So President Trump has closed the border to illegal immigration, declining to accept asylum applications from illegal border crossers, shutting down the USAID spigots to NGOs fueling the migrant pipeline, reading Mexico the Riot Act on its free trade privileges and rapidly repatriating those who attempt to enter illegally.
The daily number of illegal border crossings has gone to the low hundreds, according to the Border Patrol.
And just like that, the brutal cartel violence in northern Mexico is gone.
According to this local from Tijuana:
Mexico citizen reporting
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 26, 2025
- The Cartel presence has disappeared in border city Tijuana, Mexico
- People aren’t being trafficked anymore
- The Cartel isn’t there to charge businesses to operate
- Residents aren’t having their money stolen
- Cartel members have even been killed
-… pic.twitter.com/sZMQalkRwA
No car burnings. No blocked roads. No machine-gun shootouts. No bodies splattered across the pavements and in residential doorways. No shakesdowns. No innocent Mexican citizens chased across the border into the U.S. as cartels burn their homes down. No kidnappings of Mexican kids to 'serve' as human trafficking subjects up north.
It's quite likely the Mexican government is doing at least some of what President Trump asked, for -- permitting surveillance flights from the U.S. on cartels, accepting and sharing intelligence on their activities, allowing the Green Berets to train elite Mexican naval troops, the only ones both sides trust as not tainted with drug cash, to swoop down on them, which based on news reports, seems to be happening.
Next week, President Trump will announce whether tariffs on Mexico will go through which Mexico has a strong interest in not seeing happen.
But the peace in Tijuana, and likely other border cities really does seem indicative that the strategy is working.
It's probably too soon to say it's all over, it's possible things could change, and it would be better to have more sourcing on this.
But the Tijuana man in the video appears credible as an everyman who can accurately describe the situation as it is seen from Tijuana.
Sure, cartels could be laying low until the Trump sword of Damocles on tariffs passes. But it seems significant that they aren't shaking down locals and doing all the things they do that don't make big news in the U.S. It is as if they have disappeared, suddenly going into non-cartel spectaculars such as telephone fraud or other "trades," some maybe even legitimate, or else gone to their spiritual homeland in some place like Venezuela where drug dealing is state-linked and widespread.
They aren't around. Business is not good like it used to be, with an open border for drug and alien smuggling. The cash is not flowing, and as a result, there is no reason to get into machine-gun rubouts with other cartels to fight over the spoils of the open border -- because there are no spoils. The money has dried up.
And that's a lot of results in the span of six weeks, the length of Trump's presidency.
Turns out it was possible to shut down the border -- and the evil cartels that made it so hellish for Mexico's innocent citizens who live in their own country.
Everything Trump did had a long range plan that has brought this unexpected peace in northern Mexico, allowing it to get up on its feet and prosper again as Mexico's wealthiest geographical area. There's all kinds of talk about Trump bringing peace to Ukraine and the Middle East, but he's also brought it to northern Mexico which shouldn't be ignored.
If Trump is satisfied about this result and declines to raise tariffs, Mexico has been given an extraordinary gift from President Trump even as the press cloaks it in punitive language. It wasn't punitive, it was just tough love. Now Mexicans are finally seeing peace -- and the prosperity they can enact for themselves from it.
No wonder so many of them hail him even south of the border. He's making Mexico great again, too.
Image: Screen shot from X video