The era of protecting the U.S. border with fortifications came to fruition under former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Flashback to the 1990s: Nightly, under cover of darkness, hundreds of migrants pushed north from Tijuana into the United States, unfettered, nothing to stop them except handfuls of Border Patrol agents. The busy freeways filled with migrants running between cars until they made it to refuge in suburban San Diego neighborhoods.

What could Clinton do to protect the border region from being overrun? If you said, “Build a ten-foot high steel barrier!” you are correct. If you said, “Hire thousands of additional Border Patrol agents!” you are also correct. Technology in the form of motion sensors and night vision cameras followed. Under the Clinton-approved “Operation Gatekeeper,” illegal entries fell off by 75 percent in that fence-fortified border region.