OPINION:
Eight months into President Trump’s second term, the relentless pace of his administration has caused his critics to recoil in horror. Efforts to restore law and order in our heartland and at the borders have been assailed as nothing short of Mussolini-like authoritarianism.
The chief facilitators of this purported shredding of the Constitution have been Mr. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and its leader, Kristi Noem.
This narrative does not comport with the facts: Ms. Noem and her department have demonstrated exacting respect for the rule of law and the Constitution. Using laws already in the books, Ms. Noem and the Homeland Security Department have been remarkably effective at putting much-needed emphasis on securing our borders and removing foreign threats from the country.
Ms. Noem’s most striking accomplishment is the transformation of the southern border from a zone of anarchy into a secure, effectively policed international boundary. Homeland Security data shows that daily encounters with illegal aliens have plummeted by an astonishing 93% while daily apprehensions have dropped by 96%. Perhaps most impressive, for the past four consecutive months, zero illegal aliens have been released into the country.
Compare this with the Biden years, when images of a lawless, chaotic border with thousands of foreign nationals entering the country illegally became an almost daily occurrence.
Many thought reversing the Biden administration’s excesses on illegal immigration would be impossible, yet it is happening rapidly under Ms. Noem’s management. In less than 250 days, the Homeland Security Department has facilitated the exit of more than 2 million illegal aliens, contributing to a 2.2-million-person decrease in the overall foreign-born population since Mr. Trump took office. Enforcement operations have reduced northbound illegal migration from Central America by 97%. The Trump administration is now on pace to break deportation records, potentially marking the highest number of deportations in a single year in U.S. history.
Faced with this unmistakably impressive turnaround, what has been the focus of the biased establishment media? Ms. Noem’s choice of outfits. She wore an expensive watch on a visit to El Salvador and donned tactical gear while accompanying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on an operation in Phoenix. The fixation on such trivialities is not a coincidence but rather a shiny thing meant to distract the public from how bad the situation was under President Biden and the speed with which Mr. Trump and Ms. Noem are improving it.
Since Inauguration Day, the department has apprehended more than 422,000 illegal aliens, and 70% of those arrested by ICE have criminal charges or convictions. Among these arrests are nearly 1,000 known or suspected terrorists, neutralizing perhaps the most significant threat to American security in the 21st century. This targeted approach is consistent with the administration’s priority of removing the “worst of the worst” from U.S. soil.
To sustain this policy, the Homeland Security Department has dramatically increased its deportation capacity. ICE has signed more than 1,000 287(g) agreements with state and local partners across 40 states, enhancing collaboration and accelerating the arrest and deportation process. Additionally, it has rapidly negotiated the establishment of new detention facilities: the colorfully named Alligator Alcatraz, Speedway Slammer, Cornhusker Clink, Deportation Depot and Louisiana Lockup. All this is being done under the existing provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. So much for Mr. Biden’s spurious claim that the only way to secure the border was “immigration reform legislation.”
Beyond border security and deporting illegal aliens in the heartland, work remains to be done to prioritize American-born workers in the economy. Since January, 2.5 million American-born people have entered the workforce, with 100% of new jobs going to U.S. citizens. This starkly contrasts with the previous administration, when 88% of new jobs went to foreign-born workers. During this time, Customs and Border Protection has collected $184.4 billion in tariffs, taxes and fees.
The sea change in operational strategy has boosted the morale of those tasked with implementing it. ICE has received more than 150,000 job applications and extended 18,000 tentative offers this year, while CBP and the Secret Service have application numbers that more than doubled from 2024.
This is a complete reversal of the past four years, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas smeared a mounted border agent in the Haitian whipping hoax, handcuffed agents with bad policies and fixated on using “politically correct” language when describing illegal aliens. That “leadership” caused morale among the rank-and-file to plummet. Needless to say, under Ms. Noem and Mr. Trump, ICE and CBP morale are higher than ever.
Enforcing our country’s immigration laws is a hard and dirty job, even under the best of conditions. To do it after the migrant invasion under Mr. Biden is exponentially harder, yet Mr. Trump and Ms. Noem have succeeded. The American people should give them the credit that their opponents never will.
• Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington. Matt O’Brien is deputy executive director at FAIR and a former immigration judge.
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