This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 5th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Immigration raids targeting Central Americans in the US illegally appears aimed at

signaling to people currently in those countries not to come to the US.

And the dramatic decline of Mexicans apprehended at the border and in the US may be driven by better worker visa policies.

Cato's Alex Narasta explains.

Immigrations and customs enforcement has engaged in several raids sort of with some surprising results.

Why now?

That is the $64,000 question.

I think the big reason is the president is following up on what they did in 2014 to stop the

migrant surge.

So if you recall in June of 2014, tens of thousands of people started to arrive along the US border, seeking asylum

from Central America.

Those numbers were dramatic, caused a big media circus.

A lot of them were put in detention facilities in this American Southwest

and they were given hearings.

What the government did was they went down, they sent Joe Biden, they did a bunch of targeted

buy ads in Central America telling people not to come, they increased enforcement along the

border, put these people in camps in the United States to make it not appear like they want to come

here to raise the cost of them coming here.

And as a result, the numbers have dropped off a lot in 2015.

I mean, it's a fraction of what it was in previous years but since October the numbers have

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