Illegal immigration activists are more motivated than ever to return to their plan of turning the United States into the world’s migrant shelter. 

Donald Trump has put the door to our national home back on its hinges, but there remain many uninvited guests within our walls, and some subversives in our ranks who hope to tear the door down again and resume America’s role as the clearinghouse for the Third World. 

After Trump’s first election in 2016 and his return to the White House in 2024, there has been a perception by many conservatives that the immigration problem has been largely checked off the national to-do list. This belief is not entirely unfounded, as data points to a significant reversal of the southern border free-for-all that defined the Biden years. It would be a historic oversight, however, to minimize the scale of the lawlessness during the time between the Trump presidencies, and how easily it could return.  

In fiscal year 2025, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded about 237,500 southwest-border encounters—the lowest since 1970. That collapse did not happen because poverty in Latin America vanished or because cartels dissolved. It happened because new leadership changed the policy mix: consequences at the border, fewer interior releases, and a clear signal that the United States was no longer a processing center with a waiting room the size of a continent. If that signal is reversed, the status quo ante will resume with more dire ramifications.