Migration at the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Challenge Decades in the Making
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Highlights
Today’s pressures at the U.S.-Mexico border have been decades in the making. A system built to handle Mexican seasonal migration faltered with the arrival of families and asylum seekers from across the hemisphere.
- From fiscal years (FY) 1990 to 2006, U.S. border apprehensions averaged about 1 million a year, dominated by Mexican single adults who could be quickly returned under a deterrence model.
- The 2014–2016 rise in arrivals of unaccompanied children and families marked a turning point; by FY 2022, there were 2.4 million encounters, with increasing arrivals from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
- Legislative reform repeatedly stalled, leaving policy to be made through executive action and litigation rather than comprehensive law.
- Reliance on enforcement without matching investments in asylum capacity, immigration courts, and legal pathways produced a structural mismatch that no single administration’s policies can resolve on their own.
U.S.-Mexico border security has been a central policy matter and divisive political issue in the United States for decades. The U.S. border control enterprise 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. Earlier strategies that dramatically reduced the levels of illicit border crossings have been no match for the sharply diversified migration patterns of today, with the government struggling to adapt its policy and operational structures.
This report examines the history of the federal government’s efforts to improve southwest border security in the modern era, beginning with the Clinton administration in 1993 and looking at subsequent changes during the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. The study identifies key developments in the evolution of U.S.-Mexico border security, including the changing origins and characteristics of migrants arriving at the border.
The report also draws lessons from this long view of the border that may benefit policymakers and political leaders today. These include the necessity of recognizing how the Department of Homeland Security’s mission has evolved and how vital interagency partnerships are, and that a transnational phenomenon such as irregular migration requires policies and international partnerships that stretch far beyond the border line itself.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 The Evolution of U.S. Border Security
Border Security and Migration Management
3 Framing the Problem
4 The 1990s and a New Enforcement Model
A. New Strategies to Respond to Illegal Crossing
B. Impacts of the New Strategies
5 9/11 and the Emergence of the Modern Border Security State
A. The Formation of the Department of Homeland Security
B. Bipartisan Border Security Consensus and Efforts at Immigration Reform
6 The Border Is under Control, the Border Is out of Control
A. The Obama Administration Focuses on the Border
B. Reductions in Illicit Border Crossings
C. Massive Increases in Central American Border Crossers
7 The Trump Administration at the Border
8 The Biden Administration
9 Conclusion and Lessons
About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program
The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.
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