Border enforcement is a type of

immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...

enforcement Enforcement is the proper execution of the process of ensuring compliance with laws, regulations, rules, standards, and social norms. Governments attempt to effectuate successful implementation of policies by enforcing laws and regulations. Ena ...

whereby a country enforces its immigration laws by trying to prevent people from crossing its border or borders illegally. There are multiple methods a country can use to do this, including patrolling its border and building walls along part or all of it. The term is most commonly used in regards to the efforts by the United States government to prevent people from migrating illegally to the U.S. by crossing the

Mexico–United States border The Mexico–United States border ( es, frontera Estados Unidos–México) is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traver ...

. Since 2002, the number of

United States Border Patrol The United States Border Patrol (USBP) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement agency under the United States' U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Customs and Border Protection and is responsible for securing ...

agents has more than doubled, to a total of 20,273 (as of September 2016), and federal spending on the Patrol has increased from $1.4 to $3.8 billion over the same time. In addition to the Patrol, agencies responsible for border enforcement in the U.S. include

Immigration and Customs Enforcement The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...

Effects

The consequences of increased border enforcement along the U.S.–Mexico border have included, as intended, making it harder for Mexican immigrants to come to the U.S. illegally. However, this practice has also had the unintended consequence of turning the illegal immigration problem into a

human smuggling People smuggling (also called human smuggling), under U.S. law, is "the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation or illegal entry of a person or persons across an international border, in violation of one or more countries' laws, ei ...

problem, as migrants have to rely more on smugglers to make it across the border undetected. It has also led to a significant increase in migrant deaths along the border, as would-be illegal immigrants increasingly try to migrate to the U.S. via more dangerous, and less aggressively patrolled, routes. In regards to the general tendency of Mexicans to migrate illegally to the U.S., American border enforcement appears to have had very little effect. It may have also had another unintended consequence: turning what was previously a "circular flow" of workers traveling back and forth between Mexico and the United States into millions of families living in the United States illegally. Another study indicates that enforcement decreased the size of the undocumented population significantly from 1997 to 2003 (though before then its effect was either less negative or significantly positive).

References

{{Reflist Law enforcement in the United States Illegal immigration to the United States