Mark Krikorian is Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress tonight won’t technically be a State of the Union message, but it will be close enough. Every president since Reagan has delivered such a speech at the beginning of his term, laying out plans for the next four years.
Trump no doubt will have plenty of things to say about his future agenda. But unlike his predecessors, he’ll already be able to point to accomplishments. Chief among them: ending the worst migration crisis in American—or perhaps world—history in just a few weeks.
This wasn’t supposed to be possible under existing law. In urging Congress to approve the Senate’s “bipartisan border bill” last year, President Biden said:
It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.
Biden and his allies (including, curiously, bill co-sponsor Senator James Lankford, R-OK) claimed the border couldn’t be controlled without the authorities the bill would bestow. That refrain was repeated exhaustively by the media. The New York Times asked in 2023, “Why Can’t We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works.” The Brookings Institution last year gave “Four reasons the immigration crisis isn’t going away”. And the Cato Institute pronounced that “Biden Can’t Stop Immigration. Time to Embrace It.” It was the lack of these powers that caused the prior three years of unprecedented illegal immigration, so the narrative went.
The 2024 bill failed; it was a confidence trick all along, crafted by Biden’s own Department of Homeland Security to codify the administration’s illegal border-busting policies. But regardless of policy, leading voices in media and policy circles asserted that mass migration was simply inevitable.
And then President Trump was inaugurated, and the impossible suddenly became possible.
Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks has reported that in February, Trump’s first full month in office, apprehensions of illegal aliens at the southern border fell from an average of about 3,500 a day in October, the month before the election, to an average of fewer than 300 a day last month—a 90% decline. Chief Banks said this was “the lowest month in recorded history”.
This didn’t happen because conditions in Latin America and elsewhere—long claimed to be the unaddressable cause of the crisis—suddenly changed on January 20. It happened because the Trump administration reversed Biden’s policies.
The most immediate impact comes from ending catch-and-release—the practice of “processing” border-jumpers who turn themselves in and then just letting them go, dropping them off at a bus station or at a (government-funded) migrant assistance center with a piece of paper requiring them to show up for a hearing months or years in the future. Under Biden, the Border Patrol went so far as to distribute baggage check tags for the luggage that illegal border-crossers were bringing with them, to make sure people could claim their bags after being “processed” and released.
Ditching the policy resets incentives for those wanting to enter illegally. Whether you’re coming from Guatemala or Tajikistan, heading to the U.S. border illegally is expensive and risky. If the odds of success—i.e., reaching the interior—are high, many people will come. Now that the odds are low, fewer people make the attempt. It’s not rocket science.
But catch-and-release presupposes being caught. The Biden administration started two programs using the “CBP One” cellphone app, which allowed prospective illegal crossers to instead schedule their illegal immigration, either through land ports of entry or at airports. The rationale was based on the inevitability narrative: since we supposedly can’t stop people from coming to the United States, let’s reduce illegal border crossings by funneling the prospective border-jumpers into a more orderly, “lawful” process at ports of entry.
Trump stopped these programs immediately upon taking office. If migration really were inevitable, their cancellation should have led to increases in illegal crossings. Instead, not only did border infiltrations drop, but thousands south of the border planning to take advantage of these programs are turning around and going home.
Trump also has gotten an unprecedented level of assistance from Mexico in halting the flow. The Biden administration was paying Mexico to help with the border, but when the number of third-country illegal would-be crossers there got too much for the country to handle, the Mexican government would quietly launch “ant operations”—the dispersal of illegals heading north, so they’d still cross out of Mexico into the U.S., but in small enough groups to avoid drawing too much attention from Washington.
Instead of begging for help from Mexico, Trump demanded it with a threat of crippling tariffs. And he got it: 10,000 Mexican National Guard troops are headed to their northern border to prevent illegal crossings into the U.S.
But the flow of illegals hasn’t all but stopped solely because of changes at the border itself. Prospective illegal aliens must also be deterred by the realization that if they somehow slip past the Border Patrol, ICE will be waiting for them in the interior. The Biden administration, most notably DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, essentially removed the “I” from Immigration and Customs Enforcement by prohibiting agents from enforcing immigration laws.
Most egregious in this regard was the “sensitive locations” or “protected areas” policy, which prohibited ICE from even surveilling a potential illegal alien in or near any church, school, recreational center, pharmacy, hotel, school bus stop, and more. The memo establishing this policy didn’t define “near”, but did say that any kind of immigration enforcement activity should not even be visible from one of the protected locations. A colleague marked up a map of Tucson, Ariz., using a relatively narrow definition of “near” and including only some of the most obvious “protected areas.” The result was almost the entire city—a mere 70 miles from the border—becoming a sanctuary from immigration enforcement.
Despite President Trump’s reported dissatisfaction with the rate of deportations, ending the “protected areas” policy and other changes have translated into Border Czar Tom Homan removing illegal aliens from inside the country at double the rate of the prior administration.
But once ICE arrests an illegal alien, what should they do with him? Many countries take back their own deported citizens without any fuss, but many do not, or they engage in unreasonable delay in preparing the needed travel documents. Congress gave presidents the authority to stop issuing any or all new visas in such “recalcitrant countries,” a power Biden never used once. Trump 1.0 wielded this club a number of times, and this time around there’s much more cooperation. When the president of Colombia rejected a couple of deportation flights, Trump not only threatened visa sanctions, but also banking sanctions and crippling tariffs if he didn’t take his own citizens back. He caved almost immediately.
A note of caution is in order. Trump has been in office for only six weeks, and it’s possible the initial shock of his election and inauguration—the so-called Trump Effect—will wear off and alien smugglers will again start to aggressively challenge our border defenses. Or Congress could fail to appropriate sufficient funds to maintain the needed level of vigilance. Or some other pressing concern could arise that distracts the administration’s attention.
But so far, the changes outlined above, and many others to boot, all serve the same, coherent, America-first goal—to harden the border, arrest illegals in the interior, and make sure those arrested are quickly repatriated. There’s still more to do, but it turns out that ending the mass migration crisis wasn’t that difficult after all—you just needed to want to do it.