We know enough now to justify a declaration about the greatest mass-migration border crisis ever to have stricken the United States and probably any other country in the world: It is now, finally, at its end.
A fitting tombstone might read “RIP, Mass Migration Crisis: January 2021 to January 2024”.
I declare its end not as a government official empowered with any special authority to do so, but as someone who accurately foretold the coming crisis before it began in 2020 and 2021 and then, for the ensuing four years, covered this dramatic story’s beginning, middle and — now — its end intensely on the ground in seven countries. I also offer the declaration as author of a 432-page book, Overrun, which documented why President Joe Biden started this crisis on his inauguration day, what happened as it unfolded, and why the same simple steps in reverse were always available to just as quickly end it.
President Donald Trump ordered up those few simple steps required in existing immigration law — detention, border expulsion, and interior deportations — on his first day in office. Bam: As quickly as Biden opened the border on his 2021 Inauguration Day, Donald Trump closed it before the sun set on his in 2025. As I’ll explain below, I believe the new state of affairs will stick for at least the full length of Trump’s term, so long as the administration follows through on all policies that it has rolled out to date and maintains them at full throttle.
For starters, Trump’s November 5 election triggered a precipitous decline in illegal border crossings and parole program entries allowed at land and air ports, from 106,333 “encounters” in Biden’s October 2024 (about 3,544 per day) to 61,465 (about 2,048 per day) for the month of January. The freefall continued in February, Trump’s first full month in office, to 8,326 apprehensions, just under 300 a day along the entire border with Mexico, “the lowest month in recorded history“, according to Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks.
Meanwhile, what does that look like on the ground and in major U.S. cities that had been forced to take on these millions? There are no more needy foreign newcomers showing up with hands outstretched. The raging northward torrent of foreign nationals of 200,000-350,000 per month that Biden’s policies launched on his inauguration day is now flowing back southward as hundreds of thousands caught in Mexico and other countries on Trump’s Inauguration Day settle in place — and self-deport.
Almost unbelievable scenes of flight are unfolding on the trails as thousands self-deport to their home countries, just as many told me they would right after Trump’s election, when I was reporting in Tapachula and Mexico City, Mexico. Some are even self-deporting to Canada, a flow expected to spike exponentially in the coming months.
By Todd Bensman
