The Greatest Mass Migration Border Crisis in U.S. History Is Over
We know enough now to justify a declaration about the greatest mass-migration border crisis ever to have stricken the United States and probably any other country in the world: It is now, finally, at its end.
A fitting tombstone might read “RIP, Mass Migration Crisis: January 2021 to January 2024”.
I declare its end not as a government official empowered with any special authority to do so, but as someone who accurately foretold the coming crisis before it began in 2020 and 2021 and then, for the ensuing four years, covered this dramatic story’s beginning, middle and — now — its end intensely on the ground in seven countries. I also offer the declaration as author of a 432-page book, Overrun, which documented why President Joe Biden started this crisis on his inauguration day, what happened as it unfolded, and why the same simple steps in reverse were always available to just as quickly end it.
President Donald Trump ordered up those few simple steps required in existing immigration law — detention, border expulsion, and interior deportations — on his first day in office. Bam: As quickly as Biden opened the border on his 2021 Inauguration Day, Donald Trump closed it before the sun set on his in 2025. As I’ll explain below, I believe the new state of affairs will stick for at least the full length of Trump’s term, so long as the administration follows through on all policies that it has rolled out to date and maintains them at full throttle.
For starters, Trump’s November 5 election triggered a precipitous decline in illegal border crossings and parole program entries allowed at land and air ports, from 106,333 "encounters" in Biden’s October 2024 (about 3,544 per day) to 61,465 (about 2,048 per day) for the month of January. The freefall continued in February, Trump's first full month in office, to 8,326 apprehensions, just under 300 a day along the entire border with Mexico, "the lowest month in recorded history", according to Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks.
Meanwhile, what does that look like on the ground and in major U.S. cities that had been forced to take on these millions? There are no more needy foreign newcomers showing up with hands outstretched. The raging northward torrent of foreign nationals of 200,000-350,000 per month that Biden’s policies launched on his inauguration day is now flowing back southward as hundreds of thousands caught in Mexico and other countries on Trump’s Inauguration Day settle in place — and self-deport.
Almost unbelievable scenes of flight are unfolding on the trails as thousands self-deport to their home countries, just as many told me they would right after Trump’s election, when I was reporting in Tapachula and Mexico City, Mexico. Some are even self-deporting to Canada, a flow expected to spike exponentially in the coming months.
Closer to “Operational Control” than Ever
Because of the multi-layered policy architecture Trump has already put in place, the border has moved closer than ever to the probably unattainable goal of full “operational control” required of the Department of Homeland Security and defined by the U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006 as “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States”.
Even if the Secure Fence Act’s zero-entries bellwether serves as an unachievable guiding goal, President Obama’s former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s benchmark of below 1,000 entries per day — all of them promptly detained and expelled — may serve well as a realistic goal in its stead.
“I’d look at [the border crossing numbers] every morning — and my staff will tell you if it was under 1,000 apprehensions the day before that was a relatively good number. And if it was above 1,000 that was a relatively bad number and I was going to be in a bad mood the whole day,” Johnson famously told MSNBC in 2019.
With well under 500 a day trying Trump’s new system — and none of them being released — the United States is beyond there now and did it faster than migration advocates constantly told America could possibly happen.
Exposure of Mass Migration Narratives as False Leaves Only One Standing
Trump’s quick border closure now requires that the American public, lawmakers, students of immigration policy, and policy practitioners finally and forever regard as disproved and debunked the many enabling and deflecting theories that pro-immigration advocates offer about what causes mass migration events and how to stop them.
There is no intellectual choice left now but to finally accept that starting and stopping these events was always a simple matter and never the complex undertaking that many constantly claimed during the recent presidential campaign.
No major “bipartisan Lankford Senate bill” was ever required to shut it all down, as Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris relentlessly insisted during the recent campaign, when she promised, as her central border and immigration policy plank, that she would push to pass it if elected.
Also never necessary was “comprehensive immigration reform”, or billions sent to reduce the “root causes” of emigration by rebuilding troubled sending countries. Not needed were the complicated and time-consuming unproven programs to fix “the broken border” and “the broken immigration system” that Democrats, migrant advocates, and partisan immigration theorists have constantly demanded as a pretext to let millions pour over in the meantime.
No one on Trump’s inauguration day suddenly cured climate change and the long list of other “root causes” that supposedly drove swamping numbers of migrants over hapless Border Patrol agents and detention centers starting on Biden’s inauguration day.
Instead, it was always something far simpler available to any president: To open or close the border gate with the push of a couple of policy buttons. What these buttons do is turn on or off the only real “root cause” of mass migration, an almost too-obvious one that I elaborately reported in my book Overrun and more quickly explained last year in this five-minute 2024 PragerU video: The buttons raise or lower the odds for aspiring immigrants to successfully enter the United States and stay long enough to pay back their smuggling fee investments.
High odds guarantee the recouping of smuggling fee costs many times over; they’re all coming for this. Low odds guarantee debt for all their trouble and expense; no one’s coming for that.
That’s why they came by the millions when the Biden government chummed the Rio Grande waters on Day One in 2021 with policies that abandoned statutorily required detention, border expulsion, and interior deportation, and instead bestowed the unimagined gift of mass quick releases into the nation’s interior, indefinitely and with generous public welfare benefits and almost no chance of deportation. Countless migrants told me in interviews over the years that they only came when they heard about these highly unusual policies and understood the odds of successful entry and long-term stays to pay back the smuggling fees were favorable.
That’s why they stopped coming when Trump on his Day One returned to following existing laws requiring detention, expulsion, and deportation while releasing none into the nation’s interior and moved to cut off public benefits. After the election, dozens in Mexico told me they were going to abandon plans to enter because the odds of successful entry and long-term stays had fallen to unacceptable lows.
No Guarantee of Border Closure Longevity
But caveats are in order here. These simple policy prescriptions alone will work their magic only so long as the Trump administration keeps a heavy foot on the pedal and systematically executes them with very little exception.
We know this from the first Trump administration’s experience when tough border talk about a “big beautiful border wall” and first policy rollouts in 2017 initially halted most illegal immigration because aspiring border-crossers felt the odds of successful entry had fallen. That first six or seven months of hesitancy became known as the “Trump Effect”. But litigation delayed the wall and temporarily shut down policies that were going to detain and expel.
Starting in the Spring of 2018, a major surge of illegal immigration happened that the first Trump administration was able to eventually wrestle down with other policies and some court victories.
But those in the second Trump administration have learned from that experience and layered up multiple different policies to ensure that this second “Trump Effect” enjoys a longer lifespan.
For example, the first Trump administration hadn’t yet thought of invoking a powerful instant expulsion policy that was always on the books, even if litigated in recent years. It’s section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and reads as follows:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
Trump 2.0 issued that proclamation and began using it on Day One to catch and expel almost everyone it could lay hands on. The number of those who can be caught — and therefore the odds of getting caught after trying to dodge border agents — are higher than at any time during the Biden administration due to the deployment of thousands of U.S. military personnel to help spot them for a Border Patrol force no longer tied up processing thousands of "give-ups" a day for interior releases.
But should opponents litigate 212 (f)’s use, the administration put in a backup plan already litigated and good to go that allows almost the same thing, colloquially called “Remain in Mexico”. That policy also allows the president to immediately expel border-crossers claiming asylum to wait in Mexico for their hearing dates.
One way or another, the increased expulsions and odds of capture that make the vast majority of aspiring border-crossers want to save their smuggling money are visible for all to see along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump layered up in two other highly consequential ways that increase the longevity of the border’s near-operational-control state, as well. The new administration immediately put in place a 25 percent trade tariff on Mexico to coerce a 10,000-troop military deployment that turns around all migrants they can catch on their side of the U.S.-Mexico border and to contain them in Mexico's south. By all accounts, the Mexican troops are actually doing that work in very visible ways.
Finally, there is Trump’s interior deportations plan. No one has been able to miss these as Border Czar Tom Homan noisily shows and tells. These growing interior deportations message that, even if you manage to break through the Mexican and American border cordon, illegal immigrant “got-aways” still face growing odds that federal immigration officers will eventually find and deport them by air to a growing list of nations like India, Colombia, China, and some in Africa, all newly agreeable to accept the flights.
All of this layered architecture has dramatically lowered the odds that many foreign national gamblers are going to lay down their smuggling money on the green felt.
And that’s why I feel comfortable declaring that the greatest mass migration crisis in U.S. history is over and the southern border is closed.
At least for the next four years.
WARNING -- THE INVASION IS NOT OVER
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