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The revolutionary war to overthrow the dictator Porfirio Díaz, began. The fighting is so close to the US-Mexico border that US citizens are able to watch the fighting. Mexican immigrants start flooding to the US seeking refuge.
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Francisco "Pancho" Villa leads hundreds of Mexicans in an attack on the U.S. town of Columbus, New Mexico. Seventeen Americans are killed and the town center is burned.
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This restricted immigration to the US. Many people from Mexico started trying to illegally make it over the border.
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President Truman becomes the first president to go to Mexico, laying a wreath at the foot of the U.S.-Mexican war monument to the Ninos Heroes.
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Concerned about the growing numbers of illegal immigrants in the United States, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower begins Operation Wetback, a forced repatriation program supervised by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
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In September 1969, President Richard Nixon declares a war on drugs and the United States launches an aggressive search-and-seizure counternarcotics operation on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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In 1986, the United States passes the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which seeks to crack down on illegal immigration by sanctioning employers who hire illegal immigrants. The law also grants amnesty to 2.7 million illegal workers already in the United States.
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In January 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trilateral agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
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Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, U.S. border security intensifies. In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security is created, reorganizing Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocks the most controversial elements of Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070, set to take effect July 29. The law included sections that demanded police officers check immigration status while enforcing other laws and required immigrants to prove they were legally in the country.
