http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news...story.html
"...The breaking point came in 1986, when Border Patrol agents in the San Diego apprehended 629,656 people, slightly more than the population of Las Vegas....
Large numbers of unauthorized immigrants continued to flow into the U.S., but they moved away from the coast, trying to slip around the fences. Nationally, Border Patrol apprehensions peaked in fiscal 2000 with almost 1.7 million.
Post 9/11 security measures and the recession contributed to a decline in these numbers. In fiscal 2016, the Border Patrol arrested 415,816 people — of which 31,891 were nabbed in San Diego County. (More than half of all apprehensions occurred in Texas: 249,026.)...
Do walls work?
The numbers are clear: Today, apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border are one-quarter what they were in 2000.
What’s unclear is this: How much of the decline is due to the 653 miles of fencing that has sprouted along this boundary since 1989?
An April 2016 report from the Congressional Research Service cited other factors limiting migration, including “the most severe recession since the 1930s.”
“Nonetheless,” the report concluded, “the drop in recidivism rates suggests that an increasing proportion of migrants are being deterred by CBP’s (Customs and Border Protection’s) enforcement efforts.”
Researchers at the Urban Institute credited increased enforcement — including fences and 1994’s Operation Gatekeeper, which boosted the number of Border Patrol agents — with spurring development in San Ysidro and Otay Mesa.
“You have shopping centers and housing developments right next to the border, and it was impossible for that to have happened in the pre-Gatekeeper environment,” the institute’s Jeffrey Passel told the Union-Tribune last year...."
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CBS Poll: 51% of Americans Believe a Border Wall is a Good Idea
