President Trump has answered the biggest question on immigration as he hits the 100-day mark: You can shut down the border through sheer willpower.
Illegal crossings are at the lowest level ever detected. Border migrant shelters have shut down because the number of people caught and released has dropped 99.99%. The smuggling cartels are struggling to find customers.
At times during the Biden administration, 10,000 illegal immigrants were regularly encountered at the southern border daily. On Sunday, that number was 178. Gotaways, known to have evaded detection, topped 1,800 daily under President Biden. The figure on Sunday was 38, White House border czar Tom Homan said.
“Today, as I’m standing here, we [have] the most secure border in the history of this nation, and the numbers prove it,” Mr. Homan told reporters Monday as the administration took a victory lap on what has been the Trump administration’s most prominent unqualified success.
It happened without new legislation and without a major infusion of money from Congress, which is still debating Mr. Trump’s request for tens of billions of dollars in new funding.
It did take some creative policy-making, weaving together authorities from sometimes centuries-old laws, a commitment from the U.S. military, and Mr. Trump’s spending of political capital.
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“It took Donald Trump one hour on the very first day of his administration to close the border down,” said Todd Bensman, a border expert at the Center for Immigration Studies. “It was never necessary to have a big bipartisan Senate bill. Comprehensive immigration reform was never necessary. There was no ‘root causes’ solution involved. All of that was just phony propaganda, and it all stands exposed.”
“Never again does this country have to have a debate about this. It was simple,” he said.
The victory is so complete that it has left immigrant rights groups struggling for answers. They have largely conceded the border battle and are now drawing defensive lines farther inside the U.S., desperately hoping to blunt Mr. Trump’s mass deportation promises and save as many illegal immigrants as possible from deportation.
“Cruelty is their point,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. He saw elements of racism in Mr. Trump’s actions and said the president was trying “to harm all communities of color in this country.”
“What we are seeing is, this is not in fact about safety and security. It’s about creating chaos, panic and fear,” Mr. Awawdeh said.
Mr. Trump’s interior crackdown has also had the most legal hiccups.
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His administration backed away from a large-scale effort to revoke foreign students’ status after judges across the country said the move raised major constitutional concerns and issued temporary restraining orders to stop it.
A judge also put on hold the president’s attempt to punish sanctuary jurisdictions by withholding federal grant money.
Mr. Trump’s attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law, to speed deportations has drawn pushback from judges. Supreme Court justices said he must give at least some chance for illegal immigrants caught in the country’s interior to challenge their deportations.
Legal blockades and other hurdles have blunted Mr. Trump’s mass deportation plans.
Over roughly the first 90 days of Mr. Trump’s tenure, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed an average of about 640 people a day. That was down from about 755 a day during the same general period last year under Mr. Biden.
Mr. Homan said border cases inflated the Biden numbers.
ICE arrests are running at more than twice their rate under Mr. Biden, up from about 250 to about 550 a day.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said he expects these numbers to rise if the administration can “clear away” some of the judicial blockades.
Mr. Trump issued a directive Monday to release a list of sanctuary jurisdictions that limit cooperation with ICE. The hope is to provide more access to prisons and jails. It is the fastest way to boost deportation numbers, particularly of migrants with criminal records, who the administration says are its priority.
The administration also has made a concerted effort, with a network of prods and incentives, to compel migrants to self-deport.
It’s not clear how successful that has been, though the Department of Homeland Security has celebrated the departures of several high-profile foreign students. Mr. Miller said those numbers will rise.
“The bottom line is that the president is going to continue and expand and accelerate the effort to remove from our midst people who have no lawful right to be here, and we will do so without apology,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s attempt to curtail deportation amnesties and other temporary legal statuses granted to unauthorized migrants has encountered bigger problems.
Judges have blocked his attempt to revoke Temporary Protected Status for roughly 600,000 Venezuelans, as well as a move to revoke “parole” granted to half a million Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans during Mr. Biden’s tenure.
Judge Indira Talwani said Mr. Trump’s attempt to categorically revoke their paroles “undermines the rule of law.”
