I think a country should have the absolute best tools at their disposal to be able to handle processing and serving the millions of immigrants and billions of dollars of goods which cross their borders.<p>If an influx of unaccompanied minors cross a border, a country needs to have the systems, processes, facilities, and supply lines setup and ready to activate to support that population.<p>Whether it is trying to confirm identification of someone crossing at a border station or illegally, locating and vetting relatives (or someone claiming to be a relative) in country, or finding a foster family or allocating space at a shelter, there is a very significant amount of work that DHS and ICE needs to be doing to both protect this vulnerable population as well as identify criminals who may be trying to cross the border for nefarious purposes.<p>We need a best-in-world multi-layered system which includes everything from search and rescue, drug interdiction, temporary shelters, family housing, background checks and asylum claims processing, work permitting, and on and on.<p>Border crossings on the southern border are actually at a historical low, but the demographics of the people who are crossing has changed dramatically. Instead of predominantly single males, we have had a massive increase in unaccompanied minors and families. Instead of Mexicans, there has been a large flow from Central America coming through Mexico and into the US. These new demographics present extreme challenges to the existing facilities on the border which were not built to accommodate that type of population.<p>IMO what we need to be doing is properly funding border enforcement and processing, hiring a large number of new immigration judges to process claims in days not months, and build facilities that can keep illegal entrants reasonably comfortable for the <i>few days</i> it should take to process their arrival, whether that means admittance into the interior with a future court date or refusal of entry and deportation.<p>I wonder, for example, what tools and services the USDS may be building for ICE and DHS, and if the engineers on those products feel like they are positively contributing to the safety and welfare of, for example, families with qualified asylum claims, or helping identify children being trafficked across the border.