Are U.S. Borders Secure?
Why We Don't Know, and How to Find Out
Article Summary and Author Biography
Washington claims that the country's borders are more secure than ever, but the truth is that no one knows for sure. The U.S. government has never defined what border security actually means or how to measure it -- both of which are essential prerequisites to keeping the country safe.
EDWARD ALDEN is Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. BRYAN ROBERTS is Senior Economist at Nathan Associates and was Assistant Director of Borders and Immigration in the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2010.
Snapshot
In tonight's State of the Union address, President Barack Obama is expected to make reform of the nation's immigration laws one of his top priorities. To succeed, he will have to satisfy skeptical House Republicans that immigration reform would not be as disastrous now as it was in 1986, the last time Congress revamped the laws. Fortunately for Obama, the cards are in his favor: improved overall border security has made illegal immigration a much less daunting challenge.
In response to record numbers of illegal border crossings and the security fears triggered by the 9/11 attacks, over the past two decades the United States has steadily increased its efforts to secure its borders against illegal immigration. The number of U.S. Border Patrol agents has risen from fewer than 3,000 to more than 20,700; nearly 700 miles of fencing have been built along the southern border with Mexico; and surveillance systems, including pilotless drones, now monitor much of the rest of the border. In a speech in El Paso, Texas, in May, U.S. President Barack Obama claimed that the United States had "strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible." Yet according to spring 2011 Rasmussen poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans think the border is no more, or even less, secure than it was five years ago. Some administration critics claim that the United States' frontiers have never been more porous.
This contradiction stems in part from the fact that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has never clearly defined what border control means in practice. A secure border cannot mean one with no illegal crossings -- that would be unrealistic for almost any country, especially one as big and as open as the United States. On the other hand, the borders cannot be considered secure if many of those attempting to enter illegally succeed. Defining a sensible middle ground, where border enforcement and other programs discourage many illegal crossings and most of those who try to cross illegally are apprehended, is the challenge.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government has failed to develop good measures for fixing goals and determining progress toward them. Since 2005, the DHS has reported how many miles of the country's land borders are under its "operational control," but it has done so without having clearly defined what that standard means and without providing hard data to back it up. The lack of sound measurement has left the administration touting its efforts rather than their results: during a press conference in 2010, Obama noted, "We have more of everything: ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], Border Patrol, surveillance, you name it. So we take border security seriously."
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