The border crisis is over (for now)

In January this year, monthly border encounters fell below one hundred thousand for the first time since January, 2021 (exactly four years ago). We haven’t seen the official February numbers yet but Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks says it’s going to be fewer than 8,400 over 28 days. The Biden administration, by comparison, often encountered 10,000 inadmissible aliens in a 24-hour period during the border crisis.

“They heard my words and they chose not to come,” President Trump told a joint session of Congress this week. Vice President Harris also said “do not come” as part of her doomed “root cause” assignment, but people chose to come anyway. Trump and Harris have divergent communication styles but that wasn’t the difference. People ignored Harris because President Biden spent the early part of his administration opening up the border; just as they believed Trump because he immediately executed a series of actions to end the crisis as soon as he resumed office.

What happens to the border after Trump?

The decline in border encounters is truly remarkable. Just one year ago, President Biden, backed by a small group of Republican and Democratic Senators, declared that he could not manage the border crisis without a bill they constructed to make Biden’s approach to the border permanent.

The so-called “Lankford bill” would have required the U.S. to process at least 42,000 inadmissible aliens per month during a border emergency. Over four years, “processing” often meant “releasing into the country.” The Harris-Walz ticket made the “bipartisan Senate bill” the centerpiece of their immigration platform. They claimed, over and over, that the border crisis was inevitable without their bill. After a month (February) with the lowest border encounter numbers since the government started tracking them, the charade is over. President Trump justifiably spiked the football in his address to Congress saying we didn’t need a new law, just a new president. In his first few weeks, Trump has demonstrated the power and effectiveness of an Executive branch that has the will to enforce immigration law.

Reality check: The door is wide open for another administration to bring back Biden’s border policies. The bill that would have actually halted Biden’s border crisis last year was the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2 in the last Congress). We don’t want to temporarily secure the border. We want to secure the border for generations. The Secure the Border Act would prevent any future administration from reinstating Biden’s border policies. Without that bill signed into law, all of Trump’s progress at the border can be erased on day one of a future administration, just as Biden did in January, 2021.