The first border fences built along the U.S.-Mexico border to curb immigration from Mexico began in earnest under Democrats Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. After building fences for decades to stop animals, the federal government shifted its focus when people began migrating in significant numbers from south to north in the 1940s and 1950s.
In this transitional moment, both Mexico and the United States embraced the border’s permeability. To fill labor gaps left by World War II, the nations agreed to a guest worker program, known as the Bracero Program. Not everyone qualified to participate, though, so thousands began migrating independently. Growers in the north yearned for affordable labor. Mexicans within and outside of the program provided it. Under pressure to control the flow of people, the Roosevelt Administration began planning fence construction in urban areas to divert traffic to more isolated areas. By the end of the Truman Administration, most border cities were fenced. Even as both nations facilitated Mexican migration, they looked to fences to aid them in filtering who could enter.
The Bracero Program ended in 1964, and a year later, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act which, for the first time, placed a cap on the number of people who could immigrate to the U.S. from Western Hemisphere countries like Mexico. This shift in regulation directed greater attention to the border.
Despite new laws and fences, immigrants kept coming. Lured by U.S. demand, smugglers brought drugs, too. In 1969, Republican Richard Nixon launched Operation Intercept. He tried to close the border for weeks to stop the movement of illicit drugs. The initiative increased security and surveillance—a virtual fence, not a material one—but it failed by its own measure.
Two years later, First Lady Pat Nixon established Friendship Park along the border near San Diego where people could celebrate cross-border culture. At the dedication ceremony, Nixon requested that her security detail cut strands of barbed wire there so that she could greet Mexicans across the borderline. “I hope there won’t be a fence too long here,” the Republican famously said. Nixon’s administration never built significant barriers.
Facing economic distress and American angst with rising tides of labor migrations from Mexico, Democrat Jimmy Carter replaced the fence Nixon had cut with a bigger, stronger fence in 1979. A year before it went up, its design stirred controversy when the contractor stated it would “sever the toes” of anyone who dared to breach it. After public outcry, Carter’s administration redesigned the fence to be plain, but tightly woven, wire mesh topped with barbed wire. Even if that fence did not sever toes, it did tear through Pat Nixon’s bi-nationally spirited park.