On Monday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE Director under President Obama, stated that President Donald Trump’s election “has created additional deterrence at the border and the executive actions he signed sent a message that there’s no more crossing the border.”

Host Connell McShane said, “[T]his is probably the headline, if you’re the Trump administration, that you would be kind of trumpeting, right? The illegal crossings…95% decrease from 2024. So, just the idea that the way he’s talking about immigration, how aggressive he’s been with rhetoric, campaign and in [his] actual presidency, kind of scaring people into not wanting to cross the border, right? There’s been some effect.”

Sandweg responded, “I’m not going to deny, there’s certainly some of that, right? The election of President Trump has created additional deterrence at the border and the executive actions he signed sent a message that there’s no more crossing the border. To be fair, though, those numbers were declining since President Biden implemented new asylum rules that really gutted the ability of people to make asylum claims. So, if you start looking, beginning of June of ’24, they start declining. But, no doubt, Trump’s rhetoric and the actions he’s taken have further dropped those border [numbers.]”

Sandweg further stated that there is an unintended consequence that this decreases ICE’s deportation and arrest numbers.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett