The rapid reduction of illegal crossings at the U.S. southern border calls into question a key Democratic talking point during the 2024 campaign, when party leaders blamed then-former President Donald Trump for helping kill bipartisan border legislation that they argued was the only way to secure the border.
“President Trump’s fast and successful border security proves Biden’s false claim of needing the Senate’s border insecurity bill was nothing more than Biden’s attempted power grab to codify his open border tools and hamstring a future president who wanted to enforce the law,” Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told Fox News Digital.
The comments come as evidence continues to mount that Trump’s policies have rapidly improved the situation at the southern border, including news last week that single-day border apprehensions had hit a 15-year low, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents encountering only 200 aliens at the border on February 22.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem have sent a clear message to illegal aliens: Do not come to our country. You will not be allowed in. And if you get in, we will hunt you down and deport you,” a DHS spokesperson said in a release at the time.
TRUMP REPORTS ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ENCOUNTERS AT HISTORIC LOWS DURING FIRST FULL MONTH IN OFFICE
This composite image shows President Biden, former President Trump and the southern border. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert and Fox News)
That news came just days after Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks told CBS News in an interview that southern border crossings were down 94% from the same period last year, a staggering number he credited to the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown.
While Trump has managed to reduce the numbers through his executive authority, many Democrats spent 2024 arguing that the continued crisis at the border was the result of Trump and his allies in the GOP tying the president’s hands by resisting a bipartisan border bill that was working its way through the Senate early in the year and was favored by former President Joe Biden.
“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said in February after the bill failed to pass.
“Frankly, I would have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation, because that’s the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now that’s broken, fixed. To hire more Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, more judges. But, Republicans left me no choice,” Biden said in June while announcing new executive actions on border security Republicans argued didn’t go far enough to alleviate the crisis.
That blame game continued throughout the 2024 campaign, with top Democratic leaders piling on Trump for helping kill the legislation they claimed was vital to ending the crisis.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks with reporters about President Donald Trump’s agenda following a Democratic policy lunch at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
‘HE IS DELIVERING’: TRUMP’S FIRST MONTH FLIPS SCRIPT ON RADICAL BIDEN-HARRIS BORDER POLICIES
“If my Republican colleagues truly believe the system is broken, why did they vote against a bill that would have provided more immigration judges, more asylum officers, and had the support of the very conservative Border Patrol Union?” then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer asked in a May press release on border security.
“When Americans ask this year who is to blame for the continued mess at the border, they should listen to the words that came from Donald Trump himself,” Schumer added.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris took the torch and continued to blame Republicans for the crisis after rising to the top of the Democratic ticket, arguing that the legislation would have fixed the issues at the border if not for Trump’s intervention.
“Donald Trump got word of this bill that would have contributed to securing our border,” Harris said during an August interview.
“He preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris said during a September debate with Trump. “Because he believed that it would not have helped him politically, he told his folks in Congress, ‘Don’t put it forward.’”
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024, at the PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“He killed the bill, a border security bill that would have put 1,500 more agents on the border,” she added.
But Ries argued that not only did Trump’s executive actions help alleviate the crisis once he took office, but Democrats had another legislative option all along in border security legislation that had already passed through the Republican-controlled House.
“The Senate could’ve passed HR-2, the Secure the Border Act … the House had already passed it, and it was collecting dust on the Senate’s desk,” Ries said.