Transcript: Trump’s Tariff Scam Accidentally Wrecked by Stephen Miller

Isacson: Yeah, absolutely. There was a record number of migrants at the U.S.–Mexico border in December of 2023. And there was a real crackdown moment between a lot of serious discussions between Biden administration officials and Mexican government officials, after which Mexico did increase the number of military. [They had] police and migration personnel all on main roads along the railroad routes; a lot of patrols; some more deployment on the borderline itself—although once you hit the borderline, most of the people are easier to find on the inside.

Mexico, during the Trump’s first term and the Biden years, was generally getting between 10,000 and 20,000 migrants apprehended every month. By the second half of 2023 and all through 2024, it was well over 90,000, a multiple of what it was before. And that’s because of these checkpoints and a very aggressive program of when they found migrants especially at the northern border with the U.S., [they] really systematically, by the tens of thousands a month, shipping them back down to the southern part of Mexico and trying to keep them there close to Guatemala and Central America.

Sargent: I want to clarify that you’re talking about 90,000 migrants per month intercepted by Mexico. I want to make a distinction here between Mexico putting troops along the border and Mexico doing a crackdown all through its territory. As you say, the key here is not for Mexico to necessarily put a whole bunch of troops on its side of the border. It’s more to stop the migration northward at many different choke points—roads, railroads, bridges. That’s what Biden actually secured from Mexico, right?