deportation and better border techniques like the Border Patrol. If there was a wall put into place then the illegal immigrant population could potentially go down and allow an increase in legal immigrants rather.

Throughout the past, illegal immigrants that have terrorist ties have been caught residing in the United States after being brought over from Mexico. One of these illegal immigrants was Ahmed Dhakane, who was part of a human smuggling operation and brought people in through Mexico from places like Somalia and East Africa, some of whom had ties to terrorist groups. If Dhakane was able to complete an operation like this in recent years than other people could be trying to do the same thing. The wall could potentially help prevent illegal immigration and protect the United States from terrorists.

Some illegal immigrants are not as good as the rest and give immigrants as a whole, a bad name. One illegal immigrant in California, named Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes, killed two police officers. According to Fox News, Bracamontes wished he would have killed more police officers than this. Immigrants like this make a bad name for all immigrants illegal or not, which is unfair to those that are trying to come over legally and those second generation illegal immigrants. If there was a wall then there could be better ways of filtering out the good and bad immigrants and promote legal immigration rather than illegal immigration.

Although some people may argue that building a wall is not the right step in bettering the future for not only Americans but for humans in general, we should not feel comfortable with letting just anyone over the borders. If we are clueless of who is coming over the borders into our country then our government is not completing its job. Government is a way of protecting the people, which is nearly impossible if anyone can get across our borders. If people from Mexico are getting in then how do we know that people aren’t coming from other places to get in. According to the Department of Homeland Security, a wall between the Mexican-American border would cost about 21.6 billion dollars to construct, but this is a small price for the amount of security it would give our country. Not only is the debate on the Southern border about humanity, but it is also about security. Let our country do its job in protecting us and our rights by securing the border with a wall.