During the presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump repeatedly said that he would secure America’s porous borders very quickly.
This was met with skepticism from Trump’s critics, who insisted the border was far too complex a problem to be fixed with just his political will. Now, barely a month into his term, Trump has shown that political will is exactly what was needed to secure the border.
According to newly released data from Customs and Border Protection, just 61,465 people were apprehended at the southern border during the entire month of January – a 36 percent decline from the previous month. That number includes 29,116 apprehended along the border – the lowest since May 2020 – and 32,349 at ports of entry.
The numbers reflect a dramatic, almost overnight change at the southern border. From the day after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration to the end of the month, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped 85% from the same period in 2024, according to data obtained by ABC News. In the 11 days after Jan. 20, migrants apprehended at ports of entry declined by 93%.
Journalists accompanying Border Patrol agents in SUVs, buses and speedboats in Texas are reporting not seeing any migrants in places where swarms were picked up daily the last four years.
The change is similarly dramatic in America’s interior. A San Diego migrant shelter recently announced it will be closing its doors, as not a single migrant has shown up since Trump’s inauguration last month. Shelter officials also said they have not received any of the $22 million it was awarded last year as a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
While Trump is fulfilling one of his central campaign promises in securing the border, he is doing it primarily by resetting the federal government’s overall approach to illegal immigration.
“We’re concentrating on the export program,” border czar Tom Homan told Fox News. “Catch and release is over, so all those facilities that were at great taxpayer expense, to welcome people flying to the city of their choice, giving them a free hotel room at taxpayer expense, three meals a day, free medical attention – those days are over.”
According to anti-borders politicians and activists, such a quick reduction of illegal entries into the country should not be possible. During her failed presidential campaign last year, former Vice President Kamala Harris was asked repeatedly why, after four years as Joe Biden’s border czar, she did so little to stem the flow of what amounted to a calamitous border invasion.
At every turn, Harris’ default reply was that she was powerless to do anything thanks to Congress’ inability to pass a sweeping new border bill.
It has taken Trump less than a month to expose that claim as false and empty campaign rhetoric. As he did in his first administration, Trump is plugging the holes in our border security armed only with the laws currently on the books.
Funds were already allocated by Congress to finish the border wall and enhance border security. The law still calls for the apprehension and removal of people entering or living in the country illegally once their deportation orders are complete. We just lacked an executive in the White House the last four years to implement it.
By switching from strict border enforcement to catch-and-release in 2021, Biden and Harris sent a clear message to the rest of the world that America was a nation unserious about its border security, with debit cards, luxury hotel rooms and a plethora of other benefits waiting for those willing to illegally enter our country.
And what would that failed border bill actually have done had it passed? Harris insisted that it was a bipartisan bill because Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., was one of its negotiators. However, Lankford eventually voted against advancing the measure, saying, “It is not an actual effort to make law, it is an effort to do political messaging.”
In other words, what Harris insisted was a panacea for the border chaos her administration caused would have been yet another bloated, wasteful action of Congress that would likely have made the problem worse.
While Trump, Homan and other administration officials have been clear that fixing the illegal immigration mess they inherited will be expensive, money is not the most important asset in solving this problem. The most important thing is the political will and intestinal fortitude of our leaders, qualities that have been lacking in Washington recently and are now back.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
Author
