Brownsville, at the end of Texas, where Zachary Taylor once massaged his regiments towards Mexico, the border has changed its face. The most southern city in the contiguous United States, it still lives from the ballet of semi-trailers and customers from Matamoros, but the tumult of yesterday disappeared. The dusty roads always lead to warehouses bordering the highways, the duty-free still aligns perfumes and bottles of tequila, and the car parks of the transporters are saturated with leaving goods. But the sidewalks have lost their lines of migrants with plastic bags.
For years, this routine traffic cohabited with another flow: that, incessant, of undocumented migrants who tried to cross the river on foot or on makeshift boats. In the center, we saw groups of Haitians and Venezuelans Hagards pass, guided by volunteers to shelters or to NGOs. Under the relentless light of southern Texan, immigration lawyers count the hours in their air -conditioned offices: the flood of customers has dried up, and with it the animation which made the studies turn.
Demographic shock
Here we are talking about a “Historical lull”. Between January and July 2025, arrests on the southern border fell by more than 50 %, according to the Customs and Border Protection. For the White House, the border is no longer a problem, it is the symbol of recovery.
The border is no longer a problem, it is the symbol of the recovery in hand
Since Donald Trump was sworn in under the Capitol rotunda, Washington started a clear and inflexible strategy. Under the security banner, Donald Trump has set up a massive migratory locking: drones, thermal sensors, all washed down with federal troops and the national guard units deployed in several border states.
Simultaneously, the administration restored the protocols called “Remain in Mexico” (“stay in Mexico”) and signed accelerated readmission agreements with its neighbor in the South and the Central America. The asylum criteria have been tightened to the extreme: only requests with irrefutable evidence are now admissible.
For the others, the sanction falls quickly: the express expulsion procedure (“Expedited Removal”), restored by Trump, allows you to return a migrant in just a few days, without hearing before an immigration judge. The refugee quotas have been considerably reduced, with an orientation towards the processing of requests from outside the country.
The demographic shock is palpable. In June, the Washington Post announced that the United States could know, for the first time in more than fifty years, a negative net migration flow, as departures surpass entry. This same perspective is confirmed by a joint report by Aei -Broooks (two very influential, but ideologically opposed American think tanks), published in early July, and which estimates that, for 2025, the migratory balance would be between – 525,000 and + 115,000 people, with a median scenario which is clearly negative.
Donald Trump goes even further with his electorate. At the beginning of the month, the White House published on X a CNN screen capture in which Harry Enen, American political analyst and journalist, specializing in polls and analysis of electoral data, announced that the United States “Had confronted for the first time in half a century with a negative net migration”. To be compared with the positive sales of 1.3 million in 2024 and 2.3 million in 2023!
Impact on work
Under the leadership of Tom Homan, named Tsar of the Borders in January, ICE (for immigration and customs, the federal agency responsible for applying migratory laws and proceeding to expulsions) found margins of action that the Biden era prohibited him. The teams now carry out targeted arrests even in supermarkets, church car parks or construction sites, without exemption, including in sanctuary cities. The expulsion capacity jumped, with more than 150,000 references made between February and July 2025, a record since 2013.
Targeted arrests even in supermarkets
THE Wall Street Journal Shakes the red cloth: between 25,000 and 100,000 jobs could disappear each month if migratory flows are also low, especially in fields, hotels and construction sites. Relatives of Donald Trump retort that it is not a question of ” disappear ” but “Transform” : These positions, often occupied by undocumented workers, can now be provided by duly documented migrants or by Americans returned to the labor market. And even if a part of the production would slow down, Trumpian America assumes. For her, control of her soil is priceless. The White House does not retreat to the cost of restoring the border order. And on the contrary underlines that “The calendar of President Trump aimed at creating jobs for American workers illustrates his commitment to fully exploit this still unexploited potential”.
In Brownsville, the windows turned to Matamoros still see customers pass, but the absence of illegals on the sidewalks is worth all the statistics. For Trump’s supports, this void is brilliant proof: the border is no longer a passage point, it is a rampart.
