Congressional Resarch Service — Border Security: Immigration Enforcement Between Ports of Entry

A Congressional Resarch Service report — Border Security: Immigration Enforcement Between Ports of Entry — by Marc Rosenblum, considers the impacts of increased U.S. immigration enforcement in recent years. The “Summary” includes some important conclusions:

“On one hand, robust investments at the border have been associated with a sharp drop in the number of aliens apprehended, especially in the sectors first targeted for enhanced enforcement. The number and proportion of people apprehended more than once (recidivists) and those with serious criminal records are also at the lowest levels ever recorded. On the other hand, overall illegal inflows continued to increase in the 20 years after 1986, with the estimated unauthorized population more than tripling, even after almost 3 million aliens were granted amnesty as part of IRCA. The only significant decrease in unauthorized migration appears to have occurred since 2007, and it is unclear how much of the drop-off is due to increased enforcement and how much is a result of the U.S. economic downturn and other systemic factors.

At the same time, enhanced border enforcement may have contributed to a number of secondary costs and benefits. To the extent that border enforcement successfully deters illegal entries—an effect that is also difficult to measure since deterrence ultimately involves decisions made in towns and villages far away from U.S. borders—such enforcement may reduce border-area violence and migrant deaths, protect fragile border ecosystems, and improve the quality of life in border communities. But to the extent that aliens are not deterred, the concentration of enforcement resources on the border may increase border area violence and migrant deaths, encourage unauthorized migrants to find new ways to enter illegally and to remain in the United States for longer periods of time, damage border ecosystems, harm border-area businesses and the quality of life in border communities, and strain U.S. relations with Mexico and Canada.” (emphasis added).

Pages 32-33 of the report look at migrant deaths resulting from the enforcement measures, which ramped up in the 1990s. It concludes that the “data offer evidence that border crossings have become more hazardous since the `prevention through deterrence’ policy went into effect in the 1990s, though once again the precise impact of enforcement on migrant deaths is unknown.”

This latest Congressional Research Service report should make all reasonable minds wonder whether the greatly enhanced — and expensive — border enforcement efforts in recent years have been worth the candle. Absent the recession, undocumented migration appears as if it would have continued unabated without the enforcement measures. Food for thought.

KJ