National Review Online
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
After President Trump’s first month in office, border
encounters are down. Way down. Ninety-six percent down. From around
300,000 in December 2023 under President Joe Biden, to just 8,300 in February
2025. The number averaged just under 300 a day last month, constituting “the
lowest month in recorded history,” according to the chief of the Border
Patrol.
Some of this is the sheer deterrent effect of having a
loud and proud border hawk in the White House — the so-called “Trump effect”
starkly reduced border crossings at the outset of the president’s first term,
as well. But, this time, the administration has also put in place policies
designed to keep the numbers low for the duration, including, very importantly,
rapid expulsions after we detain illegal crossers.
To get a sense of the achievement, it helps to review the
record of the previous administration. Joe Biden spent his first several weeks
as president revoking, rewriting, or simply putting into the trash the suite of
executive orders and enforcement guidelines that the first Trump administration
had used to establish control of America’s southern border and end the abuse of
our asylum system. Biden’s actions kicked off a yearslong border crisis which
melted down the emergency resources of border towns and caused New York’s mayor
to prophesy the destruction of his city’s finances. Biden’s solution was a
series of “pen-and-phone” quasi-amnesties and various forms of temporary status given
to millions of people crossing with fake asylum claims.
The Biden administration built an app that literally
guided potential crossers in evading the law while appearing to comply with it.
Just last year, the foreign-born percentage of the population of the United
States ballooned to a historic high — 15.6 percent of the U.S. population, or
51.6 million people. That’s roughly equivalent to California (the most populous
state in the union) and Pennsylvania (the fifth-most).
After all this, Biden and Harris had the audacity to
blame Donald Trump for the border crisis during their 2024 campaigns. Why?
Because he opposed the Lankford-Schumer border bill, a piece of legislative
sugar meant to make House Republicans swallow more Ukraine funding. That border
bill purported to give the president wide authority to shut down border
crossings altogether. But more importantly, it formalized the lawless approach
to enforcement that characterized the Biden administration, such as diverting
asylum seekers away from adversarial judicial proceedings and granting them
status after a non-adversarial interview with an asylum officer.
The Lankford bill was not necessary for restoring law and
order at America’s southern border. For that, it was only necessary to have a
president serious about enforcing the immigration laws.
In short, Biden chose to inflict an illegal immigration
crisis on the country that resulted in tent cities across Southern California
and hotel overcrowding in New York. Voters have held his party accountable, and
Trump is applying the remedy. Sometimes, the system really does work.
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