From the Heritage Foundation, I'm Michelle Cordero, and this is Heritage Explains.

This week, we conclude our special series on immigration.

We're ending with what is probably the most important element when it comes to reforming our immigration

system. And that's how we're currently enforcing immigration laws and how we can be doing it

better. Here's David and Sarah, a policy analyst in Heritage's Douglas and Sarah Allison Center

for foreign policy. Yeah, so one of the things that I think happens in our current political debate is that

there's a lot of talk about the wall, border security, what we do at the border.

But as I've probably mentioned before, what happens when a person gets picked up at the border?

What happens when they show up at a port of entry and they

ask for asylum? What happens when they overstay a legal visa and they become an illegal immigrant

that way? All these situations require enforcement to back up the border security or legal

immigration system that we have in place.

And so to my mind, we should be focusing much more on enforcement, the loopholes that we have

in our enforcement strategies, and the resources in the immigration court systems that are

actually going to adjudicate and prosecute these cases.

Because if you're just

catching people, then that's not really enough. You can't just catch people. You have to also

return them to their home countries because if you're not returning them, then you're not saying

a deterrent message. Catch them all you want, but you need to also have the enforcement standing

behind those folks who are actually stopping people.

And I think that makes sense. No matter where you are on this issue, I think most people would agree that that makes sense. So going back to the basics, let's walk through it. Someone's caught

at or around the border. What happens next? Yeah. So if they're if they're caught, generally

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