Photo: The UpTake

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote poet Robert Frost. And U.S. Sen. Al Franken defines that something as all “relevant effective law enforcement agencies” — none of which, he says, love the wall between the United States and Mexico.

“Good fences make good neighbors,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar might quote in reply. She wants to see “a very good effort [along the border] … to make it harder to come in illegally.” A bill requiring completion of 700 miles of fence along the United States’ southern boundary divided the votes of Minnesota’s Democratic senators Wednesday.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, might have hurt any chance he had of gaining support of the Senate’s newest member on Tuesday when he drew a parallel between Franken’s election win and a south-of-the-border coup.

The two Minnesota senators — who only Tuesday couldn’t have been closer as they embraced after Franken’s swearing-in ceremony — also split their votes on a proposal requiring government contractors to use the online E-Verify system to determine whether job applicants have the right immigration status, among other requirements.

Franken was against, saying the current three-year E-Verify requirement allowed better oversight than would a permanent commitment. Klobuchar supported the measure, calling E-Verify “a good employer verification process so that employers aren’t hiring people that shouldn’t be in our country.” In fact, she said she would like to see it “made a little tougher.”

Do Klobuchar and Franken see eye to eye on enforcement along the Canadian border, which after all defines their own state’s northern boundary? After six months of suffering with Minnesota’s second Senate seat essentially unmanned, do they support the unmanned drones that this year began patrolling the skies above the Boundary Waters? Are new passport requirements adequate or does Minnesota also need a fence?

Frost had a thought on that too:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.