President Donald Trump’s tough enforcement of immigration laws could push illegal border crossings down to zero, a top Homeland Security official suggested on Friday. 

“I do believe that with the right level of enforcement consequence, we can get there,” Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks told attendees at a Center for Immigration Studies event in Washington, D.C. 

Recommended Stories

• Trump to charge $100k fee for H-1B visas
• ICE agents tear gas Chicago-area protesters outside detention center
• Eleven Democratic officials arrested in NYC after demanding access to ICE holding cells

Border crossings have already tanked in the seven months since Trump took office. Banks outlined a number of changes pushed by the White House that could make numbers drop even further, including enforcing existing immigration laws, expanding federal and state partnerships, and working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the military to target those in the country without legal status. 

In the wake of the top-down shift from Washington, there has been a dramatic surge in prosecution rates for crossing the border illegally, Banks said. Meanwhile, recruitment levels at Border Patrol have broken records every month since Trump took office, giving the government additional manpower, along with a higher-quality pool of candidates, to detain illegal immigrants. And attrition rates are improving, with “thousands” of agents pulling their retirement paperwork since January, Banks said. 

“If you had told me nine months ago that we’re going to have a 93% prosecution rate, I would have said, ‘Yeah, I don’t believe it,’ but I’m seeing it,” Banks reflected. “I’ve never seen morale this high,” he added, because “they’ve never seen the level of support we’re getting.”

Banks credited the changes to a  “whole of government approach” promoted by the Trump administration that took “the handcuffs off” agents and directed them to enforce the law. That has resulted in Border Patrol working with states such as Florida and Texas and partnering with federal agencies at the War and Justice Departments, including through federalizing property along the border to allow military police to have a more hands-on approach to detaining illegal immigrants. Expanding cooperation with ICE in sanctuary cities to target illegal immigrants has also been an effective deterrent to illegal activity, Banks said. 

“My entire career in the Border Patrol, you would always hear the words, ‘Whole of government approach’ … meaning we’re going to bring every resource in the U.S. government to bear on a problem in this country. [But] I had never seen it,” Banks said during the event at the National Press Club.

“I can tell you right now, for the first time in my career in uniform, and from the military up to here, going on 36 years now, I’m seeing all the government approach,” he added. “There’s an administration that said, ‘We’re not gonna accept no for an answer. You’re going to enforce the laws.’”

The border patrol chief defended his decision to divert agents from the border and send them to help ICE target illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities, viewed as safe havens for those without legal status. Banks said he initially “wrestled” with the decision, and tested it out by sending eight agents to interior locations. These days, he believes the strategy is an enormously successful deterrent to illegal immigration because it sends the message that those without legal status are not safe even in sanctuary cities. 

“Now the message is, if you get past the Border Patrol, that does not mean you have nothing going on. That message has been resonating because once you start making interior apprehensions of people in the country illegally, the first thing they start doing is communicating with their people in their country, right? And the message gets out real fast. Sanctuary city does not mean sanctuary city,” he said. 

Banks touched on the controversy of federal agents, including those from ICE and Border Patrol, wearing masks as they work to apprehend illegal immigrants. “We don’t want to wear masks,” he said, “but we have to” because attacks on agents “are up by 1,000%.”

“We are proud of what we do,” he said. “What we don’t want is people showing up at our schools, which we’ve had, asking for our children by name. We don’t want them showing up at our spouses or husbands’ or wives’ place of employment, harassing them because they don’t like what we do, or they disagree with what we do.”

Banks returned to lead Border Patrol under Trump after leaving the agency during the Biden administration, when he felt that the policies the White House had put in place “usurped laws” on immigration enforcement. Banks said he believed the agency under former President Joe Biden was converted into a “travel agency” to facilitate migrants’ entrance into the country instead of enforcing laws designed to keep them from residing in the United States.

TRUMP SUPERCHARGES 287(G) PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN LOCAL POLICE AND ICE TO SPEED UP DEPORTATIONS

“Every president that I’ve ever served under, or has been a president in my lifetime, has done something to advance border security,” he said. “The Biden administration was the first administration I’ve ever seen that regressed border security.” 

“What we simply needed was an administration that would allow Border Patrol agents to enforce the law,” Banks concluded. “And the reason why your border is secure now is because this administration, from President Trump to [Homeland Security Secretary Kristi] Noem and to [Customs and Border Protection] Commissioner Rodney Scott, is that they have empowered the Border Patrol to go out and do exactly what we know how to do, which is to enforce the law.”