President Donald Trump has so far succeeded on his campaign trail promise to curb illegal immigration.
Border apprehensions and inadmissible immigrants at ports of entry, the data point used to determine border crossings, have more than halved along the southwest border between February and the end of August compared to last year under President Obama.
Figures released by Customs and Border Protection Monday show that during these seven months in 2017, 153,113 illegal immigrants have been apprehended or turned away at ports of entry by CBP. This is a 54 percent reduction from the 333,019 illegal immigrants apprehended or rejected for entry along the southwest border between February and August 2016.
President Trump campaigned on a hard-line immigration policy and shortly after being elected, Trump signed an executive order which essentially put all illegal immigrants up for deportation.
“One thing President Trump did with the executive orders is he took the handcuffs off of officers. Now they can enforce the laws enacted by Congress,” Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan told TheDC in a July interview. “The executive orders could’ve been written in one sentence: ‘You are now allowed to enforce the law as written.’ There’s been a lot of people off the table. Now there’s no population off the table anymore.”
This has helped reduce what immigration officials call the “pull factor” of lax immigration enforcement.