The Great Migration Halt: How Trump Shut the Border Down

Illegal Crossings Have Collapsed, but the Open Borders Crowd Isn’t Done Fighting

In the space of three weeks, President Donald Trump has accomplished what his predecessor could not in four years. The southern border, once a conveyor belt for illegal migrants, cartel traffickers, and criminal enterprises, has all but shut down.

The numbers speak for themselves. In February 2025, daily migrant encounters plummeted to just 359—down more than 90% from the 11,000 a day recorded under Joe Biden. The number of "gotaways"—those who evade apprehension—has collapsed to 132 per day, down from the staggering 1,800 daily at the peak of the border crisis.

This is not mere fluctuation. This is a deliberate, calculated shift, driven by an administration that has reasserted control over a border that had been surrendered to foreign trespassers. The mass migration surge, facilitated by an open-borders ideology and cheered on by a Democratic Party that abandoned even the pretense of enforcement, has come to a crashing halt.

The Return of Order

Since his inauguration, Trump has reinstated the policies that worked and abandoned those that failed. He has tripled the number of U.S. troops deployed to the border, ended the disastrous "catch and release" policy that allowed migrants to vanish into the interior, and expanded the use of emergency presidential authority to fast-track deportations.

In Mexico, the shift is equally dramatic. With the backing of the Mexican Senate, U.S. Special Forces have entered the country for the first time in modern history to train the Mexican Navy’s Marine Infantry in both conventional and unconventional warfare. This is no academic exercise. This is war—a war against the cartels who have turned Mexico into a failed state and transformed the U.S. border into an open highway for fentanyl and human trafficking.

At the same time, U.S. intelligence operations against cartel networks have expanded. The RC-135 Rivet Joint and P-8 Poseidon, two of the most sophisticated surveillance aircraft in the American arsenal, now patrol the southern border and the Baja Peninsula, tracking cartel movements with precision. The CIA’s fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones, once reserved for the battlefields of the Middle East, now scour the Mexican countryside for fentanyl labs and trafficking routes.

For years, we have been told that the crisis at the border is “complex,” that it is “difficult” to control migration, that the solution is some ever-elusive “comprehensive immigration reform.” Yet in just 21 days, this administration has managed to do what the open-borders crowd insisted was impossible.

A Nation Awakens

If there is any doubt about where the American people stand, several polls (most recently from I&I/TIPP Poll and our own conducted at the end of January) should put it to rest.

When asked whether they support mass deportations of illegal migrants, Americans back the measure by a 57-35% margin. On the question of using the U.S. military to enforce border security, the numbers are nearly identical—57% in favor, 34% opposed.

Even more remarkable is where support is coming from. Among Black voters, support for deploying the U.S. military to the border outpaces opposition by a 47-41% margin. Among Hispanic voters, it’s an outright majority—51% to 38%. These are not small numbers. These are the voters that Democrats have long counted on as their political foot soldiers, and they are abandoning the party line in droves.

The Democratic establishment, led by the Biden-Harris administration, bet the farm on an immigration policy that was radical, reckless, and ruinous. For four years, they erased the border, allowed more than 10 million illegal aliens to enter the country, and funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into sanctuary cities and migrant housing while American citizens suffered under crime, inflation, and declining wages.

The backlash was inevitable. The election of 2024 was the reckoning.

The Radical Left's Last Stand

The Democratic Party and its allies in the press now find themselves in a bind of their own making. For years, they denied that an immigration crisis existed, gaslit the public with euphemisms about "irregular migration" and "undocumented workers," and smeared anyone who demanded enforcement as a xenophobe and a bigot.

Now, faced with an administration that has restored order to the border with swift and decisive action, they have pivoted to their final refuge—hysteria.

The same voices that cheered Biden’s reckless open-border policies now warn of the "militarization" of the southern border, the "inhumane" nature of mass deportations, and the "dangerous precedent" of using emergency powers for immigration enforcement. But these objections ring hollow. The American people know better. They see the results.

And the results are clear:

• Illegal immigration has plummeted.

• Cartel operations are under siege.

• Criminal deportations have skyrocketed.

Homeland Security data shows a 98% increase in arrests of criminal migrants and a 105% surge in gang-related apprehensions since Trump’s inauguration. In other words, this administration is not just securing the border—it is actively removing the worst of the worst from American communities.

The Question That Remains

The victory on the border is real, but the battle is far from over.

The radical left will not surrender its vision of an America without borders. The mayors of sanctuary cities—who begged for federal assistance after spending years defying immigration law—will not go quietly. The activist judges and open-borders NGOs, who have spent decades obstructing enforcement at every turn, will fight Trump’s crackdown with everything they have.

Trump has won the first round. The numbers prove it. But the fight ahead will not be easy.

The battle for America’s borders is, at its core, a battle over what kind of nation we will be. Will we remain a sovereign republic, governed by laws, or will we become an overrun, lawless state, where citizenship is meaningless and sovereignty is a relic of the past?

That question will not be answered in the headlines of today. It will be answered in the years to come, in the halls of Congress, in the courts, and in the streets of every American city that has been ravaged by the consequences of lawlessness.

One thing is certain: The era of mass migration, of open borders, of unchecked lawlessness, is over. The American people have spoken.

And for the first time in years, someone in Washington is listening.