Savor the Border Wins For a While

I’ve been feeling a warm glow this week, despite the bitter cold in Washington.

For four years, I’ve been railing in print, podcast, radio, and video against now-former President Joe Biden’s deliberate takedown of our border controls and his evisceration of our legal immigration system through policy fudges and executive overreach. I have also inveighed against the leftist assault on American tradition and values in our government, particularly at the State Department and its Foreign Service, America’s diplomatic corps.

After I retired from the Foreign Service in May 2022, the second article I wrote was titled “A U.S. Embassy Should Fly Only One Flag.” The new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has just ordered that to be U.S. policy worldwide. Man, that feels good.

This week, President Donald Trump launched a barrage of executive orders from the White House that will stanch the bleeding from four years of “America-last” policy, both foreign and domestic.

Some of Trump’s orders rolled back the woke ideology that currently strangles our academia, corporations, and government like an anaconda.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) sounds good, but is mostly a mechanism for grifters to get paid while institutions favor race and sex over ability and experience. As of Monday, at least in the federal government, DEI is out—or “afuera” as Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, says.

DEI true-believers, like Viet Cong cadres, are committed, dug in, and won’t go gently into the good night of penury and irrelevance. But their days of intimidating federal workers are over.

It’s sad that he had to, but Trump has confirmed that there are only two sexes. After four years of the people being told to accept that biological men could not only be women, but lesbians to boot, the president has spoken truth. His federal government will no longer pretend to believe in nonsense, nor try to force us all by litigation to accept and speak falsehood.

But immigration and border policy are the BorderLine’s beat. There, Trump wielded a mighty pen on Monday. With a flurry of executive orders, Trump blew away Biden’s flimsy architecture of bogus pretexts, unlawful executive actions, and America-last, illegal alien-first ideology.

Declaring an emergency and an invasion on the southern border, Trump increased resources and unshackled agencies. He has restored the successful “Remain in Mexico” policy that reduced fraudulent asylum claims. He has ended the disastrous Biden policies of “catch-and-release” of aliens caught entering illegally at the border, as well as the severe limitations put on interior enforcement of immigration laws by feckless, reckless, and impeached now-former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.

Trump ordered an end to the Biden mass parole programs, where millions got to bypass the visa system based on their nationality. He ended the perversion of the CBP One phone application, which allowed illegal aliens to schedule their illegal entry into the United States. He ordered a return to serious vetting of aliens before they are released into the country, rather than hoping for the best with no verified information, as has been recent practice.

Trump is ending the gravy train where nongovernmental organizations get rich funneling in the world’s economic migrants and connecting them to the teat of welfare programs in states and cities across the land.

Most importantly, Trump is delivering on his promise to restore the rule of law by removing aliens so ordered through due legal process. No longer will foreign nationals ignore our laws and dictate the terms of their stay here. The American people have rejected globalism. National sovereignty requires secure borders and immigration laws that are clear and enforced.

I could go on: There are a stack of presidential actions out already, and we’re fewer than 100 hours into Trump’s second term. (The Daily Signal breaks them down here). It took me a day to fully digest the executive orders on immigration alone. Reading them was like reviewing a wish-list of action items from every article and interview I’ve done over the past three years.

Clearly, the Trump team has been preparing for this moment a long time. While Biden mumbled and bumbled his way through his one term, planners who put America first were doing their homework.

Is this final victory? Of course not. Closing out 2024, Soviet-era dissident Natan Sharansky said:

This year reminded me that history has no ending, and that it’s not within our power to achieve final victory or defeat in the war against evil. What is in our power, however, is to keep on fighting, and to keep on embracing the meaning and joy we can find in the process.

Trump’s election and his first week of executive action are battles won, but the war for America’s soul and future goes on.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which used to care about free speech for Americans and now seems to care mostly about illegal aliens and the gender-confused, has been stockpiling lawsuits all year. So have other activists on the Left, funded by deep pockets of dark money.

Let ‘em rip. Some of Trump’s agenda may die in the courts, but much will survive, because it is just and lawful, and because the people want it.

The coalition that elected Trump was wide and deep. We agreed on fundamentals, like national sovereignty, defending our borders, freedom of speech, and rejecting gender ideology. But like any coalition, we differ on some matters of policy, and on how to accomplish our shared goals.  

Over the next four years, some of us will not get what we want, and none of us will get all we want. That’s life—and politics. For now, let’s put that aside. Trump coming out of the gate firing from both barrels is awesome to behold. Let’s enjoy it for a while.

The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.

Read Other BorderLine Columns:

The Anglosphere’s Migration Mess

Biden’s Border Legacy Is More Crime, Strained Cities

When Can Government Deport Foreign Students for Pro-Hamas Protests?

Could Biden Ignore the Law Yet Again to Bring a Million Gazans to the US?

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