Sunday’s New York Times reported that arresting lots of would-be immigrants on the Mexican border still doesn’t deter people from trying to sneak in. So Congress, naturally, thinks the answer is more enforcement:
What is certain is the United States keeps building up its border defenses, with more planned this year, including adding 1,500 agents and spending some $35 million in Arizona alone on surveillance equipment.
The U.S. plans to up the number of agents by 10,000 over the next five years, which will make Border Patrol the largest enforcement agency in the country—bigger than the FBI and four times as big as the DEA. This report from the TRAC Immigration Project has some useful numbers on whether more immigration enforcement is effective or not. It doesn’t seem so. Between 1995 and 2005 the U.S. doubled its Border Patrol, yet apprehensions went down by 10 percent. But people continue to think that if we just add a few more agents, then this time we’ll finally start to crack down on immigration…
