In order to prove the effectiveness of Operation Gatekeeper to the Border Patrol commission standards, the INS had to demonstrate a decrease in illegal immigration by seventy percent, in order for the Operation to stay in effect (Evidence and Fraud 2). However, investigators of the apprehension statistics of Operation Gatekeeper claim they have five falsifying factors that were released and practiced by the INS in order to prove that Operation Gatekeeper is effective. Firstly, supervisors of the INS altered apprehension reports in order to reduce the number of recorded apprehensions. Secondly, apprehension records were destroyed by border patrol agents or “mysteriously lost”. Aliens were also returned to Mexico without being processed, so there would be no record of their apprehensions. Supervisors also falsified documents to make it appear as if aliens had been apprehended far east of Imperial Beach. Lastly, the detention enforcement failed to document any apprehension of Mexicans who were drunk or in medical need, skipping the Alien Detention and Removal (ADR) branch and brought straight to station personnel where the immigrants are detained until sober or sent back to Mexico without medical help (3-4).

With higher security at the border migrants are now forced to traverse the Tecate Mountains, a substantially more dangerous area to travel across. The mountain peaks are over 6,000 feet tall. With snow and below-freezing temperatures occurring during much of the year, exposure deaths became all too common. The winter after the introduction of Phase II, 16 migrants, including children, froze to death in just one month. (“Operation Gatekeeper Fact Sheet”).

The two thousand mile border between the United States and Mexico between Brownsville, Texas and San Diego, California has long been a turbulent area due to the way the federal government of the United States has chosen to enforce immigration laws. During the early 1900s and in times of economic growth when workers were needed, Mexican workers were welcomed across the border with relative ease. But during the Great Depression of the 1930s this was not the case. Mexican workers were perceived as the cause of America’s misfortune and occupying job opportunities that could be taken by a white Americans(“Fact Sheet” n.pag.). Nor was it during “Operation Wetback” in the 1950s which primarily focused on Mexicans being deported back to Mexico, along with their American born children, which were technically American citizens (Operation Gatekeeper: ”New Resoures”1). During these periods, over a million people of Mexican descent were “repatriated” to Mexico, even though most had United States citizenship (US Commission on Civil Rights, 11).

Phase I of Operation Gatekeeper was implemented in October 1994. Its purpose was to seal off the westernmost fifteen miles of the border. Consequentially, migrants crossed over the more dangerous terrain of the Otay Mountains. A report by the U.S. Justice Department's Inspector General described the Otay Mountains as "extremely rugged, and includ[ing] steep, often precipitous, canyon walls and hills reaching 4,000 feet." (“Operation Gatekeeper Report” n.pag.).

Some topics in this essay:
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