Imagine being an immigrant sans documentation, working for weeks to get to an American port of entry. You used your CBP One phone app to get your golden ticket of an appointment to claim asylum, only to arrive Monday afternoon and find all the future appointments have been canceled. Welcome to Donald Trump’s border.

Meanwhile, your Chicago-based cohorts, who have already made it and brazenly exist out of the shadows, are beating a hasty retreat back into hiding, fearful that ICE will hunt them down and ship them back because they committed a crime here. Welcome to immigration enforcement, Donald Trump style.

After the Homeland Security disaster that was the impeached Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the guy who told us “the border is closed” when no such thing was true, Trump’s DHS nominee Kristi Noem has a big mess to clean up upon her confirmation.

The good news is that she will have some advantages. The Border Patrol workforce is eager to do their job without being hamstrung. “I’m going to let people do their jobs,” said Noem during her confirmation hearing. “I’m going to remind them what their jobs are. Some of these Border Patrol agents haven’t been able to do their jobs for a very long time. They’ve been processing paperwork and facilitating an invasion when they should be back securing our border, which is why they were recruited and wanted to serve there to begin with.”

Also backing her up will be a number of policy changes and corrections President Trump (it feels good to type that once again) will make. First was pulling the plug on the CBP One app, which went offline just hours after Trump took office. Then, yesterday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was slated to begin cracking down on illegal immigrant scofflaws in Chicago and other cities. Border czar Tom Homan (a real one, as opposed to Kamala Harris) came out with guns blazing, stating last month, “We’re going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois. And if the Chicago mayor doesn’t want to help, he can step aside. But if he impedes us, if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien, I will prosecute him.”

Another important piece of the puzzle may end up in court rather quickly. President Trump used one of his initial executive orders to end the interpretation of the 14th Amendment allowing birthright citizenship. As The Washington Post pointed out this week: “In 2018 and 2019, Trump threatened to sign an order revoking birthright citizenship, but he never did. The Congressional Research Service said then that prevailing legal interpretations held that children of undocumented immigrants are citizens. But the service cautioned that the Supreme Court ‘has not firmly settled the issue in the modern era.’”

We’ll bet that someone will push this case their way before the midterms.

Lawsuit-happy left-wing advocacy groups aren’t the only obstacle to Trump’s success. In Chicago, Democrat Congressmen Jesus Garcia and Delia Ramirez advised their constituents to “exercise their rights, particularly to remain silent and refuse to allow officers into their homes without warrants.” In addition, their city government previously adopted a “Welcoming City Ordinance” prohibiting the city from sharing immigration information with federal authorities.

The other issue is Mexico. Back in 2019, President Trump was successful for a time in convincing the Mexican government to adopt the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Joe Biden stopped the program when he took office, and after a court battle attempting to reinstate it finally succeeded in 2023, Mexico opted to end its participation. With Trump back in office and economic tools at his disposal, our friends south of the border may decide to play ball once again.

Right after the election, our Nate Jackson clearly stated his preference to “Let the Deportations Begin.” Two months before Trump took office, Jackson was clamoring to eject the criminal illegal aliens first, reasoning that once they begin deporting the criminals as well as those already ordered to be deported by an immigration judge but who hadn’t left yet, then the remainder will begin to leave. “Once people are deported by authorities,” Jackson predicted, “others will self-deport rather than be caught.”

That would be the best solution, as leaving voluntarily may give people the best chance to return legally down the road. Either way, we now know there’s a new sheriff in town, and he means business. Success in this endeavor will go a long way toward assisting the GOP in the midterms, not to mention restoring the Rule of Law and national sovereignty.