Unlike Biden, Trump Really Is Addressing the ‘Root Causes’ of the Border Crisis

President Donald Trump is truly addressing the “root causes” of our border problem. He’s doing this by cracking down on the crime and criminal organizations that send waves of people and illicit drugs into our country.

Trump announced Sunday that he would be cutting off all aid to the nation of Colombia and blasted President Gustavo Petro for being an “illegal drug leader.”

The State Department revoked Petro’s visa in September when he joined a protest in New York City and allegedly called for U.S. troops to disobey orders.

Trump continued to rhetorically hammer the Colombian government just as the U.S. military continues to hammer drug traffickers off their coastline.

“They make drugs, they refine drugs, they make cocaine, they have cocaine factories,” Trump said on Sunday. “They have no fight against drugs, and I’m stopping all payments to Colombia because they don’t have anything to do with their fight against drugs.” 

It isn’t just Colombia that Trump has tussled with. He’s used military strikes to annihilate drug traffickers off the Venezuelan coastline while putting pressure on the regime of leftist Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Maduro’s government almost certainly helped the vicious Tren de Aragua gang infiltrate the United States.

The president’s moves in Central and South America and the Caribbean mark a central and somewhat overlooked cornerstone of his national security policy. As I and others have noted, Trump appears to be reviving a sort of new Monroe Doctrine, where the U.S. is more focused on dealing with issues in the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s early moves regarding Greenland, the Panama Canal, and trade with Mexico and Canada suggested as much.

The fact that Trump has devoted much time and attention on securing peace deals in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere doesn’t preclude this. In fact, I’d say it’s a part of this administration’s shifting focus. Peace far abroad, containment of China in Asia, and stability at our national doorstep. These all seem to be very much a part of the “Trump doctrine.”

What’s interesting to me is that Trump is actually addressing the “root causes” that created the border and immigration crisis that the Biden administration allowed to burn out of control.

Remember that back in 2021 then-Vice President Kamala Harris announced she was tasked with solving those so-called root causes.

Harris said on Twitter, now X that President Joe Biden “asked me to lead our diplomatic work with Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. To address the situation at the southern border, we have to address the root causes of migration. It won’t be easy work—but it’s necessary.”

The strategy ended up being like the Democrat strategy at home. There were lots of promises about addressing “inequality” and some nice words about democracy and human rights, but little seemed to get done. In fact, the problem worsened.

When some countries actually did try to solve the problems plaguing the region—mainly crime and broken economies—the Biden administration acted with hostility. El Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele made it his mission to annihilate the criminal gangs destroying his country by throwing them en masse in prison. He was met by chilliness and occasional condemnation by the Biden administration and certainly their allies in the media.

The result of the Biden administration’s efforts—if you could really call them that—was years of record-breaking crossings at the southern border that continued nearly unabated until Trump arrived back in office.

El Salvador improved dramatically despite the frosty relationship with the U.S. government and went from “murder capital” to being one of the safest countries in the region. The explosive migration of the country has reversed, and many people are even voluntarily returning home. They are doing what every left-leaning government, seemingly across the globe, says can’t be done. They are arresting their way out of a crime crisis. And it seems to be working pretty well.

Trump is doubling down on that anti-crime impulse. Instead of putting out insipid statements about “democracy” and giving South American countries handouts they are likely to waste, he is targeting the source of their dysfunction.

Clearly, enforcing border laws and deporting those who broke them is having a huge impact on the border crisis, which has seemingly disappeared. But the president is willing to go a step further to ensure that the long-term problem is further mitigated by focusing on stopping crime, halting the flow of drugs, and putting the screws on hostile leftist governments.

It seems to be working.

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