The Border Crisis Did Not End on Election Day: Washington Must Finish the Job

The Numbers Still Demand Action

Border encounters remain far above historical norms even after the policy reversals of 2025. Customs and Border Protection data from fiscal year 2025 still showed monthly apprehensions in the hundreds of thousands across the southwest border, with fiscal year 2026 tracking toward another million-plus year if current trends hold through September 30. Those figures do not represent lawful commerce or orderly migration. They represent a system that has not yet recovered from four years of deliberate neglect.

The American public was told that a change in administration would reset the border overnight. That was never realistic. Border infrastructure cannot be rebuilt with executive orders alone. It requires detention capacity, asylum officers, immigration judges, border wall segments, and coherent parole rules that do not invite mass release. Each of those elements depends on Congress funding the Department of Homeland Security at levels that match the task.

House appropriators are currently debating a homeland security bill that would add roughly 10,000 detention beds and restore construction on the Rio Grande Valley barrier sector. Those are welcome steps. They are also late. The previous administration reduced interior enforcement, narrowed the scope of expedited removal, and expanded parole programs beyond anything Congress authorized. Reversing that damage will take more than one fiscal cycle.

The public understands this. Polling from Pew Research Center and Gallup consistently ranks immigration among the top concerns for voters, and has done so since 2023. Americans do not oppose legal immigration. They oppose chaos. They oppose cartel control of human smuggling routes, unaccompanied minors delivered to sponsors without follow-up, and fentanyl crossing in record quantities. In fiscal year 2024, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized more than 21,000 pounds of fentanyl at the border, enough lethal doses to kill every American several times over. That poison travels on the same routes used by unauthorized migrants.

Democrats in Congress complain that enforcement is cruel. That complaint ignores the cruelty inflicted on border communities, on migrant children handed to unrelated sponsors, and on American families mourning fentanyl deaths. A nation that cannot control its border cannot protect the vulnerable inside it. That is the lesson of the past five years, and it is a lesson Congress should carry into the next spending fight.

Loopholes Keep the Pipeline Open

Current asylum standards still allow applicants to trigger years of court proceedings with a single credible-fear claim, and immigration judges face backlogs that stretch beyond 2028 in some circuits. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University reported more than 3.5 million pending immigration cases earlier this year, a figure that swamps every enforcement tool currently in the field. That backlog functions as an open door. It tells foreign nationals that arrival today means release tomorrow, and release tomorrow means years of residence before any final decision.

The credible-fear screening process was meant to be a narrow filter for genuine persecution. It has become a default setting for nearly everyone who crosses between ports of entry. Immigration judges and asylum officers are pressured to move applicants through initial screenings quickly, which means weak claims are advanced rather than rejected. Once inside the country, applicants receive work authorization, access to public benefits in many states, and the ability to disappear before a final hearing.

Congress created this problem through legislation and court settlements, and Congress must fix it. The next homeland security package should raise the credible-fear standard, limit asylum claims to those who present at ports of entry, and require applicants to remain in Mexico or a third safe country while claims are adjudicated. These are not radical ideas. They were standard practice in successful border-control regimes in Canada and Australia before those nations softened under political pressure.

Restoring order also means confronting the parole abuse that became standard under the previous administration. The Department of Homeland Security created categorical parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans that admitted hundreds of thousands of people without visas or congressional authorization. Many of those programs were halted by court order, but the underlying statutory ambiguity remains. Congress should cap humanitarian parole at the narrow, case-by-case basis Congress originally intended.

Judicial injunctions have slowed every enforcement initiative of the past decade. The Supreme Court has repeatedly been forced to clarify that the executive branch has broad authority over entry and removal. Congress should use that authority as a floor, not a ceiling, and write statutes that leave less room for nationwide injunctions from single district judges. Lawmaking is the antidote to litigation.

State and Local Sabotage Must End

Sheriffs in jurisdictions such as Los Angeles County, Cook County, and New York City routinely ignore immigration detainers, releasing criminal defendants back into communities instead of transferring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi has begun withholding certain grant funds from these sanctuary jurisdictions, but recovered amounts remain small compared with the federal dollars still flowing to defiant local governments. Compliance cannot be optional. Federal law on alien detention and removal preempts local ordinances that obstruct it.

The arguments in favor of sanctuary policies collapse under scrutiny. Advocates claim detainers violate the Fourth Amendment, yet federal courts have upheld properly issued detainers for decades. They claim local police should not do immigration work, yet detainers merely ask a jail to hold an inmate for a few hours until federal agents arrive. The real motive is political. City councils in deep-blue jurisdictions want to signal opposition to federal policy, and they are willing to release violent offenders to do it.

Congress can fix this by conditioning every law enforcement grant on compliance with detainer requests. The power of the purse is the cleanest remedy available. If a county wants federal Byrne grants, COPS funding, or justice assistance dollars, it must stop releasing deportable criminals onto American streets. This is not coercion. It is the same bargain states accept every day for highway funds, education dollars, and Medicaid.

Border security is not a single policy. It is a chain of decisions made every day by patrol agents, asylum officers, judges, sheriffs, and legislators. That chain broke in the early 2020s. The 2024 election gave the country a mandate to repair it. But a mandate is only as good as the follow-through. Washington must fund enforcement, close loopholes, and end sanctuary obstruction. The alternative is another decade of disorder.