By Issues & Insights Editorial Board | March 14, 2025
For those who followed the illegal immigration debate, the last two months have been dizzying, to say the least. Not only has the flood of illegal immigrants crossing our border been reduced to a trickle by aggressive enforcement of existing laws, but thousands and thousands more illegal entrants have been dissuaded from even trying. It’s a huge victory.
As we never tire of saying, we are not anti-immigration. We are, however, against illegal immigration. After all, what kind of eventual citizen will you be if your first act upon entering is to commit a crime? And most Americans agree with us.
That said, we’ve been surprised at the speed with which the Trump administration has moved, without “legislation from Congress,” to shut down our sieve-like border, with crossings now at their lowest ever.
Mission accomplished? Not at all. If anything, the White House is moving even harder and faster to make sure the border is really and truly no longer open, as it was during the Biden years. Indeed, the Biden years, it turns out, were the worst ever for illegal immigration.
Hardly a day goes by without something new, and big, taking place on the illegal immigration front. A pledge to end the border breach was, after all, a major reason for President Donald Trump winning in 2024.
A series of developments and news reports in recent days illustrate just how much the administration’s efforts have borne fruit.
- A new report from the Wall Street Journal finds Trump’s border policies having a major impact on northbound illegal traffic: “As President Trump’s migration policy begins to bite, growing numbers of people are heading back through Panama and Colombia. ‘What else can you do?’” asked one dejected migrant.
- Yet another report, this from Panama’s Migrant Authority, found that illegal crossings of the Darien Gap, the dense Panamanian jungle that is a popular route for U.S.-bound migrants, have dropped 99% since Trump took office.
- Panama’s southern neighbor, Colombia, reports that the number of people making the reverse trip from the long trek north to the U.S. border surged 132% in the first two months of this year, bolstering Panama’s claim of a dramatic shift.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests “since President Donald Trump took office are already outpacing arrests made in all of 2024,” the agency said Wednesday — while saying the Biden administration had been ‘cooking the books’ on its numbers,” Fox News reports.
- Far-left Venezuela, one of the biggest sources of illegal immigration during the Biden years (and that includes violent Tren de Aragua gang members who are now causing mayhem and murder in cities across the U.S.), has said it will resume flights to pick up illegal immigrants from the U.S., according to Trump’s Special Envoy Ric Grenell. The flights begin today.
- Trump vowed Thursday to use the 1798 “Alien Enemies Act” to “target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.” By declaring some illegal immigrant gangs, such as Tren de Araragua, as terrorist groups, Trump can use the law to send the gangs back to their home countries without requiring approval of an immigration judge.
And that’s just one exhausting week. And it’s not over yet. Trump has delivered on his promise in a way few imagined he would.
As Trump himself said during his boffo address to Congress last week, “The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
That wasn’t hyperbole. As on other issues, including the price of eggs (down $2 a dozen since Trump took office) and overall declines in both consumer and wholesale inflation, Trump is moving fast to lock down the border from all but those who come here legally.
For many Americans, the illegal immigration disaster under former President Joe Biden was the final straw. Their faith that President Trump would take action on illegal immigration was met with stunningly fast and aggressive post-election action to close the border, despite Democrats and their far-left allies sneering at the very possibility of such a thing.
Imagine that: A politician who actually meant what he said, and did what he said he’d do.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
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