30 Years of Operation Gatekeeper: A Q&A with Joseph Nevins

Today's border has "surveillance towers littering the landscape, militarized personnel [everywhere], miles of formidable walls. Gatekeeper played a huge role in bringing about this dystopian reality."

Border Patrol watches over a newly built wall during Operation Gatekeeper in February of 1999 near San Diego. (Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Thirty years ago there were drastic changes underway at the U.S.-Mexico border, epitomized by the U.S. Border Patrol’s Operation Gatekeeper. Never would the since disfigured borderlands look …