Obama defends stance on border fence

McALLEN — The United States needs a border fence in some areas, Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday.

But the Democratic presidential hopeful added he has no desire to pursue a costly and ineffective project.

In an interview just days before Texas’ primary elections Tuesday, the junior senator from Illinois defended voting for the construc-tion of the fence in the Senate. He said his comments in recent weeks that the barrier is ineffective in some areas are consistent with his message on the issue.

“I’m not interested in engaging in projects that aren’t going to work and just cost a lot of money,” Obama said. “I want to solve the problem in a way that retains the particular culture of the Texas border but also deals with a very real problem that we have hun-dreds of thousands of people that are coming into the country illegally.”

Striking a conciliatory tone in a race that has become increasingly heated in recent weeks, Obama said he and Sen. Hillary Clinton — his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination — voted for the fence in the interest of border security.

On a recent visit to the Rio Grande Valley, however, Obama said he was confronted with a different reality when he saw that a por-tion of the proposed fence would cut across the University of Texas-Brownsville.

“Obviously, they are not thinking things through,” Obama said of the Bush administration. “It’s not going to be effective.”

Obama and Clinton, the junior senator from New York, are locked in a close race going into Texas’ primary election, widely consid-ered to be a must-win for either candidate to clinch their party’s nomination.

Across Texas, several polls show Obama has made considerable gains in the past month, trumping Clinton by a mere few points. But the gap between the two is within the margin error, putting them in a virtual dead heat.

Clinton trails Obama by 109 delegates — 1,385 to 1,276 — according to the latest Associated Press count. It takes 2,025 delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination and the 228 in Texas are considered crucial.

Responding to questions Saturday about a comprehensive immigration reform package, he said he “disputed” the notion that the politically divisive issue couldn’t be resolved. He also said he would not support an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants in lieu of a complete reform package.

“Just because we had a lame-duck president who couldn’t get it done doesn’t mean that we can’t rally the country around a sensible, common-sense approach,” Obama said. “What’s going to be important is explaining to the American people that realistically, practi-cally speaking, we are not going to be shipping 12 million undocumented workers back.”

In San Antonio on Saturday, Clinton sharpened her criticism of Obama, attacking him on national security in an attempt to portray him as inexperienced to be commander in chief.

“His entire campaign is based on a speech he gave at an anti-war rally in 2002,”' Clinton told reporters aboard her campaign plane as she flew between events in San Antonio and Fort Worth. “The speech was not followed up by action, which is part of a pattern that we have seen repeatedly.”

In Weslaco, members of the United Farm Workers gathered Saturday to rally support for Clinton and to hear union President Arturo Rodriguez stump for the former first lady. Earlier in the day Rodriguez and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe spoke to local politicos and Clinton supporters about turning out to caucus on Tuesday.

Former President Bill Clinton is expected to rally his wife’s supporters across South Texas on Monday, including making an appear-ance at 11:15 a.m. at the Field House at the University of Texas Pan-American in Edinburg.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Sean Gaffney covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4434.