The Department of Homeland Security released its numbers on Tuesday night, timed to the State of the Union. And the numbers are the kind of thing that explains why Democrats just shut down DHS funding rather than let the agency continue operating at full capacity.
Nearly 3 million illegal immigrants have left the United States since Trump took office. Two-point-two million self-deportations — people who saw the enforcement environment change and decided to leave on their own. More than 713,000 formal deportations. In thirteen months.
Total border apprehensions under the entire Trump administration are now lower than a single month under Biden. Not a single year. A single month. The busiest month of the Biden border crisis saw more illegal crossings than the entire first year-plus of Trump’s second term.
Secretary Kristi Noem’s summary: “Countless lives have been saved, communities have been strengthened, and the American people have been put first again.”
The numbers back her up. And Democrats know it — which is why they’re trying to defund the department producing them.
The Enforcement Record
The headline number is 3 million departures. But the enforcement details beneath that number tell a story that’s even more significant.
ICE arrested and removed more than 1,500 known or suspected terrorists over the past year. Fifteen hundred people on terrorism watchlists who were inside the United States, identified by ICE, and removed. That’s not a policy debate. That’s a national security operation that prevented potential attacks on American soil.
Nearly 8,000 gang-related arrests, including members of Tren de Aragua — the Venezuelan prison gang that has been expanding across American cities — and MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that has terrorized communities from Long Island to Los Angeles for decades.
DHS launched a “Worst of the Worst” web page tracking criminal illegal immigrants arrested during federal enforcement operations. Public accountability. Names, charges, outcomes. The kind of transparency that makes it very difficult for critics to argue that enforcement is targeting innocent families when the department is publishing the criminal records of the people it’s removing.
The Children They Found
This is the number that should haunt every person who supported the Biden administration’s border policy. DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services have located 145,000 unaccompanied children who were lost under the Biden administration.
Lost. Not misplaced temporarily. Not briefly unaccounted for during a bureaucratic transition. Lost. Children who crossed the border alone — or were sent by traffickers — and were released into the interior of the United States with no meaningful tracking, no follow-up, and no assurance of their safety.
“Too many of these children were exploited and abused before, during, and after being trafficked over our borders,” DHS said.
One hundred and forty-five thousand children. Found. After being lost by an administration that claimed to care about children at the border more than anything else. An administration that lectured the country about family separation while losing track of 145,000 minors — children who ended up in labor exploitation, sex trafficking, and abuse because the government that was supposed to protect them couldn’t be bothered to keep track of where they went.
Trump’s Operation Metro Surge alone located 3,000 missing migrant children in Minneapolis. Three thousand children in one city. Found by an administration that its critics call heartless, after being lost by an administration that called itself compassionate.
The Drug Seizures
Customs and Border Protection seized 617,648 pounds of illicit drugs nationwide over the past year — an 8% increase over the previous year. The Coast Guard separately seized roughly 550,000 pounds of narcotics worth more than $3.9 billion and prevented more than 206 million lethal doses from reaching American communities.
Two hundred and six million lethal doses. That’s not a statistic. That’s a body count that didn’t happen. Every one of those doses — fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine — was headed for an American community. A neighborhood. A school. A household where someone’s child might have encountered it.
The enforcement isn’t just stopping people from crossing the border. It’s stopping the drugs that have killed more Americans than every war since Vietnam combined.
The $13.2 Billion in Savings
DHS estimates that the administration’s immigration enforcement has saved taxpayers more than $13.2 billion. That’s the cost of illegal immigration that isn’t being incurred — emergency room visits, public school enrollment, welfare benefits, criminal justice costs, housing assistance — for the nearly 3 million people who are no longer in the country.
Thirteen billion dollars. In one year. From one policy area. While Democrats argue that enforcement is too expensive and too cruel, the math says the opposite — that non-enforcement was costing the American taxpayer billions every year in services provided to people who weren’t legally entitled to them.
The Shutdown
And here’s where the Democratic response becomes impossible to defend. On the same night these numbers were released, Senate Democrats blocked Republican attempts to fund DHS. They shut down the department. The agency responsible for border security, immigration enforcement, counterterrorism, airport screening, disaster response, and cybersecurity — defunded by the party that claims to care about public safety.
Trump called them out from the podium: “As we speak, Democrats in this chamber have cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security. They have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers.”
The timing is not coincidental. Democrats shut down DHS funding the same week the department released numbers showing record-low border crossings, 3 million departures, 1,500 terrorists removed, 8,000 gang members arrested, 145,000 lost children found, and $13.2 billion in taxpayer savings.
They couldn’t let those numbers stand unchallenged. They couldn’t fund an agency that’s producing results this visible. So they defunded it — not because DHS is failing, but because DHS is succeeding. And DHS success is Democratic failure.
Every DHS employee working without a paycheck right now — every Border Patrol agent, every ICE officer, every TSA screener, every Coast Guard member — is going unpaid because Senate Democrats decided that stopping Trump’s border success was more important than paying the people who protect the country.
The numbers are on the wall. Three million gone. Fifteen hundred terrorists removed. Eight thousand gang members arrested. One hundred forty-five thousand lost children found. Thirteen billion dollars saved. And a Democratic Party so desperate to change the subject that it shut down the department producing the results.
That’s the State of the Union in one sentence: the border has never been more secure, and the party that opened it wants to defund the people who closed it.
