Remember when the southern border was less a line on a map and more a suggestion? Under the previous outfit, it was open season for anyone with a sob story and a backpack, including folks whose resumes featured bomb-making or beheading enthusiasts. Now, with actual enforcement back in vogue, Customs and Border Protection is racking up wins that make the old days look like a bad acid trip. They’ve turned back thousands of known or suspected terrorists this fiscal year alone—over 3,000 encounters with the terrorist watchlist, to be precise. That’s not chump change; it’s a firewall against the kind of headaches that end in headlines we don’t want.
The Math of Mayhem Averted
Fiscal year 2025, wrapping up September 30, saw CBP’s Office of Field Operations snag 3,066 watchlist hits at land ports—2,782 down south, 284 up north. Add in 61 between ports via Border Patrol, and you’re staring at 3,127 bad actors who didn’t get the grand tour. Compare that to the prior four years’ tally of around 1,900, spread thin like butter on too much bread. Back then, the numbers crept up to 736 combined in fiscal 2023 and 2024, but mostly they were waved through or cut loose pending a court date that might arrive around the heat death of the universe.
This isn’t just bean-counting. Designating outfits like MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and the cartel kings as foreign terrorist organizations juiced the watchlist, catching more of these narco-nightmares at the gates. Overall border traffic? Plummeted to historic lows—26,000 nationwide encounters in September, 93 percent below the Biden-era peak lunacy of nearly 371,000. Fewer total crossers means sharper eyes on the threats that matter. CBP’s screening—biometrics, intel shares, the works—ensures these watchlist wonders get the boot: inadmissible, repatriated, or handed off before they can unpack.
Dodging the Next Disaster
What did we sidestep? Picture the alternative: thousands more slipping in, blending into the woodwork, plotting whatever twisted schemes keep terror wonks up at night. We’ve already nipped cartel capers that doubled as terror ops—baby trafficking rings gutting pregnant women for profit, organ harvesters, coke lords with Hezbollah ties. One bust last month alone shredded a network peddling infants for 13 grand a pop via forced C-sections. Let those geniuses loose stateside, and you’re not just fighting drugs; you’re importing jihad-by-proxy, gang wars escalating to holy war hybrids.
The old regime’s catch-and-release roulette meant watchlist walk-ins could vanish into sanctuary cities, courtesy of lax vetting and policy paralysis. Now, zero releases month after month—five straight as of September—means threats stay threats, not neighbors. No more paroling potential plotters while bureaucrats dither. We’ve prevented the slow bleed of sleeper cells, the kind that fester until they blow. America First isn’t sloganeering; it’s the math of survival. Secure the perimeter, and the homeland sleeps sounder, minus the boom.
The Long Game Pays Off
Enforcement like this echoes the first Trump term’s restraint—fiscal 2017 logged just hundreds, but without the cartel terror tags, it flew lower. Today’s haul dwarfs it because we’re naming the beasts: transnational thugs aren’t mere migrants; they’re enemy combatants in mufti. CBP’s frontline grind—officers eyeballing every passport, every claim—starved the system of recruits for chaos. No fresh 9/11 reruns on our dime, no subway stabbings traced to border ghosts. It’s the unglamorous heroism of saying “no entry” to the wrong crowd, preserving the republic from imported Armageddon. If that’s not doing the job, I don’t know what is.