I was born in Tijuana, Mexico and grew up in San Diego, California, only a few hundred yards from the actual borderline. As a kid, there were always border patrols around but I never felt like my birthplace offered any threat. A few years ago, though, I noticed a massive escalation of security infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border. I couldn’t figure out what had changed. How had Mexico and our neighbors to the south become a threat? Did we really need to spend billions of dollars on fencing, technology and thousands more border guards? And was any of it working?