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Encyclopedia of American Immigration, 2nd Edition

Border fence

by Donald A. Watt

Identification: Construction of barriers to prevent undocumented immigrants and potential terrorists from entering the United States along its southern border

Date: Major construction began in 1994

Location: United States-Mexico border

Significance: Barriers along the U.S. border with Mexico gained attention beginning in the mid-1990s, in response to the drug trade and the growing number of undocumented immigrants entering the United States. The U.S. congressional decision in 2006 to build hundreds of miles of additional fencing along portions of the United States-Mexico border (the border is calculated as between 1,933 and 1,954 miles in length) touched off a diplomatic dispute with Mexico, angered Latino communities in the United States, and was almost unanimously condemned by human-rights organizations, who believed the policy would result in a large number of deaths among immigrants seeking to enter the country via more dangerous unfenced stretches of borderland. The issue saw further attention with the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, as Republican candidate Donald Trump emphasized his intent to build a border wall, a goal he continued to pursue with limited success after being elected.

Prior to the tightening of the U.S. border with Mexico during the mid-1990s, several relatively short sections of fencing separated the two nations. While most were to hinder the movement of people in and around urban areas, other stretches were like that in Organ Pipe National Monument, where a fence was built to keep Mexican cattle, and other animals, from harming vegetation in the monument and spreading diseases. However, in the mid-1990s expansion of pedestrian and vehicle fencing was undertaken in high traffic areas. Controlling illegal entry into the U.S. quickly became a security concern in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. After five years of congressional debate, the construction of an additional 850 miles of barriers along the United States-Mexico border was authorized by the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

Fencing the Border

Although the terminology evokes images of a conventional, high, and possibly barbed-wire fence stretching across the border separating Mexico from California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, the “fence” that has been erected is as varied as the landscape along the border. A substantial portion consists of walls as well as border-control points and obstacles to vehicle movement, constructed where major highways link Mexico to such metropolitan areas as San Diego. Other sections include pedestrian barriers—often parallel walls separated by “no-go” zones—but many segments are or will be of a “virtual” electronic variety, using cameras, motion-detection devices, and observer personnel to monitor the border.

To a significant degree, the form of the border fence and the pace and siting of its construction have been determined by the border landscape. The more desolate and dangerous the area on the U.S. side of the border, the lower the priority to fence it immediately. The first barriers were thus erected near the urban areas that beckoned drug dealers and undocumented immigrants. In 1994, the administration of President Bill Clinton launched Operation Gatekeeper to construct a barrier along a fourteen-mile stretch south of San Diego. Similarly, most of the nearly five hundred miles of border that were covered by either pedestrian or vehicle border barriers under the administration of President George W. Bush lie along the zones nearest to the U.S. highway network, not the long stretches of desert borderland.

Fencing must take into account not just the likelihood of traffic but also the environmental considerations of the landscape. For example, sections of fence near the Rio Grande have been designed to accommodate flood waters from the river. Between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California, the fence extends into the Pacific Ocean. Other sections must deal with shifting sand dunes or rocky hillsides. In addition to the remoteness of much of the border region, these factors complicate efforts to establish a cohesive physical barrier. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, by late 2020, just 669 miles (one third of the border) of vehicle and pedestrian fence stretched along the border.

Evaluating the Operation

Assessments of the success of the fencing operation in controlling unauthorized immigration have been mixed, although most concede that the U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most challenging law-enforcement areas in North America. There, bandit gangs in Mexico, volunteer spotters from right-wing groups in the United States, paid smugglers of human cargo (the armed “coyotes”), drug dealers, impoverished Mexicans living in shantytowns just south of the border, Mexican authorities, and 90 percent of the U.S. Border Patrol (at times augmented by National Guard troops), coexist and often collide. According to some reports, in some areas the fence divided communities that had worked together before September 11, 2001, such as those of Jacumba, California, and Jacume, Mexico. Families were separated by a two-hour drive instead of a fifteen-minute walk, and businesses were cut off from those who had patronized them.

Increased surveillance and fencing on parts of the border has affected the pattern of unauthorized immigration. Many would-be immigrants have been forced to try to enter the United States by way of the often lethal, less monitored desert access points, and thousands have died in the fifty-mile trek necessary to reach roadways. For those choosing the less dangerous crossing points, interception by authorities has become easier given the combination of high physical walls, cameras, and sensors lining those areas. Furthermore, the rate of unauthorized immigration did seem to slow beginning in 2008, although it was not clear whether it was a result of the increasing number of fenced miles or the fact that a U.S. economy in recession discouraged many from seeking employment north of the border.

A principal criticism of the fence was that it constituted too little, too late. By the time the Secure Fence Act was passed, it was conservatively estimated that there were at least twelve million undocumented immigrants in the United States, nearly 60 percent of whom were Mexicans. Moreover, the same year that the Secure Fence Act passed, the governors of New Mexico and Arizona declared states of emergency on the grounds that their states were suffering significant financial hardship because the federal government had failed to control the drugs and undocumented immigrants entering from Mexico. At approximately the same time, forty-three states had legislation pending that was designed to limit undocumented immigrants’ access to employment, education, and social welfare benefits.

The border fence between El Paso and Juarez.

AmImm2e_p0120_1.jpg

Photo by Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

In part due to the lack of agreement on the effectiveness of border fencing, as well as ongoing concern over undocumented immigration and drug smuggling, the issue became a key element of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Republican candidate Donald Trump ran a campaign based largely on anti-immigration policies, including a proposal to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, which he claimed Mexico would be compelled to pay for. When Trump was elected, debate over the worth of such a proposal, which would effectively finish or expand the work begun in 2006, was inflamed once more. Trump’s inflammatory racial comments and frequent inaccurate or misleading statements regarding immigration and the wall further contributed to an intense partisan political atmosphere around the subject.

Critics of Trump’s proposed border wall argued that there would be too many ways for smugglers and migrants to get around the wall for it to be effective—a claim supported by a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in February 2017, which found that the then-existing 654 miles of border fence had been breached more than 9,200 times between approximately 2010 and 2015. Experts noted that the wall posed little obstacle to the flow of illegal drugs, given the power of drug cartels and that fact that many drugs such as opioids came from sources other than Mexico. Opponents of a border wall also considered it unnecessary based on statistical trends: the number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants apprehended at U.S. borders decreased from 1.6 million in fiscal year 2000 to just 192,969 in fiscal year 2016; the number of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in the United States declined from 6.9 million in 2007 to 5.6 million in 2015-16; and the total number of people leaving Mexico to live in another country (usually but not always the United States) declined from 6.4 migrants per 1,000 residents in 2008 to 3.6 migrants per 1,000 residents in 2015. Another concern was the financial burden construction would entail, particularly given the extra costs required to build on the inhospitable terrain along some stretches of the border. Furthermore, critics accused Trump of over-exaggerating the threats of immigration and using the wall issue more as a political tool to inflame racial resentment than as a serious policy element.

Supporters of the proposed wall argued that it remained the best available solution to stop, or slow down, unauthorized immigration. Some analysts suggested that statistics indicating decreasing illegal immigration were evidence of the impact of existing fencing. To many the wall proposal became a symbol of Trump’s presidency, and some conservatives sought to frame opponents to the project as weak on crime or supportive of open borders.

While President Trump called for as much as $25 billion for a long-term wall construction project, in March 2018 Congress approved $1.6 billion in funding for one year to replace some existing fence sections and erect about thirty-three miles of new wall, mostly focused on the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The Trump administration continued to push for further funding, though it turned away from demands for a solid wall to accommodate the possibility of steel fencing or other barriers. Disagreement over the proposed wall was the key factor in the record-breaking government shutdown in December 2018 and January 2019. In order to gain more funding for the wall, the Trump administration declared a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border in February 2019, and used funds initially allocated for other purposes.

By October 2020, Customs and Border Protection reported that only fifteen miles of new primary barriers had been completed since Trump took office, along with 350 miles of replacement barriers or secondary structures. Another 221 miles of both new and replacement barriers remained under construction and 157 miles were considered in pre-construction status. When it was clear that Trump would be leaving office after one term, he encouraged continued excavation and blasting in several areas, causing great harm to the local eco-system. After President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, one of his first executive orders was to halt construction of the border wall and redirect the funds that had been dedicated to the project. The order did not involve removing or destroying any existing barriers, despite false claims circulated on social media. It did include a call for a review of construction contracts related to the wall and the status of each project. Biden also ended the Trump administration’s declared national emergency at the border.

Further Reading

1 

Alden, Edward H. The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11. HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.

2 

Batalova, Jeanne, Mary Hanna, and Christopher Levesque. “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute, February 11, 2021, MPI. Accessed 5 May 2021. www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states-2020.

3 

Bigelow, Bill. The Line between Us: Teaching about the Border and Mexican Immigration. Rethinking Schools, 2006.

4 

Bronstein, Scott, et al. “Border Wall Breached 9,000 Times. Does It Even Work?” February 16, 2017. CNN. Accessed May 5, 2021. www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/politics/gao-border-wall/index.html.

5 

Gonzalez-Barrera, Ana, and Jens Manuel Krogstad. “What We Know about Illegal Immigration from Mexico.” Fact Tank, 2019. Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/28/what-we-know-about-illegal-immigration-from-mexico/.

6 

Guerette, Rob T. Migrant Death: Border Safety and Situational Crime Prevention on the US-Mexico Divide. LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2007.

7 

Hill, Jessica. “Fact Check: Biden Executive Order Halts Border Wall Construction, Redirects Funding.” February 2021. USA Today. Accessed May 5, 2021. www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/03/fact-check-joe-biden-executive-order-trump-border-wall-construction/4337994001/.

8 

Holley, Peter. “Trump Proposes a Border Wall. But There Already Is One, and It Gets Climbed Over.” April 2, 2016. The Washington Post. Accessed May 5, 2021. www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/02/shocking-video-shows-suspected-drug-smugglers-easily-crossing-u-s-mexico-border/.

9 

Holpuch, Amanda. “What Exactly Is Trump’s Border Wall and Why Does He Want $5.7 Billion For It?” January 15, 2019. The Guardian. Accessed May 5, 2021. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/15/trump-mexico-border-wall-status-migrants.

10 

Krogstad, Jens Manuel, et al. “5 Facts about Illegal Immigration in the US.” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, 2019. Accessed May 5, 2021. 5 facts about illegal immigration in the U.S.

11 

Merchant, Nomaan. “US Prepares to Start Building Portion of Texas Border Wall.” February 4, 2019. AP. Accessed May 5, 2021. US Prepares to Start Building Portion of Texas Border Wall.

12 

Nevins, Joseph, and Timothy Dunn. “Barricading the Border.” October 31, 2008. nacla. New York: The North American Congress on Latin America. Accessed May 5, 2021. nacla.org/article/barricading-border.

13 

Rodgers, Lucy, and Dominic Bailey. “Trump Wall: How Much Has He Actually Built?” October 31, 2020. BBC News, 5 May 5, 2021. www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46824649.

14 

Romero, Fernando. Hyperborder: The Contemporary US-Mexico Border and Its Future. Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.

15 

Simon, Johnny. “To Understand Trump’s Speech, Look at the US-Mexico Border As It Exists Today.” January 9, 2019. Quartz. Accessed May 5, 2021. www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46824649.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Watt, Donald A. "Border Fence." Encyclopedia of American Immigration, 2nd Edition, edited by Michael Shally-Jensen, Salem Press, 2021. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=AmImm2e_0073.
APA 7th
Watt, D. A. (2021). Border fence. In M. Shally-Jensen (Ed.), Encyclopedia of American Immigration, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Watt, Donald A. "Border Fence." Edited by Michael Shally-Jensen. Encyclopedia of American Immigration, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2021. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.