I don't appreciate the laziness of not verifying the source before sharing it with us and expecting posters to carry that burden. I find it ironic you tell us to not blanket trust mainstream media but just grab results from Google (which has a reputation for politically skewing your results based on your browsing history;
see filter bubble) without any real thought put to them. Likewise, these sources you posted are similar to mainstream sources or sources mainstream media would probably use, so it's kind of... off that you'd use sources from mainstream media to try to discredit mainstream media.
At least you're self-aware, but this advice runs exactly the opposite of healthy critical thinking (as well as the rest of your post which jabs mainstream media), and I strongly discourage to "run" with your gut and I also don't encourage to actively "distrust" media. This sort of thing is why we got fake news as news reports on things people don't like so they seek out literal fake news that confirms their prejudices. Oftentimes, our "gut" is, well, full of shit, so I say use your brain instead and instead do what skeptics do: read all the article rather than the headlines, read the useful comments that point out problems, ask yourself what emotions you're feeling and ask if this article is intended to pull on your strings, read the "about" parts, google search the article to verify, check fact-checkers like snopes, WaPo, politico, and so on; check other articles, check what other things the author wrote, check the date published. It takes training to figure it out, but it's far better than just relying on our gut that has been stained by political biases.
To say that American journalism was better 50 years ago is to demonstrate some real ignorance of history too, as "fake news" and misreporting on stuff is arguably older than accuracy and fact-checking. While mainstream media is held to pretty strict standards and collaborate from outsider sources, a lot of media that's spread on facebook and so on don't have those sort of standards and is the reason fake news became so noxious.
And my stance on absolutely not "trusting" your gut is also supported by this study.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002771830163X?via=ihub
Despite your calls of saying that all political wings are receptive to fake news, conservatives are far more receptive to misappropriating news they don't like as fake. This is also supported in the study as well, though it's not really explored in the abstract,, and this study isn't available without paying for it, but I've seen the study.
Your point is already addressed later, but there are other flaws in your post. Such as the "already breaking the law via illegal entrance"...
https://www.politifact.com/florida/...bishops/being-united-states-unlawfully-crime/
Also, the act of crossing a border illegally would be a crime, but we've established that a huge portion of these immigrants have crossed the border legally and had overstaid visas. Those people wouldn't be criminals.
It wouldn't decrease illegal immigration by any significant amount. We might net with more undocumented immigrants as this sort of border crap only makes the bureaucracy untenable for legal migrants (it already is, as it costs a lot to be a legal immigrant) and would only facilitate expiration of documents and all. Unlike the simplistic world of Donald Trump, people have a ton of reasons for illegal immigration and they tend to be real and complicated reasons where simplistic solutions might calm the minds of his base but serve to excaberate problems in reality and push the income divide even further. Also, that wall is an ecological disaster by fragmenting habitat (like Trump and his supporters care) and some lines of that wall were cut straight through some towns.
Right-wing commentators love to bring up Jim Acosta on how he apparently unwittingly demonstrated how effective walls are at illegal immigration, but that incident is purely anecdote and proves nothing especially on the long-term. There's no way of knowing if there were people before the wall was built, controlling for confounders such as people finding other routes, and so on. Yes, Jim Acosta is no authority on the effectiveness on wall measures but just because he didn't think through some of his comments doesn't mean anything to me.
The wall is simple but it is, frankly, a thoroughly stupid idea. It's on the same line as "why don't we print more money to solve income inequality?". Ignorant, childish, simplistic, naive, shouldn't ever be seriously considered.
