With a tight Texas budget session ahead in 2017, state legislators are already looking for every available dollar. Not having to spend $800 million on border security — the amount allocated in the previous two-year budget — would amount to a huge financial windfall at the state Capitol. Not counting federal funds, the Legislature spent about $114 billion in the last budget. If President-Elect Donald Trump delivers on his promise to dramatically beef up security on the U.S.-Mexico border, leading Texas lawmakers say they might quit spending so much state tax money on it.

Magal Security Systems, the Israeli company which built the defensive fence system around the Gaza Strip saw a surge in shares after Donald Trump was confirmed as the winner of Tuesday’s election. Magal had looked with anticipation at the prospect of a Trump victory how it would help the barrier-building business. Magall has built border walls and fences in Egypt, Somalia, and other African countries.

The Hungarian parliament narrowly defeated a plan proposed by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, to ban the resettlement of migrants in Hungary. Analysts say that the setback, coming on the heels of the failure last month of a similar proposal in a referendum, may weaken him as he tries to rally other EU members to adopt a tougher immigration policy.

News organizations widely report that there are 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. But where does this figure come from? Donald Trump has falsely asserted: “It could be three million. It could be 30 million. They have no idea what the number is.” In the third debate, Hillary Clinton said, “We have 11 million undocumented people. They [undocumented parents] have 4 million American citizen children. 15 million people.” The confusion is warranted – but demographers have figured out a simple and effective way to estimate the number of unauthorized immigrants.

An entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed recently that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists made a first in port discovery of an insect within an imported air cargo shipment of cut flowers arriving from Bogota, Colombia. CBP says that the Guayaquila pallescens, commonly called treehoppers or thorn bugsis the first of its species intercepted in Puerto Rico.

The United States isn’t the only country — nor Texas the only state — with a long history of illegal immigration over a porous southern border. Where the Mexican state of Chiapas touches Guatemala, undocumented immigrants and smugglers don’t have to worry about a border patrol, customs agency, or immigration authorities of any kind.

The union representing the agents of the U.S. Border Patrol, the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), is a direct reflection in many ways of the U.S Border Patrol’s unique institutional history and present culture. That the NBPC leadership endorsed Donald Trump during the primaries is not surprising, nor is NBPC’s continued strong support for Trump to be our next president.As I documented more than a decade ago, the Border Patrol and the NBPC are both run by masculinist and militaristic bureaucracies more self-interested in their own agendas than reflecting the needs of their employees or union membership. NBPC’s endorsement of Trump is nothing less than support from the leadership of a labor union that has always been much too busy with other issues to support their own female Border patrol agents when they are discriminated against and harassed in a hostile work environment.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday it would consider a controversial Texas case involving a cross-border shooting that ended with the death of a 15-year-old boy at the hands of a Border Patrol agent. Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca was killed in 2010 by agent Jesus Mesa Jr., who was patrolling the banks of the Rio Grande in El Paso during what was called a “rock-throwing incident.” Hernandez was on the Mexican side of the international boundary in Ciudad Juárez when Mesa fatally shot him from the Texas side.

During this 2016 election year, there are basic security facts about the wall between Mexico and the United States that every American should clearly understand before he or she considers the merits of the policy solutions offered by our political parties. Security facts about the border wall are not always intuitive, based upon what passes for common sense, or even easily available to the general public. In contrast, abundant myths and falsehoods, regardless of how often they are repeated, are rarely based upon documented evidence produced by serious researchers. Instead, these assertions may be of part of election motives and agendas throughout the ballot from top to bottom. Americans should continue to learn more about our entire border security system in this region. These facts about our border security matter, and will continue to matter, long after this election day.