Trump has made the border secure again — but now the hard part begins
The second Trump administration has radically reduced illegal migration. The border-control blitzkrieg brought quick victory. But, from here on, the campaign will be a long slog — finding, arresting and removing deportable aliens inside the U.S.
The most dramatic change since President Donald Trump took office has been at the southern border, where almost no aliens caught entering illegally are now released. Under Biden, "catch-and-release" was routine, and tens of thousands of illegal aliens were fed into an overloaded immigration system that takes years to work through. If their asylum claims fail, someone has to deport them.
This month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed they had deported more than half a million illegal aliens since Trump took office. They hope to top 600,000 by year’s end.
TRUMP'S DHS TOUTS MASSIVE NUMBER OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DEPORTED AS DEMS LASH OUT AT ICE
Additionally, researchers at the Center for Immigration Studies estimate that over a million additional illegal aliens have left the U.S. on their own since January 2025.
In that same time, DHS says they’ve arrested 485,000 illegal aliens. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that 70% of them have been charged with or convicted of a crime committed in the U.S. (in addition to being illegally in the country). Given that there were at least 435,000 aliens with criminal convictions in the U.S. a year ago, and another 200,000 more with pending charges, that’s easy to believe.
Most of those criminal aliens were on ICE’s non-detained docket, meaning they lived freely in the community. Few were monitored. Some of those ICE arrested since January will have been deported, but most probably remain while their immigration cases drag on.
The American left was aghast to see the speed and ease with which Trump proved that it was lack of will, not means, that shut down the illegal migration trail from Yuma to the Darien Gap.
For four years, they wanted Americans to believe that mass illegal migration was inevitable — caused by forces beyond U.S. control. That narrative has collapsed like the tent camps U.S. taxpayers paid for to house millions of illegal migrants a few years ago.
The loss of this excuse forced the left to change tack. Their new strategy — now that the flow has ended — is to let as many as possible of Biden’s millions of illegal aliens stay here.
Their tactics are to use the national media, left-wing activists and illegal aliens themselves to depict any enforcement as cruel. They demonize federal agents as fascist goons, even though they are simply doing their jobs and enforcing our laws. They bandy the word "Nazi" about as only those completely ignorant of European history can.
And they see every arrested illegal alien as an angel, whatever the facts in each case.
For the left, illegal aliens are always dutiful parents, hard-working strivers and pillars of the community. They make media heroes out of the likes of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an alleged spouse-abuser, gang member and professional alien smuggler who is depicted as a devoted father caught up in an unfair, heartless immigration system.
Left-wing "abolitionists" believe in dismantling the "carceral state," meaning the justice system, from police to judges to jails. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to "close many of our prisons and explore just alternatives to incarceration." Her fellow Democratic Socialist, New York’s newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani, wants to stop punishing misdemeanors. Not long ago, he was against building jails at all.
"Abolitionists" generally also believe in an international right to migrate, so they want to end all immigration detention.
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As I write in "The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)," the Western world is in the midst of an epic struggle between the global left, who want open borders and international government, and conservatives who understand that strong nation-states are the essential protectors of citizens and the building blocks of a secure, prosperous world.
Over the next three years, we will see this struggle play out in the streets, particularly in "sanctuary" cities like Portland and Los Angeles run by far-left mayors and city councils. Cities like New York and counties like Arlington, Va., that don’t honor ICE detainers will force agents to find and detain dangerous criminals in the streets.
The next Democrat administration will have no fig-leaf of outside forces to hide behind if they open our borders again to process, parole and punt millions of unknown, unvetted and unqualified "asylum seekers" into the country.
If Trump resists overreach, maintains his nerve and backs federal agents to safely do their jobs no matter how intemperate the opposition becomes, then by the end of his term he will ensure the federal writ applies throughout the land. Americans will grow used to the rule of law being enforced again.
But if the "abolitionist" left — assisted by the media and activist judges — can frustrate interior enforcement enough to render federal immigration law toothless, we will have a new nullification crisis on our hands.
