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As Donald Trump touted during his speech on Tuesday, illegal border crossings have slowed to almost a complete halt. So does that mean the border crisis is finally over? Thanks to the day one policies implemented by Trump, the answer to that question is yes.
Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies says that under Trump, "Illegal crossings fell by 2/3 from what they were, and then have now plummeted to something like 2 to 3 hundred a day." That's down sharply from the October 2024 numbers, which according to Bensman, were around 3,544 a day.
He went on to note that the 200-300 illegal aliens caught each day are immediately being turned around and expelled, rather than being released into the United States.
So what about all the illegal aliens who already made it into the United States under Joe Biden? Well, Bensman says that now that we've stopped the bleeding, we can get to work on that issue. He said, "There's a massive cleanup to be done in the interior. On the order of 10 or 12 million foreign nationals got in under this thing."
Unfortunately, that's a problem that will take a little longer to solve. Bensman says that Biden went out of his way to ensure that detainment capacity was significantly hampered during his administration. He said, "You have to have a place to put people while you're waiting. You might have to hold people for three or four days. The Biden Administration very systematically eliminated that capacity, so it has to be rebuilt."
Trump has already taken steps to address this, namely opening up Guantanamo Bay and other military installations to house illegal aliens, but Bensman says it will likely take a year or so to fully restore detention capacity.