While President Donald Trump's executive order on the border wall seems to be getting most of the attention, experts believe a move to end what the Border Patrol commonly calls "catch and release," will have the biggest effect on reducing the flood of migrants from Mexico and Central America.
Former Border Patrol Chief Victor Manjarrez says the last time this was tried was under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. It took in recommendations from the 9-11 report.
Instead of catching and releasing migrants before their court hearing, it kept them in custody.
"When you stop catching and releasing, what we saw back then was a huge deterrence effect," he tells Newsradio 1200 WOAI. "The spigot was significant reduced once people realized that they were not being walked out anymore."
One of Trump's executive orders calls for tripling "enforcement and removal operations/agents" of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and hiring 5,000-new Customs and Border Protection personnel.
Manjarrez, who is now a professor at UTEP says similar actions were taken back in 2004, but nothing was as effective as holding migrants until their hearing.
"In essence, there is a consequence for entering the country illegally," he explains, saying the word quickly got south of the border.He says, like today, there were concerns in 2004 about bed space to hold migrants. It turned out that the flow was cut so much, no new detention centers were needed.
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