Biden said only Congress could fix the border; Trump proved him wrong

By Brian Lonergan
Federation for American Immigration Reform
The Center Square

Numbers can tell a story that no amount of partisan spin can erase.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, southwest border apprehensions in fiscal year 2026 fell 95% from the Biden-era average, with fewer than 99,000 between ports of entry. Nationwide encounters totaled just 379,243 – the lowest in agency history and 88% below the 2.7 million annual average of the Biden years.

Fiscal 2026 also marked the first year with zero Border Patrol releases into the interior, a streak that reached 17 consecutive months by September. Drug seizures hit nearly 1 million pounds. These are not projections or aspirations. They are results.

Compare that to the record. In 2023, under President Biden, CBP recorded 3.2 million apprehensions – the highest on record – while encounters routinely exceeded 2 million a year. More than 2 million known gotaways entered without even being processed.

Catch-and-release was official policy, not the exception.

Cartels treated the border as a logistics corridor for fentanyl, human trafficking, and terrorism watchlist encounters. Border deaths climbed as migrants were funneled into remote, deadly routes. Interior cities absorbed the costs in overwhelmed shelters, strained schools, and elevated crime rates tied to released aliens. The contrast is not subtle. One administration treated the border as an open invitation. The other treated it as a sovereign boundary.

Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris spent years insisting this outcome was impossible without a sweeping new act of Congress. Biden repeatedly said he had “done all I can do” and needed “the power I’ve asked from the very day I got into office.” He claimed a bipartisan Senate bill would grant him “new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed,” and that legislation was “the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now that’s broken, fixed.” 

Harris pushed Biden’s narrative, blaming Republicans and then-candidate Trump for killing a bill that would have added agents and funding while accusing Trump of preferring to “run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” The message was consistent: the executive branch was powerless; only Congress could restore order.

Fiscal 2026 demolishes that claim. President Trump did not wait for a comprehensive immigration overhaul. He did not invent new statutory authority. He restored and expanded enforcement of laws already on the books to the fullest extent as authorized by Congress – expedited removal, detention, and asylum restrictions – while ending the mass parole and release policies that had incentivized crossings. The deterrent effect was immediate and sustained.

When the message is clear that illegal entry results in apprehension, detention, and removal rather than a court date years later and work authorization, the migrant flow evaporates. New barrier construction resumed, but the decisive factor was policy posture, not concrete and steel alone.

This was not a near-impossible task requiring the invention of fresh statutes. Existing immigration law already authorizes the president to control entries, detain those who arrive illegally, and remove them. Prior administrations of both parties used those tools when they chose to. The Biden administration chose not to. It dismantled Remain in Mexico, ended Title 42 without a replacement plan, expanded parole programs, and directed agents toward processing rather than prevention.

The result was the largest illegal migration surge in modern history. The subsequent reversal under Trump demonstrates that the problem was not a lack of legislation. It was political will, the willingness of the chief executive to treat border security as a core duty of the office rather than a bargaining chip or a virtue-signaling gesture toward the rest of the world.

America does not owe the world an open invitation to enter at will, claim asylum on economic grounds, or remain indefinitely while courts grind through backlogs measured in years. Sovereignty is not a bygone concept. It is the prerequisite for any ordered liberty and any functional social contract. 

Nations that cannot or will not control who enters cease to function as nations. The costs of the alternative – fentanyl deaths measured in tens of thousands, unvetted noncitizens released into communities, cartel profits, and eroded public trust – are not abstract. They fall on American citizens first.

The historic lows of fiscal 2026 do not mean the work is finished. Gotaways still occur, cartels adapt, and interior enforcement remains contested. Yet the data establish a clear lesson: sustained executive enforcement of existing law produces rapid, measurable control. Claims that only new congressional legislation could achieve this were either mistaken or, more plausibly, an effort to lock in policies that maximized flows of illegal aliens while shifting blame.

The border is secure not because America discovered new legal magic, but because one administration decided that safeguarding the nation ranked above the idea that entry is a global entitlement. That decision, executed through ordinary presidential authority, is what the numbers now record.

Brian Lonergan is director of strategic communications and content at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, D.C., and co-host of the “No Border, No Country” podcast.