A pessimistic Ann Coulter concedes that ‘it doesn’t have to be a wall’

I asked if she was done writing books.

“No, I’m going to write a cookbook.” The first entry in that book will be “The Coulter,” a cocktail meant to taste like the Samoa Girl Scout cookie. A box of them had just been given to her by a mutual friend who was joining us. (Minor disclosure: I’ve been well-acquainted with Coulter for a few years and have a couple times helped her with her work, and she wrote a blurb for my first book.)

Coulter is, in her frustrated way, mostly joking. But she’s serious in believing the country is now on an irreversible path to destruction because President Trump has so far failed to bring order to our jungle of an immigration system.

It’s an area where Coulter has had more influence on the president’s thinking than anyone else, going back to the day that Trump launched his campaign in 2015.

In that speech, Trump correctly noted the steady stream of criminals and “rapists” flowing into the U.S. across our southern border. “It’s coming from more than Mexico,” he said. “It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably — probably — from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop, and it’s got to stop fast.”

This was straight out of Coulter’s book, Adios America!, released just days before, on the very subject that came to define Trump’s campaign. Until then, Republicans were running terrified from any question on the issue. Now, it’s become a litmus test for any serious person who wants to run for office as a Republican.

Coulter is responsible for Trump’s early views on immigration. She gave the opening remarks at one of his rallies and wrote the pro-Trump Resistance is Futile book last year. But they’re not on speaking terms due to her sustained criticism of his lack of action on immigration since he took office.

During a press conference in February, Trump was sure to note that he “hasn’t spoken to her in way over a year” and that “I just don’t have the time to speak to her.” He also said she’s “off the reservation.”

[Read more: Ann Coulter hits back at Trump for ‘wacky nut job’ taunt]

Coulter and I agree on almost everything about immigration, but she is wrong about “the wall.” I told her that the gaping hole in our system called “asylum” is more important to address than the construction of “the wall.”

“That’s retarded,” she said. (It can get very uncomfortable disagreeing with Coulter in a small restaurant.)

Coulter, like almost everyone who wants “the wall,” has an unrealistic idea of what makes up a “wall” and a misinformed sense of what type of border barrier is necessary and in what location. She wants what Israel has on its border with Egypt — a 150-mile stretch of steel fencing that ranges in height between 16 and 26 feet.

I offered that the difference between our border and Israel’s is that ours is 14 times as long, and that while Israel’s terrain is all flat desert, ours is mountainous, cavernous, entangled in forestry, and has a small complication called the Rio Grande. “Fascinating,” said Coulter, with a tone of sarcasm that I would expect to come from my teenage child (if I had one) that would surely lead to his or her own death if I were to physically react.

Eventually, after calling my questions “boring,” she allowed that whatever barrier proven effective would be sufficient.

“He promised us a wall,” she said. “Yeah, I actually would like a wall but OK, I’m conceding it doesn’t have to be a wall, but he did say ‘wall’ every single day. I think a wall would be great, but if we can do it for less …”

When I visited the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas earlier this year, I saw that there already is a substantial border barrier in place, a concrete and steel-bollard fence 25 feet high (in some areas, the concrete isn’t used), that border agents said is highly effective in deterring and apprehending illegal aliens. There are gaps in the barrier because much of the land in Texas is privately owned, and the Department of Homeland Security is working to fill those in. But as I’ve been writing since my visit, no wall can stop illegal immigrants from crossing the river, hitting U.S. soil, and then claiming asylum.

That’s why, in recent years, immigrants from Central America and Mexico have stopped trekking toward California to try getting onto the U.S. side. They are instead going to Texas. They know that we can’t build a wall in the Rio Grande, which is the physical territorial line that separates us from Mexico. They float across, hit American soil, and simply find an agent to claim asylum. Even if their claim has zero merit, it means they cannot be immediately deported.

The unabated flow of illegal migrants has led to a backlog of nearly a million immigration court cases. Data provided to me in January by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that in 2018, nearly 70 percent of asylum claims were made by people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, countries ravaged by gang violence and poverty. Only 10 percent of asylum seekers from those places were granted legal protection to remain in the country as a refugee, but 90 percent of those who passed an initial first interview with authorities were simply released into the country after they promised to appear in court.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 70,000 people from Central America applied for asylum last year. Up to 40 percent of them will not show up for their court date, meaning that as many as 30,000 people from these broken places have simply vanished into the U.S.

As important as more physical barriers are, when 30,000 people make their way here by simply saying the magic word “asylum,” there is no point whatsoever to any of it. You can build a solid wall 50 feet high, lace the top with boiling acid, and set it on fire. The people south of Texas will look at it after crossing the river, smile, then find an agent to turn themselves in for asylum. So long as that’s our system, we shouldn’t build a wall at all. We should build a sign that says, “Welcome to the U.S., enjoy your stay!”

Coulter doesn’t buy the position that there is any way to prioritize what areas of the absurd immigration system should be fixed over others. She wants it all at once.

“This is not what got him elected,” she told me. “There’s a reason that the signs didn’t say ‘fix the asylum loophole.’ They said ‘build the wall.’ It’s a metaphor for all of it.”

By “all of it,” she means that Trump should simultaneously construct a barrier on the border, reform asylum, end the anchor baby scheme, end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order (done but currently bogged down in court), and prosecute elected officials in sanctuary cities that offer refuge for illegal aliens.

She wants “all of it” but doubts any of it will get done because she’s convinced that Trump actually doesn’t care about the issue. She’s probably right. In his first two years in office, Trump took no serious action on immigration outside of ending the DACA program, the fate of which rests in the hands of the Supreme Court.

By the end of our interview, Coulter was exasperated, both from arguing with me and from thinking about how Trump had let her down by stacking his White House with staff who never supported any of his campaign agenda, let alone “the wall.” That includes his own daughter, Jared Kushner, and Coulter Enemy No. 1, Mercedes Schlapp. (Some conservative media reports said that Schlapp had picked a fight with the “angel moms,” the women whose children had been killed by illegal immigrants.)

Coulter wanted to talk about other things. As she put it, darkly, “What’s the point of changing asylum when Kamala Harris is going to be the next president?”