\\server05\productn\C\CPP\7-1\CPP107.txt unknown Seq: 1 15-JAN-08 13:12 POLICY ESSAY BORDER BLUNDERS: THE UNANTICIPATED HUMAN AND ECONOMIC COSTS OF THE U.S. APPROACH TO IMMIGRATION CONTROL, 1986–2007 JACQUELINE HAGAN University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill SCOTT PHILLIPS University of Denver In the mid-1980s, the U.S. government began to implement a series of enforcement policies and activities to curtail undocumented migration and to facilitate the location, arrest, detention, and deportation of noncitizens who violate the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). In 1993, as a strategy to protect his presidential reelection from California anti-immigrant hysteria fueled by Proposition 187, President Bill Clinton implemented “Prevention through Deterrence,” which was a militarized border operation. Three years later, during a national presidential campaign in which “get tough on crime” and “immigration control” resurfaced as major themes, Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), both of which amended INA by substantially increasing enforcement resources and increasing the power of the federal government to deport noncitizens. After September 11, 2001, policy makers increasingly linked immigration issues to national security and ushered in more exclusionary policies. In October 2001, less than a month after the terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush signed the U.S.A. Patriot Act into law, thereby undermining the civil rights of both citizens and noncitizens. Collectively, these unprecedented enforcement activities have produced a staggering increase in the detention and removal of noncitizens and, more fundamentally, a dramatic departure from the immigration policies of the post-World War II era that were built on the principles of family unity, integration, and the rights of immigrants. This essay examines each of these recent enforcement activities and draws attention to some far-reaching and unintended consequences of immigration policies that frame and target migrants as criminals but largely ignore the hiring practices of employers who play a fundamental VOLUME 7 NUMBER 1 2008 PP 83–94 R