New Report Calls for Major Investments and Reforms to Build a U.S. Border Control System that Can Address Present and Future Challenges
WASHINGTON, DC — A new report out today calls for major reforms and investments — including for immigration functions not always understood to be part of the border enforcement system — to address unprecedented migration challenges at the U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing from visits to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities along the entire southwest border and extensive interviews of governmental and nongovernmental officials in the United States, Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report emphasizes that border control cannot be achieved at the border alone. Success will require, among other things, significant investments in building capacity as well as collaboration with regional partners to address the increasingly complex migration patterns now being seen throughout the Western Hemisphere.
The report traces the factors that have stretched the U.S. border management system beyond its capabilities: The current record level of encounters of asylum seekers and other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, sharp diversification in nationalities and the shift in the characteristics of arrivals, with families now accounting for an increasing share.
While the Biden administration last year began to implement a far-reaching strategy that seeks to incentivize orderly and legal arrivals and disincentivize unauthorized crossings, the early results have been mixed, the MPI researchers find. Longstanding processing capacity, policy coordination and resource limitations across the agencies that have a role in screening arriving migrants are among the significant hurdles to success.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/major-investments-needed-us-border-control
