New Report Examines Evolution of U.S. Southwest Border Control since 1990s and How Today’s Migration Challenges Were Decades in the Making
WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. border control enterprise at the U.S.-Mexico border has faced two distinctly different eras of unauthorized migration: The first, from the 1980s through the early 2010s, was addressing overwhelmingly Mexican seasonal adult flows. The current era has been marked first by a rise in arrivals of Central American children and families beginning in 2014, and most recently unprecedented flows of asylum seekers from Latin America and beyond.
While the federal government did not completely stop the earlier Mexican migration, it developed effective strategies, backed by significant resource investments, that dramatically reduced the levels of illicit border crossings. For the current era of unauthorized migration, which is sharply diversified in migrant origins and characteristics, the government has struggled to adapt policy and operational structures to match the changed nature of the migration challenges to be managed.
A new Migration Policy Institute report, co-authored by former U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Alan Bersin, recounts the history of the federal government’s efforts to strengthen southwest border enforcement in the modern era and build “the world’s most advanced migration management enterprise,” beginning with the Clinton administration in 1993 and looking at each subsequent administration. The report, Migration at the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Challenge Decades in the Making, identifies key developments in the evolution of southwest border control and lessons learned that may inform the next phase of the federal government’s southwest border strategy.
“U.S. policymakers built an effective border security and immigration management enterprise during the 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s, calibrating the response to the nature of irregular migration at the southwest border during those years,” the authors write. “The fundamental characteristics of migrants arriving at the border have, however, changed in material ways since then. U.S. policy and operational response have not evolved in turn. As a result, there is now a profound mismatch between the problem and the government response.”
As a topline matter, the report argues that policymakers and political leadership must recognize how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mission has evolved, how vital inter-agency partnerships are to the success of border management operations and how the transnational phenomenon of irregular migration requires international partnerships that stretch beyond the border itself (most particularly the need for a durable and effective U.S.-Mexican partnership).
The authors note that Congress has not made significant reforms to U.S immigration law in decades, even though border security has been among the most politically visible and contentious issues dating to the 1990s and multiple migration crises have confronted each of the five presidencies since then. Congress has chiefly acted through a tacit bipartisan agreement to commit vastly increased resources, most prominently in the 1990s and 2000s, for border control. In the absence of congressional action to overhaul U.S. immigration laws, decisions have fallen to the executive branch and the courts.
“This has led to a less stable and coherent system, as actors with diametrically opposed beliefs and aims battle over comparatively technical aspects of the system while the major questions that drive migration and shape the country’s handling of it… have been left largely unaddressed,” the authors note.
The report is a companion to one released earlier this month, Shifting Realities at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Immigration Enforcement and Control in a Fast-Evolving Landscape, that examines the current border management system and offers a series of recommendations to create a more effective, durable system of border control.
Read today’s report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/migration-border-challenge-decades.
And read the Shifting Realities at the U.S.-Mexico Border report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/shifting-realities-us-mexico-border.
For all of MPI’s work on border security, visit: www.migrationpolicy.org/topics/border-security.