The following is adapted from a talk delivered on Jan. 22 at the Allan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Hillsdale’s Washington campus as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series.
In 1960, the Eisenhower administration began counting the number of foreign nationals “apprehended” or “encountered” by what was then called the U.S. Border Control when crossing into the United States over its southern border with Mexico. These figures have been published and closely monitored through the years, and there has never been anything like the numbers we are seeing now. A human tsunami of previously unfathomable size—Border Patrol has had to handle more than 7.6 million border crossers in 36 months—has smashed every record, with each year’s numbers exceeding the previous year’s record in stair-stepping fashion.
