It’s “beautiful” to see more Border Patrol agents back on the southern border since President Donald Trump entered the White House, Efrain Sella said.
Sella spent 25 years with the Border Patrol before retiring in 2019. Speaking with The Daily Signal at the Big Bend Area Law Enforcement Association’s March meeting, he said that “things are changing quick” at the border under the Trump administration.
“Now, we’re controlling the border,” Sella said. “We don’t have the gate open anymore. The door [is] not open to come in, like under President [Joe] Biden. So, now, with President Trump, there’s more resources coming in.”
Trump has reinstated the Remain in Mexico policy, which requires illegal aliens to wait in Mexico for an asylum hearing, ended “Catch and Release,” launched a mass-deportation effort focused on the arrest and removal of criminal illegal aliens, designated some criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and taken a slew of other pro-border security measures.
“The fact that President Trump put the [cartels] on a terrorist organization [list] now, it’s a huge factor,” James Frietze, who spent 25 years serving in the New Mexico State Police before retiring in 2019, told The Daily Signal.
“So, now, you have availability of that access to military personnel and/or intelligence equipment,” Frietze explained.
Standing on his ranch that borders Mexico in Luna County, New Mexico, Russell Johnson told The Daily Signal that he started seeing Border Patrol agents back on the border just one day after Trump took office.
After watching a Border Patrol helicopter fly over his property on a windy March afternoon, Johnson said sighting a Border Patrol helicopter was rare “up until pretty much Trump took office.”
The rancher would like to see an even great Border Patrol presence along the border wall and hopes the unfinished border wall on his property is completed, but Johnson said seeing “at least some presence [of Border Patrol] on the border, it’s just so reassuring that maybe this issue is actually going to get tackled.”
Illegal crossing through his ranch are now almost “nonexistent,” he said. “We need the wall. Don’t get me wrong, but you saw that dramatic shift in traffic purely by enforcing the laws that we have.”
Encounters of illegal aliens at the southern border have sharply declined under the Trump administration, according to Customs and Border Protection data, falling from 96,036 in December to 61,447 in January, and down to 11,709 by February.
The number of illegal immigrants crossing the border “have dropped drastically” since Trump was sworn into office two months ago, Hudspeth County, Texas, Sheriff Arvin West said.
“We’re not getting the influx of aliens coming across, but the drugs are staying kind of steady,” West said, adding that due to the increased security at the border, he expects the Mexican cartels to act a “little more brazen” to get drugs across the border.
“By all means, the border is a lot, lot better,” West said, “I mean, I’m going to say probably 100% better than what it was during the [President Barack] Obama or Biden administrations. However, we’re still dealing with the problem. It’s still coming across,” he said.
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