“We have to remember that information sharing is restricted by legal barriers and cultural barriers and by the notion that information is power and therefore should be hoarded so if you share information you can extract something in exchange.”

People in our so-called Rust Belt have lost out, and politics and society have not been responsive either in providing the kind of additional support they need or to retrain them for jobs that are being created in the new economy.

Today, the number of migrants crossing is at a 30-year low. That’s because of years of bipartisan work on this issue.

In the last generation we’ve moved past a U.S.-Mexico relationship that while friendly on the surface, and demilitarized for the most part, really was not a genuinely cooperative relationship.

I think there’s no question that the barriers, the fences and in certain urban areas, the walls, have had an important effect in terms of increasing the manageability and the security of the border.

We need to realize that the economic situation between Mexico and the United States is not just one in which we trade with one another.

People should remember that Mexican migration is now at a net negative.

Our security in a global world must be looked at on a continental basis.

Mexico has become a robust democracy with a robust press and an active legislature.

We do a trillion dollars in trade among the three countries; more than 18,000 American companies are involved in foreign direct investment in Mexico and Canada.

You need a strategy that involves layered defense: deployed patrols, sophisticated sensor equipment, and surveillance from the air. That is what has had a positive impact over the last generation.

To add insult to injury, most Americans never knew that, and most Mexicans have never forgotten it.

An increasing number of Mexican companies are creating jobs in the United States.

The Mexicans return the detained Central American migrants by bus or by air to the countries they come from.

But in fact as Secretary of Homeland Security General John Kelly acknowledged at his confirmation hearing, walls and barriers alone are insufficient to insure security.

Cross-border trade is part of a single production process, and while apparently the Trump administration will seek to re-examine elements of that production platform, it is what it is and won’t be easily dismantled.

Until we have a legitimate labor market between Mexico and the United States, people will attempt to come here to work.