The Border Crisis Fallout Isn’t Over

Last week brought two disturbing reminders of why Congress must permanently close the loopholes that fueled the border crisis.

An illegal alien was sentenced this week for abusing and impregnating a 14-year old he smuggled into the U.S. as his sister. Over the period of abuse, he applied to the Biden Administration to sponsor four more children and was approved for at least one. In a separate case, a woman was indicted for sponsoring 40 unaccompanied alien children who were trafficked for child labor. 

These two cases involve just some of the roughly 500,000 unaccompanied minors who were released into the U.S. during the Border Crisis. According to caseworker estimates, two out of three ended up working full-time, often in hazardous, exploitative, or otherwise inappropriate situations for children. Many remain unaccounted for.

Congress should permanently close the loopholes that enabled these abuses.

The tragedy is that none of this was unforeseeable.

The Biden Administration Ignored Warnings

In a conversation with Mark Krikorian last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott shared this chilling anecdote from his brief time serving in the Biden Administration:

“The performance metrics got shifted immediately. It wasn’t about securing the border; it was about how fast can you process people and then let them go….

“….And then exactly everything — not just me, everything that any border security expert that had a chance to whisper in their ear told them, without consequences, you are literally opening the dam. Like, this isn’t about the 15 people standing in Tijuana right now; this is about millions of people around the world. They’re going to see this as an invitation to come to the United States. And I honestly have to admit, even I was surprised that they were like: ‘And?’

“They literally just had a completely different perspective on the world.”

By the summer of 2025, after the border surge had been brought under control, nearly 70 percent of Americans – including nearly half of all Democrats – believed the Biden Administration deliberately opened the border. They weren’t wrong.

A Better Border

What a difference a year makes.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office credits executive actions taken on the first day of the second Trump Administration for turning these numbers around. Specifically:

• Reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols (i.e. “Remain In Mexico”)
• Ending categorical parole programs (reinstating case-by-case)
• Ending the App the Biden Administration provided to inadmissible migrants to facilitate their release

Remain In Mexico limited false asylum claims by requiring applicants to wait outside the country, while the other two policies returned parole to a case-by-case basis. Roughly half of the 80,000 releases in 2025 occurred during President Biden’s final 20 days in office.

The Trump Administration has proven that illegal immigration is neither inevitable nor insurmountable. Speaker Johnson has promised a vote on legislation to codify these reforms into law.

Negative Net Illegal Immigration

In addition to plugging the leak, the Trump Administration has begun to bail the water out of the boat. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the illegal population declined by 360,000 in 2025. Other studies agree there was a significant decline although the estimates vary. 

CBO also calculated: 

• 260,000 visa overstays
• 120,000 interior deportations
• 400,000 self deportations
• 225,000 adjustments to legal status

That last number includes people who receive green cards through a family relationship or asylum. The deportation numbers demonstrate once again that the United States will never arrest, detain and deport our way out of illegal immigration. 

The most efficient way to convince people to return home is to take away the thing they broke the law to acquire: an unauthorized job. If Congress is serious about immigration enforcement, it must mandate E-Verify.