Clear messaging, closed border: Homeland Security’s campaign is working

The Trump administration can claim many historic victories but none greater than securing the southern border. This wasn’t just the fulfillment of Trump’s signature campaign promise — it was a demonstration that “law and order” means nothing without real enforcement.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has become the face of that message. She appears in a series of high-profile ad campaigns — aired nationwide and internationally — warning illegal immigrants to self-deport or face permanent removal. The ads sparked predictable outrage, but the message remains clear: The days of catch-and-release are over.

After four long and chaotic years, this country is once again speaking up for our sovereignty, our citizens, and our way of life.

But the ads aren’t brazen — they’re brilliant.

Democrats have slammed the ads as a waste of money or a form of political advertising. But the truth is, they hate the ads because of how powerful they are.

These ads reflect a basic truth: DHS has a duty to enforce federal immigration law. Campaigns like these aren’t new. The Biden administration ran its own digital push in 2022 under Customs and Border Protection, urging migrants to “Say No to the Coyote.”

But the results now speak louder than any slogan. Trump and Noem haven’t just increased removals or tightened border security — they’ve changed the calculus entirely. Fewer migrants are even attempting to enter the country. That’s the power of clear, consistent messaging.

Biden told the world illegal entry wouldn’t carry consequences. Trump has made it clear those days are done.

As Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies once noted, the power of presidential messaging became undeniable in 2016. Compare the “Trump effect” to the “Clinton effect”: In November 2016, border agents logged more than 63,000 apprehensions. By March 2017 — just two months into Trump’s first term — that number dropped to just over 12,000.

By the end of that term, Trump had slashed both legal and illegal immigration by a staggering 92%. The world took notice.

It’s happening again. After four catastrophic years of Joe Biden, Trump’s return to the Oval Office has triggered a collapse in border crossings. Overall encounters have dropped 93% since he took office. In Panama’s Darien Gap — one of the most notorious corridors for illegal migration — crossings have plunged by 99%.

The message is getting through: America’s borders are no longer open.

Law and order depends, first and foremost, on clarity. It’s one thing to enforce the law, but it’s another thing to make sure everyone knows that you’re enforcing the law. The only way someone can play by the rules is if he knows what the rules are and what the penalties are for breaking those rules.

Why do we write down our laws? Any healthy human society already knows that things like murder, theft, and fraud are wrong. That law is written in our hearts. We write down laws and penalties so that everyone knows exactly what the rules are for living together and what happens otherwise. Advertising the information is the entire point of putting it down on paper in the first place.

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Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images

If our laws are to be truly just, they must be stated clearly and enforced faithfully. This is the entire point of having a written set of laws, so that everyone knows the rules of the game and the penalties for breaking them.

Laws don’t enforce themselves. Without consequences, they’re just suggestions.

Kristi Noem understood that early. She was the first governor to deploy National Guard troops to the southern border in support of Texas during Biden’s open-border disaster. In one meeting with Border Patrol agents, she heard it straight: “There are no consequences right now. Without consequences, there is no enforcement, and there is no law.”

That’s changed.

Under Trump and Noem, consequences are back. And the whole world knows it.

We are no longer seeing mobs of illegal aliens rushing the border wearing Biden campaign T-shirts, expecting to receive free, taxpayer-funded handouts that candidate Biden promised them on the campaign trail. Instead, the corporate left-wing media is forced to churn out pearl-clutching sob stories about how illegal aliens are choosing to self-deport or how businesses that depend on immigrant traffic through the Darien Gap have collapsed due to the decline in immigration.

The famous chart from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) proves that President Trump accomplished in just 100 days what it took him four years to do last time. And he’s just getting started. These results are not just a function of enforcement. They are a result of messaging.

When America speaks, the world indeed listens. Now, after four long and chaotic years, this country is once again speaking up for our sovereignty, our citizens, and our way of life.