The Department of Homeland Security announced 50,925 arrests of illegal aliens for August. The roundup amounts to the largest number of illegal aliens arrested in a single month in U.S. history. Those who headed for the exits included murderers, child molesters, and Milo Yiannopoulos.
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Has a presidential administration ever fulfilled a campaign promise as thoroughly as the second Trump administration does on illegal immigration? (RELATED: Team Trump Is Touting Its Wins. As It Should.)
“The invasion at our southern border — we will stop it and we will stop it quickly,” Trump said at his acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. “You heard Tom Homan yesterday. Tom Homan, put him in charge and just sit back and watch.”
The Biden administration logged more “got-aways” in April 2023 than the Trump administration noted in all of 2025. The U.S. foreign-born population shrank for the first time in about six decades in 2025, and the net migration fell to its lowest levels since the Great Depression. Data released Thursday shows this trend continuing. Illegal immigrants number 2.3 million fewer than when Trump took office, and legal immigrants number 600,000 fewer. (RELATED: In Defense of Mass Deportations)
Success engenders not gratitude but complacency. Failure galvanizes supporters.
Just a few years ago, the pictures on the southern border showed an endless caravan of Central Americans walking into our country without any attempt to stop them. They do not bother to come anymore.
Given that Americans told Gallup that immigration amounted to their number one concern as late as 2024, one might think that voters might credit the Trump administration for more or less solving this vexatious problem. Instead, the opposite phenomenon occurs. Donald Trump, according to NateSilver.com, endures a net approval rating of -19. In recent surveys, his approval rating ranges from 32 percent in a UMass-Amherst poll to 44 percent in both Rasmussen Reports and Harvard-Harris polls.
Remarkably, in the area where his administration counts remarkable triumphs, the president remains underwater. In an average of the various polls, 41 percent approve of his handling of immigration, and 54 percent disapprove.
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One of the terrible ironies of politics sees rewards for programs that fail and punishment for ones that succeed.
Every year around this time, colleges and universities receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies, mostly indirectly, with students acting as the pass-through. Politicians justify, and their constituents demand, the aid because of ever-higher higher education costs. The more schools raise their prices, the greater the clamor for more aid. The smart people who run the universities understand how this works, so they charge — just like the person selling you a car or a house — as much as they can. The federal government allows them to charge even more as it rationalizes its aid as a way to keep education “affordable.” (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Rip-off U.)
On the flip side, Trump appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court playing a crucial role in striking down Roe v. Wade resulted in not a thankful right but an energized left. The political consequence of the sharp drop in murders and other serious crimes coincided with the elections of such soft-on-crime politicians as Zohran Mamdani in New York and Katie Wilson in Seattle. The related gargantuan decrease in illegal immigration similarly did little to bolster the popularity of the politician primarily responsible for it.
Success engenders not gratitude but complacency. Failure galvanizes supporters. Politics, unlike the business world from which Donald Trump hailed, overflows with perverse, reverse incentives.
Donald Trump hurt his popularity through the Iran debacle and missteps regarding Canada. But to a great degree, victories on immigration make him a victim of his own success.
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