What does the U.S. border security debate mean for intending migrants?
U.S. border security became a major public talking point when Donald Trump entered the race for the U.S. presidency. During Trump's election campaign, he emphasized the importance of building a wall along the United States-Mexico border to prevent immigrants with no lawful status from entering the country. Border security and unlawful immigration is still a point of contention today. Soon after Trump won the election on November 8th, 2016, undocumented immigrants and their advocates grew concerned about their status and how the future administration would deal with them. At first, Trump proclaimed that Mexico would fund the wall’s construction. Trump hinted that tariffs and taxes would fund the project. Today, the U.S.-Mexico border wall has come to the spotlight, as President Trump has partially “shutdown” the federal government as part of his ongoing negotiations of the border wall’s construction. This means that most deportation hearings will be cancelled and rescheduled until the federal budget is agreed upon. This will only cause further delays in an already backlogged process. The effect of a constructed border wall is questionable. Although a southern border wall will presumably make it more difficult to walk across the border, it does little to deter unlawful immigration smuggling and trafficking. Human smugglers, or “coyotes,” are paid thousands of dollars to help bring non-citizens over the U.S.-Mexico border. These smugglers have decades of experience and are able to evade U.S. Customs officials who are unaware of the human capital they are transporting. Most of these smugglers are capable of transporting individuals through ports of entry and need not rely on walking over the border by land. The administration has yet to provide any evidence on how human smuggling and trafficking would be deterred or prevented by a “wall.”
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