Among the pile of executive orders the president signed on Inauguration Day were several aimed at tackling the border crisis and shutting down various avenues of immigration. He declared the southern border a national emergency, designated cartels as foreign terrorists, and re-established restrictive orders from his first term that former President Joe Biden had reversed or ended. And that’s not even the half of it. Trump has spun a whirlwind through the immigration system. Some orders are already being challenged, and additional resistance is certainly underway. Will it faze Trump or stop him from fulfilling his promise to overhaul immigration? Unlikely. This is just the beginning. The process will be long and have many critics, but will it make the nation better?
Sealing Our Borders
One of the first steps to closing off the southern border was the president declaring a national emergency, allowing him to redirect personnel and funds to help build a wall and thwart illegal crossings. Yes, the wall is back. It’s one of many directives in an executive order called “Securing Our Borders.” With this action, Trump also ended a practice known as “catch and release” and terminated the CBP One app, a mobile application used to facilitate entry into the US, though some evidence suggests the program was corrupt. “Congress has revealed that nearly 96% of aliens who used the app were waved in without vetting,” said Andrew Arthur in The New York Post. “[A]nd in August, the DHS Inspector General found that 1,700 different app users claimed just seven US addresses as intended destinations.”
Next, Trump nixed a Biden-era program that was used to parole migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Its website has already gone dark. Nearly 530,000 people had received parole and entered the US from those four nations, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Migrants were allowed a two-year stay with permission to work if they qualified for the program and had an American pledge to support them financially. Once here, they could apply for asylum and other benefits. The program, however, was an “unmitigated disaster,” said the House Judiciary Committee in a report last November.
The president also reinstated the Remain in Mexico policy from his first term, forcing migrants to stay in Mexico while waiting for asylum hearings instead of having the luxury of living and working in the US for years before seeing a judge. For this policy to work, though, Trump needs Mexico’s permission. How it will play out is still unknown.
Ending the ‘Invasion’
In an executive order titled “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion,” President Trump said illegal crossings had become bad enough to declare the situation an invasion. “I have determined that the current state of the southern border reveals that the Federal Government has failed in fulfilling this obligation to the States and hereby declare that an invasion is ongoing at the southern border.”
He then refers to the Constitution, Article IV, Section 4, which states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
Being inundated by migrants using illegal and legal channels to cross makes it difficult to screen them for health problems and criminal histories. “This ongoing influx of illegal aliens across the southern border of the United States has placed significant costs and constraints upon the States,” explains the order. The country has spent billions of dollars in medical care and other human services while losing a considerable amount on increasing law enforcement costs “associated with the presence of these illegal aliens within their boundaries.”
For now, all “physical entry of aliens involved in an invasion into the United States across the southern border” has been suspended until the president determines that the invasion has ended.
Labeling Cartels as ‘Terrorists’
“The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border,” says an executive order designating cartels and other groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). The designation would allow the government to prosecute people who help cartels and expand the authority of law enforcement over criminal groups, an action that could prove problematic for some Mexican businesses, many of which pay extortion fees to cartels.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico studied 218 companies in 2024 and discovered 45% had “received demands for protection payments and 12% said that organized crime had ‘taken partial control of the sales, distribution and/or pricing of their goods,’” explained Reuters.
Labeling cartels as FTOs, though it could strain relations with Mexico, might give the Trump administration leverage over the country’s political class. “A large number of people in positions of power in Mexico – corrupt governors and mayors, members of the security forces, bankers – are going to be prosecutable or at least untouchable (to work with) for the U.S. government,” said Adam Isacson, director of Defense Oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, in a report by Reuters.
This is not a new idea. Trump considered doing it during his first term. Other US presidents have also discussed the possibility of labeling cartels as FTOs, including Barack Obama. With tens of thousands of Americans dying from Fentanyl smuggled across the southern border, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to wield every realistic tool imaginable to crack down on the people and the country primarily responsible for the carnage.
Moving Forward
Barely a week has passed since Trump’s inauguration, and already his actions have created an impact at the southern border as he barrels forward and upturns the immigration system. The Department of Defense sent 1,500 active-duty troops to help secure the border and build barriers. The Pentagon plans to send military aircraft to transport detained immigrants. The refugee resettlement program has been indefinitely paused, even for people who had already been approved. ICE is already rounding up illegal aliens with criminal histories in major cities. Illegal crossings have plummeted. This is more than an overhaul. This is a screeching halt to a broken system.
There will be challenges and lawsuits, for sure, because a relentless faction of progressives still seem to have their priorities skewed. But the president is prepared. Unlike during his first term, now he has had time to plan. He knows his way around and is surrounded by people who share his vision and realize a nation needs borders. Because without them, we won’t have a nation.
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