Congressional Digest

Excerpt

The land border between the United States and Mexico is the busiest in the world and one of the longest, covering almost 2,000 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. The Rio Grande makes up about 1,240 of those miles, while the land boundary spans diverse terrain from deserts to mountains. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 authorized the installation of physical barriers to deter illegal border crossings. Construction of the first version of a southern “border wall” began in 1993, when President Bill Clinton mandated its construction between San Diego and Tij…