On his first day in office for his second term, President Donald Trump signed ten executive orders and proclamations to overturn US immigration laws and regulations.
The Trump White House is clinging to its first-term policies and rhetoric as it struggles to remake America in a way that would deter anyone from those who want to cross the border and apply for asylum, to babies being born in February 2025 to parents who are here on temporary visas.
These orders, along with emerging legal theories that put the military in the position of assaulting asylum-seekers, create severe punishments to force obedience to the law and set things up for the possible eventual invocation of the Insurrection Act and Alien Enemies Act.
The impact of these orders is rather significant because they lay the groundwork for what is still to follow.
Virtually all of the policy changes are directives to federal departments or agencies; some were put into effect within the first 48 hours, and others took more time to deliberate over the course of weeks and months.
Trump’s policy on border security
At the start of his administration, President Trump issued an Executive Order to keep people from entering the US illegally through the southern border. The states have voluntarily sacrificed some sovereignty to the federal government in exchange for making the border impenetrable.
Texas and the other states requested this during the Biden Administration and were offered no security that they needed to prevent being overwhelmed by millions of illegal aliens. The President is authorized to exempt illegal aliens along the southern border under the United States Constitution, Article II, and the Immigration and Nationality Act.
President Trump, as an executive, instructed the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of State to act in a way that prevents illegal aliens from entering and being deported.
He also made it more difficult for an individual who is part of an “invasion” to live in the US by limiting entry to immigration policies like asylum.
President Trump promised in 2024 to “seal the border on Day 1” and maintained that illegal immigration hurts all Americans, hurts workers, costs taxpayers, threatens public safety, and overwhelms schools, hospitals, and local communities. Illegal immigration drains billions of dollars out of the country every year.
Trump’s border claims
On April 29, 2025, Donald Trump’s speech in Warren, Michigan, to celebrate his 100th day in office was practically a revival of the old-style campaign rally, and clearly a thrill for him.
As part of his April 29 remarks, Trump had also boasted that he signed a record number of executive orders, tried to reduce the size of the federal workforce, and deported illegal aliens in the US. He even showed a video of deported aliens arriving at a harsh El Salvador prison.
He used the rally to assert that, according to many, he had the “most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country.”
Trump made mention of his battle against illegal immigration, American jobs coming back to America, and battling what he called “the inflation nightmare.”
He spoke about his attempt to address illegal immigration, which spanned last year’s election. He mentioned: “For two months straight, we have hit record lows for illegal border crossings.”
This claim seemed to be backed by earlier monthly stats on illegal migrants at the US-Mexico border. In March, there were 7,181 encounters with migrants, and in February, there were 8,346. It is claimed that these are the lowest numbers since records started in 2000.
Comparatively, however, there were about 140,000 contacts per month last year whereas during President Biden’s time in office, there was a record number of crossings, followed by a falloff after that again later at the end of his tenure.
The Migration Policy Institute compared yearly monthly averages of rates dating back before the year 2000. It asserts that this is the basis upon which this year’s unauthorized crossing over the border was as low as since the late 1960s but by no means low.
Fact-checking Trump’s border claims
The number of unauthorized migrants crossing the US southern border seemed to have declined to its lowest level in at least 25 years during President Trump’s first few months in office, preliminary government data showed.
In February 2025, Border Patrol arrested about 8,450 migrants who crossed illegally between official ports of entry along the US-Mexico border.
On some days in a recent wave of illegal crossings during President Biden’s time in office, Border Patrol took in over 8,000 migrants in a single day.
February’s number could be adjusted when the government releases the official numbers, but it would be the lowest monthly arrest at least since 2000, the previous year with public monthly numbers. The final numbers are usually near the original numbers.
In the past 25 years, only in April 2017, when Border Patrol arrested 11,000 at the border, did the number of monthly arrests get close to the level of February.
Illegal immigration has fallen dramatically since Trump took office.
In January, there were 29,000 migrants apprehended at the border-by-border Patrol agents, down 38% from 47,000 in December. The decline between February and January was even steeper, with approximately a 70% drop.
Trump administration officials cite their stringent immigration policies as the cause of the dramatic reduction in illegal crossings.
Along the border with Mexico, the Trump administration allowed federal officials to quickly deport migrants without giving them a chance to make asylum claims on the grounds that the country was under “invasion.”
American law generally allows migrants in US territory to make asylum claims to delay or block their deportation. Trump officials have claimed that economic migrants and smugglers, who are not entitled to asylum, have abused the system.
Even as the Trump administration’s border policy was achieving rapid success, their efforts at handling immigration across America, where the President had made a promise of the biggest deportation campaign ever, have been running into one snag after another.
Top officials within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been recently reorganized as they are upset that the agency still hasn’t been making enough arrests and deportations.
Also, ICE facilities are full. They were recently at 117% capacity with more than 45,000 migrants inside, more than 20,000 of whom were stopped on the southern border, internal government reports stated.
Testing the truth of Trump’s border claims
Before 2000, information was provided annually. Dividing that annual federal information by 12 reveals an average for every month. Based on those figures, the monthly average arrests were below 6,100 between 1961 and 1968. This proves that Trump’s border claim is not totally accurate.
Regardless, illegal border crossings on the US southern border have been falling over the course of the last year, including during Biden’s presidency, after peaking late in 2023.
They started falling early in 2024 when Mexican officials stepped up efforts to block migrants from reaching the US border, and then fell further over the summer after Biden restricted access to the asylum system.
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