From getting tough on fentanyl trafficking to deporting gang members to El Salvador, Trump has implemented a whole-of-government approach to border security.
In Starr County, Texas, Marcus Canales said the past 100 days under President Donald Trump have made him wonder if he’s living in the “Matrix,” the computer-generated virtual world made famous in the 1999 Hollywood science fiction movie by the same name.
That’s because of the night-and-day difference when it comes to the number of illegal immigrants he’s seen since Trump took back the White House, scoring historic gains in this heavily Hispanic county that went red for the first time in 130 years.
“Oh, the man gets an A+,” said Canales, a retired teacher. “I mean, compared to where we were—at an F-,” he said.
He no longer sees illegal immigrants sitting along the side of the road waiting to be picked up by Border Patrol agents, who now seem less busy.
In the past, he’d see agents speed past him, but now they drive through town a lot slower.
“I would go from now till doomsday voting for the man,” said Canales, a local GOP chairman. “Sometimes you just need these hard-hitting individuals who don’t play cutesy.”
Canales said the country needed someone tough like Trump to secure the border and deport illegal immigrants. Some 11 million came into the United States unlawfully under the Biden administration, with most crossing along the Southwest border.
“We, the voters, wanted this,” he said. “Trump is just following our mandate.”
Closing the U.S. southern border and deporting those who are in the country unlawfully was a top campaign promise that helped Trump win the White House for a second term.
Arrests of illegal immigrants by Customs and Border Protection have plummeted since Trump took office. February and March totals were each under 30,000. In 2024, during those same months, illegal immigrant arrests hovered close to 250,000 apiece.
In an AtlasIntel poll released in March, Trump received his highest marks on immigration, with 52 percent of 2,550 respondents saying his performance was excellent or good. The poll’s error of margin was 2 percent.
In an Epoch Times online survey conducted Jan. 29–30 with 54,144 respondents, more than 81 percent approved of deporting illegal immigrants.
Trump’s whole-of-government approach to securing the border involves executive orders, the military, and enforcing existing immigration laws, some of which have been seldom used since the founding days of the Republic.
