Every so often, American politics offers a before-and-after so stark that even the spin doctors run out of excuses. The southern border’s collapse under Joe Biden and its breathtaking turnaround under Donald Trump exposes a story larger than any single presidency: the price of wishful thinking versus the power of resolve. Today, the numbers can’t be buried: the difference between fantasyland policy and no-nonsense action is printed in black and white. Ignore this lesson, and you just might miss the moment when D.C. talking points finally collided with reality.
When the White House rolled out a graphic spotlighting the seismic shift in illegal border crossings since Trump returned to the Oval Office in January 2025, the political world took notice. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the graphic on Friday.
The chart, which contained information from Issues and Insights and the label “monthly illegal southern border crossings,” functions as a Rorschach test for the Biden era, only you’d be hard-pressed to find an optimist in the ink. It features an eye-popping quote from Biden, dated February 2024: “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump.” It’s the kind of brazen deflection that aged about as well as milk in the Texas sun, especially when paired with the ironclad numbers on display.
Let’s Pause To Marvel At Trump’s Incredible Border Victoryhttps://t.co/y7Xx2mncsf pic.twitter.com/cGjELhBeOB
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) August 15, 2025
Scan that bar chart, and you don’t just see statistics; you witness the collapse of the left’s bogus immigration narrative. The surge in illegal crossings got rolling barely a month into the Biden administration, escalating month after month, a steady drumbeat of border failures. By December 2023, the situation reached a hideous crescendo: over 300,000 illegal crossings in a single month. That number isn’t just unprecedented, it’s catastrophic. Talk about a flashing red light.
Here’s a two-paragraph narrative summarizing Biden’s attitude toward the border based on those quotes:
From the start of his presidency, Joe Biden consistently claimed that the border was secure, even as illegal entries surged. His administration reinforced this narrative, portraying the administration as making progress despite the “historic challenge” of a broken immigration system. Yet over time, his rhetoric shifted to place blame on others, particularly Trump, for the nation’s border problems.
Recommended: 'I Was Blown Away’: Kash Patel Describes Explosive FBI Burn Room Discovery
By 2024, Biden openly argued that the only reason the border wasn’t secure was Trump, while he simultaneously pointed to congressional inaction as a limiting factor on his own authority. At the same time, he sought to cast himself as proactive, highlighting executive actions and record staffing levels aimed at improving border enforcement.
Kamala Harris echoed this narrative, insisting that the border was secure while the broader immigration system remained broken, signaling the administration’s strategy of presenting control amid chaos. They both had the audacity to portray themselves as tough on immigration while claiming their hands were tied by a dysfunctional Congress. It was a bizarre, almost Orwellian narrative, which Trump knew he would expose as false once he returned to the White House.
The chart is undeniable. After his inauguration in January 2025, illegal crossings nosedived. The numbers tumble each month, plummeting until, by July 2025, they’re so low that you could mistake them for a typo: Customs and Border Protection logged fewer than 7,832 illegal crossings last month. For context, the July average over the last quarter-century sits at a whopping 76,000. That’s not just improvement. That’s an exclamation point in public policy.
Ironically, it was a different immigration chart on July 13, 2024, that may have quite literally saved Trump’s life. Now we have a new one, this time charting the rescue of the country itself. Sometimes the solution is as simple as having a president willing to put America first. The border crisis didn’t demand a thousand-page bill or a summit in Geneva. It just needed a leader who meant what he said and was ready to act. And Americans will remember this chart as the defining marker of Trump’s second term.
