Paper No. 17: Operation Hold The Line, How El Paso Spawned Today’s Failed Immigration Strategy (February 9, 2022) Policy Paper

A former Border Patrol chief turned congressman is the architect of today’s failed immigration policies. Silvestre Reyes’s Operation Hold the Line operation led to today’s official immigration strategy of “prevention through deterrence”. It is a strategy that failed then and continues to fail to address the problem of irregular migration. Not only did it fail to deter undocumented migration from entering the United States, but Reyes’ operation was “successful” in one thing only – keeping El Paso’s gardeners, maids and nannies from going to work while doing nothing for keeping undocumented migrants from crossing the border.