President-elect Trump’s plans to curb illegal immigration will ease the burden on Border Patrol agents and local police at the southern U.S. border. Chairman of the National Border Patrol Council Brandon Judd told Fox News Digital.
Trump won 14 of 18 counties within 20 miles of the U.S. border, challenging Democrats’ traditional hold there. Among Latino voters in those counties, 55% voted for the president-elect — a 55% increase from his 2020 numbers.
Trump has promised that targeting non-citizens who have been convicted of crimes and the 1.4 million immigrants who remain in the US despite having received a formal order of removal from a judge.
Among his promised policy changes, Trump has declared that he will declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to assist with deportations; to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, despite the fact that he was This is blocked by the Supreme Court in his first term; and ending birthright rights for children born on U.S. soil.
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Immigrants line up at a remote U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Lukeville, Arizona, on Dec. 7, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Trump has also said he will restore his “Remain in Mexico” policywhich requires migrants entering from the southern border seeking asylum to remain in Mexican territory until their U.S. court hearing. President Biden’s administration ended the policy in August 2022.
Judd, a former Border Patrol agent, said reinstating the policy would be a boon for police in border cities.
“Once you have a decrease in illegal border crossings, and local law enforcement in border cities, they are now free to actually do their jobs,” Judd said. “While so much of their time right now is taken up dealing with illegal immigration, dealing with drugs… you give local and state officials the freedom to actually do their jobs and protect their citizens.”
Curbing border crossings would also hamper cartels, which make an estimated $13 billion a year from smuggling people into the US. New York Times report.
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The border has seen record numbers of illegal crossings in recent years. (John Moore/Getty Images)
There are fears that cartels may be bringing in additional migrants in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration, with Arizona’s Cochise County seeing an increase in smuggling activity – up to 10 a day each day. News Nation.
“They’re going to push hard now. The cartels know they have to do that. We’ve got a president coming who has made it very clear, and based on his record, he’s going to secure this border,” said Cochise County Sheriff Mark. Dannels told the outlet. “He’ll declare it an emergency.”
After working as a Border Patrol agent between 1997 and 2003, Judd served as president of the NBPC, the union for Border Patrol agents, from 2012 until May this year. He told Fox News Digital that while each president was different during his time in office, the Trump administration’s border policies were the “most effective.”
“If you look at the Bush administration, we had huge numbers of people, but it was the same people over and over again,” Judd recalls. “Under the Obama administration, we were dealing with fewer people, but we were releasing people into the United States at a level that was unprecedented and that caused what we saw: the huge spike during President Obama’s second term.”
“What I can say is that the Trump administration was by far the most impressive administration, and the numbers bear that out. Also, the (amount of) drugs coming into the United States… was a lot less,” he continued. “We saw that on the street. We saw that in our cities, in our communities. But (for) local law enforcement, (there are) far fewer drugs on the streets under the Trump administration than under the previous administration. “
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A U.S. Border Patrol agent checks the identification of immigrants as they await processing after crossing the border from Mexico in Yuma, Arizona, on December 30, 2022. (Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
According to the House Committee on Homeland Security, 8 million migrants have been encountered nationwide during Biden’s presidency, including 6.7 million at the southern border.
The foreign-born population reached a record high in March, largely due to the flow of illegal migrants into the U.S. in recent years. The population of foreign-born people living in the U.S. reached a new record of 51.6 million in March, increasing the percentage of foreign-born residents to 15.6% of the total U.S. population. according to one study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
“If you go back to the Clinton administration, (the border crossings were) centered in San Diego and El Paso. Then the Bush administration, San Diego and El Paso became non-factors. It was all the Tucson sector. And after the Obama administration, we saw Texasyou know, the Rio Grande Valley. So there’s always an ebb and flow,” Judd said. “The difference with this administration is that under Obama, under Bush, under Clinton, we had two to three hotspots (along the border), while the Biden administration… basically across the entire southwest border.”
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” Judd continued. “And we went from two to three hotspots to seven to nine hotspots. And it was just undeniable because it was across (the entire) border. We were flooded everywhere.”
Local law enforcement agencies across the country also plan to work with ICE officials using the 287(g) program. The program, which was added to the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1996 under then-President Clinton, authorized ICE to delegate to state and local law enforcement officers and give them the ability to act as immigration officers. Trump has said he plans to lean on local law enforcement in his effort to carry out the “largest deportation” in American history.
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Migrants board a state-sponsored bus to New York outside the nonprofit Mission: Border Hope in Eagle Pass, Texas, on March 11, 2024. (Christopher Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Harford County, Maryland, Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler told NBC News that “this doesn’t stop people on the street from saying ‘show me your papers.'”
“When they are brought in, they are arrested for something they committed, an act they committed against the citizens of our community. And at that point, they are held accountable for the action they took in the country. illegal,” Gahler said.
But it is not yet clear whether local police forces will receive additional funding to help immigration authorities.
