Donald Trump’s return to the presidency hasn’t just returned illegal border crossings to the level seen in his first term. The new focus on border security and immigration enforcement has driven illegal crossings to levels not seen since Bill Clinton’s final year in office.
According to CBS News this weekend, crossings in the entire month of February comes to the level of an average day during Joe Biden’s presidency:
The number of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border illegally in President Trump’s first full month in office plunged to a level not seen in at least 25 years, according to preliminary government data obtained by CBS News.
Last month, Border Patrol recorded about 8,450 apprehensions of migrants who crossed into the country unlawfully between official entry points along the U.S.-Mexico border, the statistics show.
On some days during a record spike in illegal crossings under the Biden administration, Border Patrol recorded more than 8,000 apprehensions in a single day.
February’s total, which could be adjusted when the government officially publishes the statistics, would be the lowest monthly apprehensions tally recorded by Border Patrol since at least fiscal year 2000, the last period with public monthly data. The final tallies usually don’t deviate much from the preliminary figures.
And Trump accomplished this with six weeks of taking office, simply by enforcing existing law and rounding up criminal illegal aliens that Biden’s DHS had ignored. The change of policies, as well as the immediate application of security resources to the border, has had a predictable effect on incentives. People who saw the Biden/Harris promises as incentives to cross the border for four years now see the disincentives in place that outweigh any potential benefit. And those disincentives apply even more to coyotes and other human traffickers who had made a fortune over the past four years, too.
Now, consider this immediate result from enforcing the law and border security with what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris kept claiming during the 2024 campaign. Both Biden and Harris tried to shift blame for the Biden Border Crisis to Trump, accusing him of making it impossible to secure the border after Trump pushed Republicans in Congress to oppose the Biden/Harris immigration-reform ‘compromise.’ That compromise would have prevented serious enforcement efforts as long as the rate of illegal border crossings remained at 2500 per day or below.
Harris tried this during the debate last September:
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings. And let me say that the United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported. And that bill would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border to help those folks who are working there right now over time trying to do their job. It would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States. I know there are so many families watching tonight who have been personally affected by the surge of fentanyl in our country. That bill would have put more resources to allow us to prosecute transnational criminal organizations for trafficking in guns, drugs and human beings. But you know what happened to that bill? Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress, and said kill the bill. And you know why? Because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem. And understand, this comes at a time where the people of our country actually need a leader who engages in solutions, who actually addresses the problems at hand. But what we have in the former president is someone who would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.
Let’s not pussyfoot around this point: Everything Harris and Biden said about border enforcement was a bald-faced lie. Biden and Harris didn’t need that bill to enforce border security and control immigration enforcement. Trump had managed to do it without that bill for the four years of his first term. Biden and Harris created the border crisis because they wanted to force Republicans into a bad “compromise” bill that would leave illegal crossings at historic highs for as long as possible. Their progressive-elite clique detests borders and sneers at American legitimacy, and would have never even cared about the crisis unless Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis started to bus illegals into places like Washington DC, New York, and Chicago.
Trump exposed it as a lie within less than two months in office. Trump did more to secure America’s southern border in 40 days than Biden and Harris did in four years. And he did it under existing laws, with the existing resources already at the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. Congress didn’t need to lift a finger to allow the executive branch to secure the borders and deal directly with the traffickers of both humans and drugs. Trump didn’t even need to build the wall to get immediate results, although that will be coming.
Joe Biden lied.
Kamala Harris lied.
Nancy Pelosi lied.
No one should ever forget that Democrats lied while putting every community in the US at risk. Ever.
