How’s Trump doing on immigration? Great! (mostly)

New York Mayor Ed Koch used to ask almost everyone he met, “How’m I doing?”

Trump hasn’t asked me “How’m I doing?” on immigration, but if he did, I’d answer, “Outstanding, Mr. President, but with one hiccup and much left to do.”

The first challenge the President faced was to stop the disaster at the border. And he’s succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. As journalist Byron York asked on X, “How many presidents solve a problem… that was a huge issue in the campaign, and solve it in the first few months of their presidency?”

Arrests at the southern border in May were down 93 percent from the same time last year. During a recent 24-hour period, border czar Tom Homan reported that only 95 illegal aliens were encountered by the Border Patrol along the entire 2,000-mile border – the lowest number ever recorded.

And the reason the numbers have cratered is policy: border jumpers are no longer let go. Why incur the expense and risk of the trip if you’re just going to end up in immigration detention? In May 2024, the Biden-Mayorkas DHS released into the country 62,000 aliens who had no right to enter the United States. And this past May? Zero – zip, nada, bupkes. 

The next big challenge is to try to unwind the disaster created by Biden’s anti-borders policies, and more generally, the lax and frivolous way immigration control has been approached for decades. This will take longer, but we’re seeing a great start.

Reducing the illegal population has two tracks: 1) illegal immigrants taken into custody by ICE and sent back to their countries, and 2) self-deportation, where illegal aliens realize the party’s over and go home on their own.

Despite fairy tales to the contrary, Trump is not lagging in deportations. The higher numbers recorded in prior administrations were due to continued mass violation of the border – lots of people crossed, lots were sent back, and that racked up numbers. But removals of illegal aliens from the interior of the country – which is what we’re seeing now since almost no one is coming over the border – are up under Trump, with roughly 70,000 so far. These removals actually reduce the illegal population, rather than just keep it from increasing.

Those being removed are a mix of criminals and deportation fugitives, on the one hand, and ordinary illegals, on the other. The latter come to ICE attention either as “collateral arrests” (people ICE came across while tracking a specific bad guy) or through worksite enforcement, i.e. raids on factories, restaurants, etc.

Worksite enforcement is essential to the second track of the strategy: self-deportation. If the only illegals being arrested and deported are criminals, and you, like most illegals, are not a criminal (other than immigration-related crimes), you have little to worry about and so why would you leave?

This is where the hiccup mentioned above comes in. Earlier this month, business lobbyists, fearing their access to cheap labor will be curtailed, briefly persuaded the President to call off all immigration enforcement – and even investigations – at farms, meatpackers, hotels, and restaurants. This would have torpedoed any possibility of leveraging ICE enforcement to prompt more self-deportations.

Within a couple of days, the President realized his mistake, and ICE was back in business. Good thing, too, because self-deportation is working. Preliminary government data my colleagues at the Center for Immigration Studies have examined suggests that the illegal population has declined by as much as 1 million just since January. And once the Big, Beautiful Bill is passed and the funding comes online, the additional ICE agents and detention beds will translate into increased reductions in the illegal population along both tracks – ICE deportations and self-deportations.

There’s much left to do: the e-Verify system has to be mandated, allowing employers to check online whether new hires are legal; visa overstays will be the next frontier in illegal immigration, now that the border is under control; and changes to legal immigration are needed to help American workers and crack down on fraud.

But for now, promises made are being kept. And though there are always obstacles – both political and logistical – the new administration can fairly say, to adapt the Post Office’s motto, that neither snow nor rain nor riots nor loony politicians stay ICE agents from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.