As I listen to the rhetoric regarding immigration reform for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country, one of the most commonly uttered phrases is, “secure the border.” However, no one from either party has specifically defined what that means. Yet, it appears that no bill will move forward in Congress until the question is answered.

Is the border not secure if one immigrant enters the U.S. illegally, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000? Do we need to militarize the border, fence the nearly 2,000 miles, send in more drones?

Perhaps Congress needs some perspective.

According to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center, more Mexicans are now leaving the U. S. for Mexico than are entering the U.S. from Mexico.

For the fourth year in a row, the Obama administration set a record for the number of people it deported. In 2012, the total reached 409,849. The number of people deported under Obama has risen in each of his four years in office and totals more than 1.5 million.

During President George W. Bush’s last year in office, 33% of the people deported by the U.S. were convicted criminals. The Obama administration has increased that percentage each year, reaching 55% in 2012. In all, 96% of the people deported fall into Homeland Security’s priority categories, including recent border-crossers, repeat immigration violators and fugitives from immigration court.

The migrants crossing the border are increasingly non-Mexican. Overall, arrests along the border are down since the mid-2000s, suggesting that fewer people are attempting to cross. The exception is the Rio Grande Valley sector in South Texas bordering Mexico’s Tamaulipas state, where there was a 60-70 percent increase in apprehensions in 2011. Maybe that’s where the government needs to concentrate its “secure the border” efforts?

Virtually all of this growth consists of what local authorities call “OTMS” — other than Mexican. These migrants are mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. For the first time, non-Mexicans now account for the majority of migrants apprehended in South Texas.

I have to wonder if the “first we need to secure the border” crowd is the same group of politicians who oppose amnesty and are attempting to delay or completely stop the whole process by insisting that the government meet an ill-defined or impossible goal.

Hopefully, we’ll soon have the answer.