In a radical departure from the reporting we usually see with regard to immigration, a legacy news outlet elected to report GOOD news related to the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce the southern border. NBC’s report on the border is a real eye-opener:
Watch the report in its entirety, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, October 7th, 2025:
TOM LLAMAS: Now to new numbers from the southern border showing illegal crossings have plummeted to record lows under President Trump. A dramatic change from the scenes we saw along the border just a year ago. Julia Ainsley has our new reporting.
JULIA AINSLEY: Tonight, new numbers showing the dramatic change at the border.
MIKE BANKS: We’ve got the most controlled border we’ve ever had in the history, and in my lifetime in the border patrol.
AINSLEY: In Eagle Pass, Texas, during the Biden administration, more than 2,000 migrants crossed into the U.S. in a single day. But now, under President Trump's policies, officers encounter just 20 migrants a day here. Tonight, DHS touting the lowest number of illegal border crossings since 1970. And Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks tells us they’ll expand the one mile of defensive buoys on the Rio Grande.
BANKS: We’ve got about 500 miles identified across the entire Texas border where we’re gonna place these in the river.
AINSLEY: Is this the new wall?
BANKS: It's defense in-depth.
AINSLEY: We were here two years ago where migrants used to carry children on their backs to get across this river and cut through this barbed wire to get to the United States. They would see hundreds, even thousands a day in this very spot. But today, it’s silent. North in Del Rio, border residents telling us they are thrilled the crossings are down.
RESIDENT: We have our community back to normal.
AINSLEY: Border security, a major factor in two majority-Latino districts, Eagle Pass and Del Rio, voting red last November. Business owner Lwo Martinez is a Democrat who voted for Trump, saying his once-eight-hour commute to his factories across the border now takes 20 minutes.
LEO MARTINEZ: Now if you look at the border, it's super quiet. So whatever the current administration has done, it's working.
AINSLEY: His daughter voted for Trump, too.
Do you think what happened here with the surge led more people to vote for Trump?
LEO MARTINEZ’ DAUGHTER: Yes. 100%.
AINSLEY: But across the border, President Trump's policies blocking asylum claims also having an impact. Johanna Romero with her 6-month old son saying she's desperate, waiting in Mexico since December. Saying she's fleeing death threats from her baby's father. I was really afraid. It was a very strong threat, she said.
President Trump's policy banning asylum seekers at the border is now being challenged in court. Tom.
LLAMAS: Julia Ainsley. Julia, we thank you.
Normally, when you see immigration reporting, it is centered around building victimization narratives. And Julia Ainsley did serve that up, but at the END of the report. Almost as if to cleanse viewer palates of everything else they saw prior.
And what did they see, exactly? There was the head of the Border Patrol talking about how numbers have come down dramatically. There was discussion of the defensive buoys placed in the Rio Grande, but no hyperventilating about them as murder devices.
The report then featured Trump-voting Democrat Hispanics who are pleased with what they’ve seen in terms of border enforcement. Recall that places such as Eagle Pass and Del Rio bore the brunt of Biden’s open border. But no more.
There were also no immigration advocacy groups present in the report to vilify Trump’s enforcement policy or to complain about everything. This report was a refreshing change of pace from the usual immigration fare on legacy media.