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Mexico : The United States And The Economy Of North America

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INTRODUCTION: The relationship with Mexico is vital to the United States and the economy of North America. It is one that cannot be ignored or treated with carelessness, especially in the regions where it has impact on the lives and livelihood of millions of people. September 11, 2001 changed the way the United States would secure its borders from neighboring Canada and Mexico, and those who enter it with the intent to do harm, forever. The border with Mexico in particular became a matter of special focus out of fear that terrorists might use the relatively porous Southwest border as an entry point into the United States to carry out further terrorist attacks against the homeland (Lee, Wilson, Lara-Valencia, de la Parra, Van Schoik, Patron-Soberano, Olson, Selee, 2013). As a result of the attacks that killed nearly three thousand people that day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created by President George W. Bush’s Executive Order 12338, and the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (www.dhs.gov, 2015). The new agency began operating on March 1, 2003 integrating twenty-two previously disparate domestic agencies into one single department. One agency under the umbrella of the newly formed DHS is the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), charged with the daunting task of protecting our borders from dangerous people and materials. A law enforcement component of the CBP is the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) whose mission is to detect and prevent the illegal entry of

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