There are years that drift by in the political calendar, leaving little trace. And then there are years like 2025 that split history in two.
For four long, chaotic, demoralizing years, Americans endured an open-borders nightmare brought on by a government that neglected its most basic duty of protecting the nation. Under Joe Biden, the southern border became the staging ground for the largest wave of illegal migration ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
Cartels ran wild throughout the entire Southwest. Human traffickers operated with impunity. Foreign gangs took over urban neighborhoods. Children disappeared into the shadows. Fentanyl rained down on American neighborhoods like a chemical weapons attack.
All the while, the liberal ruling class told us this was “compassion.”
Then came January 20, 2025. President Donald J. Trump returned to the Oval Office, looked out over a country battered by Biden’s negligence, and did what Democrats said was impossible: he reasserted the sovereignty of the United States almost immediately.
The result has been the most successful border security turnaround in American history.
One of the most jaw-dropping statistics from 2025 is that more than 2.5 million illegal aliens have been removed in a single calendar year. Of that total, more than 600,000 have been physically deported by ICE, while nearly two million have self-deported. Every day under Trump, it gets more difficult for illegals to work, get free taxpayer-funded housing or healthcare, or get away with crimes – so millions are fleeing in droves.
For seven straight months, the United States has released zero illegal aliens into the interior. Under Biden, the federal government was effectively a co-conspirator with the cartels’ human smuggling operation, distributing untold thousands of foreign nationals all across the country at taxpayer expense. Under Trump, the conveyor belt is shut down permanently.
Illegal crossings have fallen to their lowest level since 1970, and America is on track to achieve something it has not seen in half a century: net negative migration. That means more people are leaving the country than arriving – a complete reversal of the Biden-era tidal wave. This is the ultimate proof that border enforcement works.
Illegal aliens quickly learned this year that so-called “sanctuary cities” are no longer safe havens under the Trump administration. In 2025, they felt the long arm of the law for the first time. From Los Angeles to Minneapolis, from Chicago to Boston, federal law enforcement removed tens of thousands of foreign rapists, murderers, kidnappers, and drug dealers from the streets – despite Democrat mayors fighting tooth and nail to protect them.
This year also exposed one of the darkest truths of the Biden administration: tens of thousands of migrant children lost, discarded, handed to strangers, or funneled into forced labor and sex trafficking. In 2025, the Trump administration rescued more than 62,000 of these children from the abyss Biden created.
Meanwhile, the flood of poison across the border has slowed to a trickle. Every single month this year, drug overdose deaths fell as Trump’s crackdown suffocated cartel supply lines. There is no mystery here. Just stop the drugs from coming in, and people will stop dying.
Trump’s border policies had a major impact on jobs as well. With the labor market no longer flooded by illegal aliens, 2.5 million native-born Americans gained jobs, while one million foreign-born workers lost employment. Few people understand how historic this is. To put it into context, virtually all of the net jobs gained under Bush and Obama went to foreigners, not native-born Americans.
Even our universities, long accustomed to shoving aside American students to make room for foreign applicants who pay higher tuition rates, were forced to change. Foreign student admissions fell 17 percent. For the first time in decades, institutions of higher learning had no choice but to accept American students first.
How did President Trump achieve so much on immigration in just one year?
First, he simply reinstated all of the executive actions he had taken during his first term, which Biden had canceled. Asylum applicants were once again forced to remain in Mexico while their cases were decided. Wall construction resumed. Catch-and-release ended. Biden’s infamous CBP One app, which was a digital red carpet for illegal aliens, was turned into Trump’s CBP Home app, which provides one-touch instructions for self-deportation and expedited departure processing.
Trump also designated the world’s most dangerous cartels – Sinaloa, Jalisco New Generation, MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and others – as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Now the full might of the U.S. military is bearing down on their smuggling operations and blowing their boats to smithereens in the Caribbean.
Finally, Trump secured the funding to make sure these changes are long-lasting – a big contrast to his first term, when he had to cajole and browbeat Congress for every penny needed just to build part of the wall. The One Big Beautiful Bill, passed earlier this year, delivers the largest border security investment ever enacted, providing a massive increase in manpower, surveillance, detention capacity, and enforcement muscle to guarantee that this year’s victories are more difficult for Democrats to reverse in the future.
But no victory is ever permanent. Everything Trump achieved in 2025 can be undone if Democrats regain power and if the American people fail to be vigilant. The border can be reopened. The drugs and crime can return. The trafficked children could vanish once again. And the political class will resume lecturing us all about “compassion.”
If there’s one thing that 2025 taught us, it’s that the border crisis was not a natural disaster or an act of God. It was a deliberate, ideological attack on our nation waged by people who truly hate America.
Trump’s actions on immigration and border security have saved our country – but only for now.
The open-borders zealots didn’t go away. They just went into hiding. And rest assured, they are patiently awaiting their chance to get their hands back on the levers of power.
Mike Marlowe is the pen name of a writer based in Texas.
