Border security expert calls Trump’s achievements “monumental”

“I don’t think Kamala Harris intended it this way, but the page has turned”

On Monday, border security expert and investigative author Todd Bensman appeared on Fox Business Channel’s Mornings with Maria to discuss how the Trump administration has been able to effect such a quick turnaround at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Migrants on the other side, from their perspective, they’re saying: why should I spend $2,000, $3,000, $10,000 to try to cross the U.S. border when I’m going to end up right back in Mexico, or even in my home country? Nobody is coming for the great Mexican dream,” Bensman said.

“The whole thing has changed, the whole dynamic. Because the odds are very high, now, that if you do try to cross that border, you’re going to end up back at square one, number one,” he said. “And number two, if you do happen to make it, as a runner, into the interior, ICE is going to come get you, at some point. That’s a double-whammy, from their perspective, and that is absolutely huge.”

According to Bensman, these dynamics are why “border czar” Tom Homan’s strategy includes intensive messaging to human smugglers and would-be migrants via the news media. “Tom Homan is running around on shows like yours talking this stuff. He’s talking to them. He’s talking to the cartels, and he knows it,” Bensman said.

Bensman described several action items that President Trump has achieved during the first two weeks of his administration as “monumental” — including obtaining the cooperation of Venezuela and Colombia to accept repatriated nationals.

“And not only that, but China is probably next,” Bensman said. “All of these recalcitrant countries around the world are going to have to take back our deportees. And, as Trump says, they’re going to like it.”

Bensman explained why the deportation of at least 600,000 Venezuelans — “one of the largest nationality groups inside the country that crossed illegally” — is more complicated than people realize.

“The vast majority of them didn’t even come from Venezuela,” he said. “They came from Colombia, Ecuador, places they’ve been living for years and years, with asylum, with work authorization. So to send them back to Venezuela is the worst possible thing for them. They probably would prefer to be sent back to these third other countries where they were living happily and prosperously, for years.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s overnight success in convincing the president of Panama not to renew Panama’s “Belt and Road” agreement with China is also “monumental,” Bensman said.

Visiting Panama City on his first foreign diplomatic trip as Secretary of State, Rubio also addressed the crime of human smuggling through Panama’s Darien Gap, the geographic choke-point for stopping dangerous, illegal migration from South America.

“They’re going to close that Darien Gap,” Bensman said. “There is going to be U.S. support for deportation flights, by Panama, for anybody coming through that Darien Gap. And that’s terrorists and Tren de Aragua and all sorts of national security threats. That’s where the Chinese, 80,000, came through.”

Finally, Bensman characterized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s announcement that taxpayer money would no longer fund illegal immigration via rogue non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as also “just monumental.”

Bensman’s investigative work since 2021 has exposed how this funding is used to subsidize and facilitate human smuggling, coordinated by the United Nations and led by the UN’s two main migration agencies, The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Bensman has documented the activities of the UN and the NGOs throughout the migration trail, from Mexico to Panama, Colombia and beyond.

“These NGOs, there’s 230 of them, down there, working with 15 UN agencies for five years to spend billions of dollars — six, seven billion dollars, down there — handing out cash, debit cards, and everything to all of these migrants coming through. To make sure that they can ease their way, grease the skids into the U.S.

“All of a sudden, Noem is saying: No more money — and by the way, this is U.S. taxpayer money. Saying, we’ve shut this fire hose off.”

But Bensman believes the Trump administration still has more to do in order to prevent future issues at the southern border.

“I think they need to next turn their attention to the United Nations agencies as well, who are really kind of the mama and papa bear, down there, arranging the forward movement of millions of migrants.

“They want to spend $1.4 billion in 2025, and another $1.2 billion in 2026 — during the Trump administration! That’s not good. That just keeps the pressure on our border, hoping to induce a failure. So this is a very important move,” Bensman said.