LAW

Securing the Border



Securing the Border

Introduction

The present-day border was established by the Guadalupe Hidalgo's Treaty, which ceased the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-48), and by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, a government purchase of roughly 30,000 acres of Mexican land in present-day Arizona and New Mexico. After the border was drawn, many Mexicans found themselves living in the U.S., where a number of them were treated as second-class citizens by white settlers. Consequently, many Mexican people and historians still regard the border as an artificial boundary imposed on a minority population.

The border was further fortified during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. The efforts of both presidents were intended not only to decrease the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico, but also to combat drug smuggling. Drug interdiction efforts at the U.S.-Mexico border were considered a key component of the U.S. government's anti-drug efforts, which Bush later termed the War on Drugs.

In 1986, Congress accepted the Immigration Reform and Control Act, it bolstered the Border Patrol with a $35 million aid package. Later, with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, Congress gave the Border Patrol further funding to repair, maintain and construct fences along the U.S. border. During that period, the Border Patrol also began to work in concert with the Navy and other branches of the armed services, turning the border into what some observers consider a militarized zone.

In 1991, Bush ordered the construction of 10-foot-high steel walls along seven miles of the border at the southern end of California, physically delineating the U.S. and Mexico with solid barriers for the first time. The tactics of Border Patrol agents also became increasingly aggressive, drawing criticism from human rights activists and civil liberties groups (Reamers, 1998).

Illegal Immigrant Population Hovers above 11 Million

The Pew Hispanic Research Center (2011), an ...