🌊 How WhatsApp Closed the Border

We visited the US-Mexico border’s busiest sector to learn why crossings have plummeted

There was one line from my recent interview with the immigration expert Muzaffar Chishti that made my jaw drop. He told me this:

The high water mark of the Biden Administration was December 2023, when 300,000 [migrants] came to the border. The number in the highest month of this term of the Trump Administration is 7,000. So from 300,000 to 7,000. Clearly, the invasion is over.

Muzaffar, to be clear, is no Trumper. He’s a frequent critic of the president’s deportation policies, from the reduced training time of ICE agents – cut from five months to 47 days (perhaps as a nod to Trump being the 47th president) – and the creation of deportation quotas for agents.

Nevertheless, before Trump, illegal immigration was a top-three concern for American voters. Since Trump took office, there’s been a 98% drop – a stunning decline regardless of where you stand. But that begs the question: How?

The answer to that question is not what you would expect, and is the subject of today’s deep-dive from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

The last time I reported from the border was during the December 2023 peak. I flew to El Paso, then the busiest border sector, to see what it was like. Simply put, it was a disaster.

Hundreds of migrants, kids included, slept on the streets in sleeping bags. They were hungry and depended on churches for food and clothing. Their aspirations to unite with their relatives in Florida or New York were fading. The Roca teammate who came with me broke down in tears when we left. It was bleak.

Last month, I headed back to the Texas-Mexico border, this time to visit the busiest border section right now: The Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. It was unrecognizable.