Immigration has always been central to Donald Trump's message. When he famously stepped onto the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for his first presidential term in 2015, he accused Mexico for of sending drugs and crime north of the border - and it's been a constant rallying cry ever since. Some of his first-term ambitions to stem the flow of would-be immigrants were constrained by the courts.
But restraints have been weaker in his second term, with a more accommodating Supreme Court and tens of billions of additional enforcement money from Congress. Who should be allowed to live in the US remains a big issue on the minds of voters in the upcoming midterm elections, which are largely seen as a referendum on the Trump presidency. He promised a closed border and mass deportations in his successful 2024 campaign - and few can deny that he's delivered on both.
But even among those who voted for a tougher stance, there is a concern that the crackdown has gone too far. His signature policy has played out in five key ways. Crossings exploded during Joe Biden's presidency, with over 4.5 million migrant "encounters" recorded at the southern border in 2023 and 2024 alone, reflecting the massive numbers of people headed north to the US border.
His administration eventually brought the monthly figures down significantly by restricting asylum claims and removing migrants entering the US illegally without processing. When Trump returned to office, that stream of migrants became a trickle. Border encounters plummeted.
By the end of Trump's first year in office, the chaotic scenes that had generated headlines around the globe during the Biden administration had largely gone. On a trip to the border city of El Paso, Texas, in November 2025, for example, the BBC found quiet streets where there had previously been makeshift camps housing thousands of migrants granted parole in the US to await immigration proceedings. To achieve what he often describes as the "most secure" border in US history, the Trump administration has taken an aggressive, multi-pronged approach.
That has included effectively freezing asylum applications at the border, ending "catch and release" of detainees into the US, deploying troops to the border and pressuring Mexico to clamp down on the flow of migrants headed north. "President Trump promised the American people a secure border, and the data proves he delivered," Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement on 16 October. "The results could not be clearer: strong enforcement works." A vow to build a "big, beautiful wall" at the nearly 2,000-mile (3,218km) US-Mexico border was a signature promise of Trump's 2016 campaign.
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