Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren pledged in Wednesday night’s fifth Democratic debate in Atlanta, Georgia to tear down parts of the border wall constructed along the U.S.-Mexican border if elected.
“You’ve said that the border wall that President Trump has proposed is quote ‘a monument to hate and division.’ Would you ask taxpayers to pay to take down any part of the wall on the nation’s southern border?” asked one of the debate moderators.
“If there are parts of the wall that are not useful in our defense, of course we should do it,” Warren declared.
Warren’s commitment to open borders doesn’t stray far from her other White House rivals who have called for the decriminalization of border crossings, prompting criticism even from prominent members of the Democratic Party.
Elizabeth Warren says "of course" we should spend taxpayer dollars to tear down existing border wall
The Democrats are for open borders!pic.twitter.com/OXeV0hLhIZ
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) November 21, 2019
Warren’s promise, however, to pursue the radical measure to tear down existing parts of the wall that provide critical security along the southern border with Mexico, a rapidly deteriorating state where drug cartels have launched an insurgency that has now claimed the lives of several Americans, is a new idea to surface in Democratic primary already pulling the party further to the left.
Democrats running in the primary chasing open borders have drawn scrutiny from high-profile Democrats as the candidates race to outdo one another on how far left one can run.
In July, former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson sharply criticized Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination as they began to pile behind the idea to decriminalize border crossings.
“That is tantamount to declaring publicly that we have open borders,” Johnson told the Washington Post, adding that it would lead migration to skyrocket far beyond current levels. “That is unworkable, unwise and does not have the support of a majority of American people or the Congress, and if we had such a policy, instead of 100,000 apprehensions a month, it will be multiples of that.”
