I don’t think there’s an easy solution. There are a lot of people who don’t regard tolerating illegal entry in any form to be a workable solution. I should think they disagree with you over whether illegal crossing can be stopped. They just regard the punishment to not be high enough. Callous as you say. But I should think they’d regard the toleration of undocumented crossings that a tiny minority of are criminals evading detection is also callous on the people that suffer as a result.

I personally think more liberal but documented movement in tiers is a solution. But I don’t think the status quo of what America had been doing - tolerating illegal crossings and toying with the idea of naturalising undocumented people - was a solution because the writing was on the wall for a long time that America was democratically moving against it. The catastrophe that’s currently happening is the result.

Some people just don’t regard illegally entering a country to be a misdemeanor, rather they regard it as a serious offence. Such stances are usually as emotional as they are reasonable. But so is most politics…