EDITORIAL: Trump’s aggressive approach to border pays off

The Trump administration’s tariff policies — and the market fallout — have overshadowed one of the president’s most prominent successes: The chaos at the border created by his doddering successor has ceased.

Homeland Security officials report that illegal crossings at the southern border have fallen to their lowest level in decades. The U.S. Border Patrol nabbed 8,347 illegal migrants in February, down from 47,330 in December, the last full month of the Biden years. Apprehensions hit a record high in December 2023, at more than 225,000.

“Once-crowded migrant shelters are empty,” The New York Times reported. “Instead of heading north, people stranded in Mexico are starting to return home in bigger numbers.” One immigration expert told the paper that, if current trends continue, illegal crossings “could fall to levels unseen since around 1967.”

The Times also notes that President Donald Trump’s tough stance on the border has had a ripple effect. Officials with Panama’s Immigration Institute told the paper, “The number of people trying to reach the United States through the Darién Gap — the forbidding land bridge connecting South America and Central America that is a barometer of future pressure at the U.S.-Mexico border — dropped to 408 in February, down from more than 37,000 in the same month last year.”

Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began closing temporary processing centers because of a lack of clientele. That’s a savings of between $5 million and $30 million a month, depending on the facility. There’s another tangible benefit. The closings, the agency reports, will allow “agents previously assigned to those temporary processing facilities to return to their primary enforcement duties along the border.”

Progressives who loathe all things Trump cynically credit Joe Biden with the turnaround, noting that illegal crossings began to fall after the previous White House finally made a modest effort last year to address the border crisis. This ignores the rapid magnitude of the progress achieved by the Trump administration. It also disregards the fact that, for the first three-plus years of his presidency, Mr. Biden created the immigration mess by taking a permissive approach to the border in a misguided effort to appease his party’s loud progressive wing. Mr. Biden acted only when it became apparent that his fecklessness on the border had become a political liability for Democrats.

The country needs a rational immigration policy that recognizes the importance of secure borders while acknowledging the economic advantages of legal and orderly migration that doesn’t strain the resources of the federal government, states or local communities. Gaining control of our southern border is a step toward that elusive goal.