Post-Biden Border Towns Feel Like “Another World,” Says Heritage Foundation President

“This time, the scene was peaceful and orderly,” said Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts after returning to the border town of McAllen, TX. 

Recently, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts wrote a piece contrasting two visits he made—roughly five years apart—to the border town of McAllen, Texas. 

During his first trip, Roberts saw “a caravan of more migrants than [he] could count… crossing the McAllen-Hidalgo footbridge into the U.S.,” and the frustration of Border Patrol agents who were knew the full extent of the cartels’ abuse but were not empowered to sufficiently contend with it.

“All had been exploited, some abused, and most coached on what to say to accept President Joe Biden’s open invitation to invade,” wrote Roberts regarding the migrants. 

But what of his recent trip? “It might as well have been another world.”

“This time, the scene was peaceful and orderly,” said Roberts. “The community was relaxed. Border Patrol agents were proud to be back doing what they swore to do: protect our homeland.”

Agents in McAllen are back in the field instead of tied up processing arrivals. Crossings across the southern border are down. Fentanyl trafficking has been cut by more than half. The Department of Homeland Security reports that “nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations.”

It would seem illegal entry carries consequences again, and the cartels have taken notice.

Roberts credits that shift directly to President Donald Trump, Border Czar Tom Homan, and a return to a “border-and-order” agenda. It’s an apt way to describe the current administration’s clean break from the progressive approach of President Joe Biden, which the House Committee on Homeland Security described at the time as “disastrous” and “out of control.” Indeed, it was a defining issue for voters in the 2024 election which led to the defeat of then–Vice President (and unofficial Border Czar) Kamala Harris.

“With Kamala in charge of the border, the United States has encountered an unfathomable 515,000 unaccompanied minors,” Roberts and the Heritage Foundation noted back in August 2024. 

That’s on top of 10.3 million encounters between February 2021 and September 2024, plus around 2 million known gotaways—a term which describes individuals who were detected crossing the border illegally by surveillance technology but were not apprehended by border patrol agents.

If you’re not willing to take conservatives’ word for it, consider that even Democrats are giving Trump his proverbial flowers. That includes U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), who challenged Trump himself for the Presidency in both 2016 and 2020 and has for decades been among Republicans’ most prominent opponents. Some months back, Sanders praised the administration’s progress on border security during his appearance on the Tim Dillon Show.

“Trump did a better job,” said Sanders. “I don’t like Trump, you know, but we should have a secure border… [and] Biden didn’t do it.”

“It’s a good thing that the border is secure,” said U.S. Senator Rueben Gallego (D-AZ). “It’s a value to this country that we have the lowest amount of illegal immigrants crossing the border right now.” 

Wherever one stands, the proof is in the data. By every quantifiable metric, the U.S.-Mexico border is quieter, safer, and less impacted by illegal border crossings—a stark contrast from where the nation stood even two years ago. Thanks to comprehensive reporting by U.S. Border Patrol & Customs, we can easily compare the entirety of Trump’s first term with Biden’s with where we stand today. For both encounters and arrests, the pattern that emerges is a reverse “U” shape. 

Across Trump’s entire first term, Border Patrol agents made 21,936 criminal alien arrests. Across Biden’s, that number swelled to an astonishing 55,106 with 17,048 of those arrests happening just in the 2024 fiscal year. 

The following year, under a new administration, that number more than halved to 8,814—a figure markedly lower than the best individual year under Biden. 

Equally telling is the government’s data on Southwest Land Border Encounters, which covers apprehensions, inadmissibles and Title 42 expulsions. In just the month of December 2023, there were roughly 302,000 encounters—an astonishing figure. Between the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, the Biden administration never saw this number fall below 100,000 with one exception: the month prior to Donald Trump taking office. A last hurrah, if you will, for illegal border crossings. 

Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2026 was clearly the driving factor in seeing encounters plummet to 61,445 that month. Arguably, the only reason the number wasn’t lower was because Trump hadn’t assumed office until 11 days from the end of the month. 

For his first full month in office (February 2025), border agents saw only 11,710. This is around where the number has hovered for the entirety of Trump’s presidency thus far. 

It even fell to 9,300 in June 2025—marking the first time since 2020 this was a four figure number. Under Biden, it was always six figures. 

Under Trump, the “worst” month was 12,450 encounters (Biden’s worst had 24 times as many) while his best saw only 7,822. That gives the Trump administration a variation of 4,628. Compare that to Biden’s 200,000+.

All of this coincides—as Roberts notes—with the largest one-year drop in murders across the United States: “In Washington, D.C.—where Trump deployed the National Guard to get the Biden crime wave under control—the murder rate fell to its lowest level since 1900!”

Progressives have long attested (against statistical data proving otherwise) that there is not a correlation between the murder rate and surges in illegal immigration. Is it a mere coincidence, then, that both happened to plummet in Trump’s first year after his administration prioritized tightening border security, deputizing numerous bureaus and agencies to assist with immigration operations, conducting mass deportations for illegal immigrants, extraditing known drug cartel members, reopening the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, declaring a national emergency, and ending “catch and release?”

An impressive coincidence if so.

“Trump’s tenacity is the only reason the border is secure today,” said Roberts. “He ignored the hysterical criticism of the media and the Left and made the hard decisions the American people elected him to make. America is safer for it.”