The media doesn’t give Trump much credit for this, but the number of attempted illegal border crossings are at a 17-year low. There were 60,000 arrests in December. In March there were only 17,000. In that same time, the decline was even more obvious among women and children: from 16,000 in December to just 1,100 in March.
Donald Trump’s saber-rattling may or may not deter Kim Jong-Un, but it has had an effect south of the border.
In the first few months of this year, illegal border crossings have dropped precipitously, according to federal statistics and anecdotal evidence. It is an early proof of concept that, yes, it is possible to secure the border and a victory, even if a provisional and incomplete one, for President Trump’s enforcement agenda.
Once you stripped away the bluster and impossibilities from Trump’s rhetoric on immigration during the campaign — there wasn’t going to be a wall along the entire border paid for by Mexico, nor were there going to be mass deportations and a Muslim ban — the irreducible core of his message was a commitment to crack down on illegal border crossings.
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