U.S. immigration policy is inextricably linked with national security and border control policies. But that wasn’t always the case. The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks prompted a major shift in the way the country handles immigration, creating new government bodies and tightening restrictions on who is and isn’t allowed in. Arguably, the most significant difference is that the Department of Homeland Security didn’t exist before 9/11. Formed in November 2002 with the passing of the Homeland Security Act, the agency replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Service and became responsible for enforcing national security and protecting the U.S. from terrorism. The U.S. began setting aside “huge funding for immigration enforcing, the creation of DHS, creating new and robust databases which were nonexistent,” Muzaffar Chishti, a director at Migration Policy Institute, told The Huffington Post. “We have an entry-exit system, where we fingerprint everyone who enters and we track people in many airports when they leave country. We also track every foreign student.”
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