Illegal border crossings on the US-Mexico border at the lowest level in 50 years.

 

An image of a border patrol vehicle on the Mexican side of the border. BBC/Getty.

Illegal border crossings on the US-Mexico border are at the lowest level in 50 years. BBC. In

Fiscal Year 2025 the Border Patrol stopped 238,000 illegal immigrants. More than half of those were during the final four months of Joe Biden's term. Since Donald Trump took office, there have been around 9000 immigrants stopped each month. Trump has been a hardliner on illegal immigration and made several executive orders that promoted border security and the removal of illegal immigrants. 

My Comment:

This is a pretty good example of how illegal immigration was a choice. Biden allowed in millions of illegal immigrants and claimed there wasn't a thing that he could do. Other than a bill that would have created amnesty for these millions of illegal immigrants. 

However, the second Trump was in office, he was able to fix the issue. Trump's executive orders simply ended the flood. Folks realized that they wouldn't get in so they stopped coming. It was a huge victory and one that shows that we don't actually have to accept millions of border crossings every single year. We don't need to accept all these unvetted and dangerous people that take American jobs and raise housing prices for every single American. 

I do worry that Trump is a victim of his own success. By absolutely fixing the illegal immigration issue, at least at the border, he doesn't have the issue to motivate the base in the 2026 midterms. I think this was a major factor in the 2020 election, I never understood why Trump didn't keep hammering in on the issue like he did in the 2016 election. 

Of course, fixing the border isn't the only factor for illegal immigration. Millions of them are still here and need to be deported. And there are always folks that come into the country legally, but then overstay their visas and they need to be dealt with as well. But at least the faucet has been turned off. 

Securing the border was always the easy part though. Getting rid of the illegal immigrants is a lot tougher. ICE has been doing work getting rid of folks and at least a million people have self-deported, if I recall correctly. But 11 million folks were let in by Joe Biden, to say nothing of the millions of folks that came in before his term. We have a long way to go before we finally fix the illegal immigration problem and the border was only one aspect of it. 

I do think Trump's competence in this area will damage Democrats in the future. Nobody is going to believe the kind of gaslighting they attempted during Biden's term. If the Democrats somehow get into power again and open the gates, they won't be able to say there is nothing they can do when it's obvious they can...