Last year, Joe Biden tried to blame the border crisis on Republicans and their refusal to pass a bipartisan border bill. He needed the legislation to “give me, as President, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it can get back under control,” Biden declared. “If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.”

Well, Congress didn’t pass the bill. And yet in his first month in office, Donald Trump has somehow managed to shut down the border without it.

Since Trump’s inauguration, the southern border has suddenly become quiet. On Feb. 16, just 229 people were encountered by Border Patrol agents trying to illegally cross the southern border.

“I’ve been doing this job since 1984 as a Border Patrol agent,” White House border czar Tom Homan declared on X. “I’ve NEVER seen numbers that low.” A week later, they got even lower. On Feb. 22, encounters fell to just 200, the lowest single day total in over 15 years, a Department of Homeland Security official tells me. Contrast that with the all-time high of 11,000 encounters on Dec. 18, 2023, under Biden. That’s a 98% drop.

Indeed, DHS officials tell me that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has encountered only about 15,700 migrants on the southwest border in the entire 30 days since Trump’s inauguration. This represents the lowest 30-day number of southwest border encounters since April 2017. Southwest border encounters are down 94% from their high point of 263,900 in December 2023 under Biden.

Trump has achieved all this without any new authorities from Congress.

Indeed, the turnaround started even before Trump took office. In December, just after Trump’s election, as word got out that a new sheriff would soon be in town, CBP encounters were 81 percent lower than a year prior.

Just the promise of a crackdown and mass deportations was enough to deter people from coming to the border. And, since Trump’s inauguration, encounters have fallen an additional 67%.

How did he do it? By exercising the broad authority he already has under current law, upheld by the Supreme Court. Immediately on taking office, Trump declared a national border emergency, which allowed him to deploy 5,000 active-duty troops to help CPB secure the southern border.

He issued an executive order ending Biden’s policy of “catch and release” at the border, ensuring detained illegal migrants won’t be released back into U.S. communities. He reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” policy he established during his first term, which Biden ended, requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims are adjudicated.

To keep the numbers on the decline, he used the threat of tariffs to convince Mexico to deploy 10,000 members of its National Guard to the border. And on Wednesday, he turned off the magnet encouraging people to cross the border illegally, issuing an executive order terminating all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal migrants. He designated eight gangs and drug cartels — including Tren de Aragua in Venezuela, MS-13 in El Salvador and six organizations based in Mexico — as foreign terrorist organizations. And he began his promised mass deportation of illegal migrants — focusing initially on those with criminal records. ICE arrests in the interior of the country are up 137%. According to DHS, from Jan. 21 to Feb. 18, a total of 42,048 illegal migrants were removed from the United States. Indeed, a DHS spokesman told me that today “more aliens are being expelled from this country than coming in.”

Trump’s actions have broad popular support. A New York Times poll finds that 87% of Americans support deporting illegal migrants with criminal records; 63% support deporting every migrant who entered the country illegally during the past four years; and a 55% majority supports deporting all migrants who are here illegally — period.

Biden could have taken any or all of these steps. They required no legislation.

He had all the authority he needed to secure the border. He chose not to do so.

And that choice had an unintended effect: It has dramatically reduced support for legal immigration. In May 2020, after four years of Trump’s successful leadership in securing the border, Gallup reports just 28% wanted to see immigration levels reduced. But in July 2024, 55% said that they wanted immigration levels reduced.

Trump is a strong supporter of legal immigration. During the 2024 campaign, he promised that, if elected, he would offer permanent residency to every foreign student who graduates from a U.S. university. But to do that, we first need to secure the border, remove those who cut the line ahead of legal migrants and stop rewarding those who violate our immigration laws.

Doing so is not that hard. Apparently, all it took to control our southern border was presidential will and a new border czar.

Unlike Biden, Trump is choosing to enforce the law — and that is the first step to restoring America’s place as a nation of legal immigrants.