It’s hard to listen to the debate on border security having grown up on the US/Mexico border, crossed it hundreds of times, and be a practicing immigration attorney dealing with border security issues every day. There are so many lies and myths. Here is some reality.
As a boy growing up in Laredo, border security was light in the 1980’s & 90’s. We didn’t have to show ID when entering the US, we were often just waived through after declaring our citizenship.
In the 1980’s I remember seeing undocumented immigrants riding on the trains when my family would drive on I-35 between Laredo and San Antonio. We would wave at them and they would wave back.
In the 90’s, border security started to increase. You started to see drug dogs, x-ray machines, more technology, more border patrol agents. Then things really changed after September 11, 2001. Money, technology, and personnel started to pour into Laredo.
So many of my high school classmates in Laredo now work for border patrol, customs, ICE or some type of border security related job. That’s who’s been hiring in Laredo over the last 20 years.
Nowadays, everyone has to show a passport when they cross into the US, even US citizens. If you do not have it, you will be sent to secondary inspection for questioning. And the bridges are full of electronics that scan both cars and people.
In the rural areas around Laredo, border patrol agents are everywhere – parked on bluffs along the river, patrolling the access roads to the river, driving all around the area. There are river boats with agents patrolling up and down the river.
There are cameras and electronic sensors everywhere in the rural areas. They are triggered when someone passes by. A few minutes later a border patrol truck pulls up to investigate.
As an immigration attorney, I talk to clients captured along the border every week. Some of them have snuck across the border various times over the last decades. They tell me it is much more difficult now and security is very tight. The prices smugglers charge have skyrocketed.
US government statistics confirm all of this. In 1992, when I graduated high school, 4,000 border patrol agents apprehended 1.2 million people illegally entering the US. In 2017, 19,000 border patrol agents apprehended just 310,000 people.
And today many (most?) of the apprehensions are of women and children who cross the river and immediately look for a border patrol agent to turn themselves into.
The reality is the US/Mexico border is secure. There are more border patrol agents than there have ever been Those agents have better resources, technology and support than ever. And they are chasing after fewer and fewer people crossing illegally into the US.
There is no immigration security crisis on the border and we need to stop pretending that there is. (end)
PS These are the cites for the border patrol staffing and apprehension numbers:
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