In the last two years, the Mexicans have detained nearly 400,000 migrants whose intent was to come to the United States. The Mexicans return the detained Central American migrants by bus or by air to the countries they come from.

We can't defend the country by looking at the borderline as the first line of defense rather than as the last line of defense. We have to secure the flow of goods and people by engaging with foreign entities. We assure our security by securing the flows as early as we can before they arrive and as far away from our borders as we can.

The law change during the Bush administration gave the Department of Health and Human Services a central role in relocating Central American minors in the United States.

Mexico has become a robust democracy with a robust press and an active legislature. It has gone from being a sending country for migrants to a transit country, and increasingly a receiving country for migrants in its own right.

The idea was to restore the rule of law, to bring order to a chaotic situation. The results became more and more apparent. Crime rates went down in the border region. Today, the number of migrants crossing is at a 30-year low. That's because of years of bipartisan work on this issue.

Homeland security is inherently transnational today. There's hardly anything adverse that happens in our homeland that doesn't have a cause or effect that's generated abroad. Increasingly, we must rely on our allies and foreign governments to share information and data to secure our country.

People in our so-called Rust Belt have lost out, and politics and society have not been responsive either in providing the kind of additional support they need or to retrain them for jobs that are being created in the new economy.