“The results became more and more apparent. Crime rates went down in the border region.”

It has gone from being a sending country for migrants to a transit country, and increasingly a receiving country for migrants in its own right.

There have been enormous advances since 9/11 to build a very robust set of targeting procedures and watch lists to screen travelers coming to the United States.

And the smuggling of cash and the money laundering that transnational criminal organizations have instituted in North America, including in the United States.

The idea was to restore the rule of law, to bring order to a chaotic situation.

We assure our security by securing the flows as early as we can before they arrive and as far away from our borders as we can.

And there are places on the border, such as the Arizona desert or the open terrain around the Big Bend in South Texas, where Mother Nature has created her own barrier that is not easily passable. Or if you do pass through it, you are easily detected.

For the first time since the second World War, we are not the sole dominant economy in the world.

The Mexican people are increasingly middle class, and Mexico has substantially become a middle-class society.

We can’t defend the country by looking at the borderline as the first line of defense rather than as the last line of defense.

Migration should take place in accordance with lawful norms and secure and safe procedures.

Trust and confidence that have been built is not something that should be abandoned without great consideration for the potentially grave consequences to the United States.

We must rely on our allies and foreign governments to share information and data to secure our country.

As a result of the U.S.-Mexico War in the 19th century, and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, half of what was Mexico was severed and became much of the western part of the United States.

We have a combined population of half a billion people; peaceful trade-friendly borders that are the envy of the world.

Migrants come up and no longer seek to evade the Border Patrol, but are actually left at the border by their smugglers.

As former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pointed out, if you build a 50-foot wall, you’ll soon be confronted with a 51-foot ladder.