Operation Gatekeeper began less than a year after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which destabilized the agricultural economy in Mexico and drove hundreds of thousands to leave the country in search of work elsewhere. Migrants have a long history of doing agricultural work in the United States, which the U.S. economy depends on.
But poor conditions exacerbated by NAFTA caused the number of migrants to increase, and the increased border militarization stemming from Operation Gatekeeper pushed migrants to take more dangerous and treacherous routes through the deserts and mountains. Conservative estimates are that more than 8,300 people have died trying to cross the border since Operation Gatekeeper began — a rate of nearly one each day for the past 25 years.
It is likely that the administration suspected migrants would die in the desert but thought this would serve as a deterrent to future migrations. As former commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Doris Meissner said in 2000, “We did believe that geography would be an ally to us. It was our sense that the number of people crossing the border through Arizona would go down to a trickle once people realized what it’s like.”
At the same time, the ramping up of personnel on the southern border also led to more border deaths. In the past decade alone, at least 90 people have died after an encounter with border agents. These agents are hardly ever held accountable for their actions, and there is little to no transparency in the investigations.
Operation Gatekeeper and the policies that followed it have also created a permanent community of longtime residents without status, trapping people in the United States who might want to go back temporarily, while denying any meaningful access to permanent status. This has trapped families on opposite sides of both a literal and metaphorical wall. In San Diego, families meet at Friendship Park, located on both sides of the border, where loved ones can communicate across the massive steel wall that stands between them.