Hakeem Jeffries Forced to Acknowledge Trump Secured the Border

In a moment that stunned even CNN’s audience, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was finally forced to admit what the data has shown for months: President Donald J. Trump has succeeded in securing America’s southern border, delivering results that Democrats spent years claiming were impossible.

Jeffries appeared on CNN Newsroom with host Pamela Brown, where he was confronted with the latest enforcement numbers — including a historic collapse in illegal crossings and a complete halt to federal migrant releases since President Trump returned to the Oval Office in January. Brown asked the question Democrats have desperately tried to avoid: “Are you willing to give President Trump any credit for that?”

Jeffries immediately retreated into well-worn talking points about “comprehensive immigration reform” and accused President Trump of targeting “law-abiding immigrant families,” even going so far as to claim, falsely, that “American citizens are being deported.”

But Brown pressed again, pointing out that illegal crossings had “gone down dramatically” after Trump reinstated the same enforcement tools that secured the border during his first term.

“Can you give him credit for that?” she pressed.

Out of room to maneuver, Jeffries conceded the undeniable: “The border is secure. That’s a good thing. It’s happened on his watch. He wants to claim credit for it. Of course, he’ll get credit for that.”

It was the first time a top House Democrat publicly acknowledged what millions of Americans already see — that President Trump has restored operational control over the border after the Biden administration’s catastrophic failures.

WATCH:

Homeland Security data shows that the U.S. Border Patrol reported zero releases of illegal aliens into the interior for seven straight months, from May through November 2025 — a complete reversal of Biden-era policy. Under Joe Biden, roughly 85 percent of an average 185,000 monthly encounters resulted in migrants being waved into the country.

President Trump ended that immediately. His reinstated directives dismantled “catch and release,” shut down the CBP One app—which had allowed migrants to book their own entry appointments—and restored deportations as a central mission of DHS. Those steps slammed shut the loopholes Biden intentionally opened.

Former ICE Director Tom Homan, who served under presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, told Congress last year that Biden “was the first president in history to unsecure a border on purpose.” He testified that Biden inherited “the most secure border in our nation’s history” and “dismantled it overnight.”

Homan further warned that Biden’s policies triggered “the greatest national security crisis since 9/11,” fueling a surge in fentanyl trafficking, cartel activity, human smuggling, and the entry of known or suspected terrorists into the U.S.

Between January 2021 and September 2023, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 10 million illegal crossings, with an estimated 2 million gotaways. Border Patrol also apprehended 736 individuals on the terrorist watchlist in FY 2023 — the highest figure ever recorded. More than 440,000 unaccompanied minors were smuggled into the country under Biden, with about 100,000 still unaccounted for, Homan testified.

“The systematic destruction of border security and the predictable consequences scare the hell out of me,” he told lawmakers. “It should scare you too.”

President Trump’s policies have reversed that decline with historic speed. Within 90 days of taking office, unlawful crossings had plummeted by 97 percent compared to the same window a year prior. By December 2025, Border Patrol recorded just 2,800 apprehensions nationwide — the lowest monthly total since 1970.

Democrats, long committed to portraying Trump’s enforcement approach as “inhumane,” now face an inconvenient truth: the policies they condemned are the very policies that secured America’s borders. Jeffries’s grudging admission — “The border is secure. That’s a good thing” — underscored just how dramatically the political ground has shifted.

With asylum loopholes closed, deportations accelerating, and illegal crossings halted, President Trump has delivered one of the most decisive policy turnarounds in modern American history. Even his critics are running out of ways to deny it.