On the very first day of his second term, President Donald Trump took action to address the crisis on the southern border. The directives he imposed resolved the crisis so quickly that we all moved on to the next item on the to-do list without bothering to take even a moment to reflect on Trump’s success.

To truly comprehend the magnitude of the policy victory, it’s helpful to remember the situation that existed at the border and how it got that way.

Approaching six years ago, former President Joe Biden’s new administration announced to the world that there would be significant changes to the immigration, border security, and asylum policies it inherited from its predecessor.

In other words, Biden’s administration wouldn’t enforce the laws Congress had passed.

What followed for most of the next four years was a horrific breakdown of border security and immigration control. The system the Biden administration created led to the worst crisis we’ve ever seen on the southern border, with literally hundreds of thousands of immigrants arriving at the border and then crossing illegally into the United States every single month for years — according to Border Patrol reports, during the four years of the Biden administration, there were a total of 7.3 million encounters with immigrants trying to cross illegally into the U.S. between ports of entry.

One of the most offensive things about the situation was that after the crisis became undeniable, leading Democrats inside the Biden administration and on Capitol Hill insisted that Biden had no real power to address the crisis his own policies had created. Without significant changes to the law, his hands were tied, they told us.

They were wrong. The problem wasn’t that the law needed to be changed, the problem was that the law wasn’t being enforced. Worse, senior Biden administration officials were lying to Congress about it.

Then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the official charged with overseeing federal government actions at the southern border, was so determined to deny reality that in February 2024 he was impeached by the House of Representatives on two articles — “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of the public trust.”

In other words, he failed to enforce the laws Congress had passed and then lied about it.

The Senate — then controlled by Democrats — refused to hold a trial and instead dismissed the articles.

When Trump took office again in January 2025, he made significant changes to reverse the Biden policies and go back to enforcing the law.

With the support of majorities in both houses of Congress — which, as a result of the 2024 elections, were both controlled by Republicans — he ordered an end to Biden’s “catch and release” policy, so people apprehended illegally crossing the border were arrested, detained, and rapidly removed.

He shut down the CBP One appointment system.

He moved to end Biden-era categorical parole programs; no more special treatment for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.

He dramatically tightened access to asylum at the southern border. This may have been the most significant change, because it changed the expected consequences of crossing illegally — no more would apprehension be followed by release into the U.S. and the promise of an eventual asylum proceeding, which may or may not ever take place (a large number of “asylum-seekers” never bothered to appear for their immigration court dates, and among those who did, the overwhelming majority were denied asylum and were ordered deported instead); now apprehension would be followed by detention and rapid removal.

Trump ordered the resumption of the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Asylum-seekers would once again be required to wait in Mexico while their immigration proceedings were pending in the U.S.

Trump restarted construction on the border wall, declared a national emergency, and deployed U.S. Armed Forces to the region.

In other words, Trump was determined to enforce the laws Congress had passed. And he had the support of Republican majorities in both chambers.

We know the results of the policy shift — apprehensions at the southwest border fell from 49,801 in October 2024 to 3,362 in February 2025. And the number of immigrants apprehended crossing the border illegally and then released into the U.S. fell to zero.

We can use the situation at the southern border between 2021 and 2026 as a case study. First, there was a Democrat president with a Democrat-controlled Congress; together, they refused to enforce the laws on the books, and the result was a crisis of overwhelming magnitude. That was followed by a Republican president and a Republican-controlled Congress, determined together to enforce the laws on the books.

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The results are crystal clear and easy to see: Democrats’ refusal to enforce the law created a massive crisis, while Republicans’ insistence on enforcing the law solved the crisis.

Elections have consequences.

Jenny Beth Martin is Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.