The Trump White House has successfully flooded the zone in its first 30 days, flummoxing its opponents with a pace and scale even the most ardent anti-Trumper could not have expected. Among all the moves Trump has taken to combat illegal immigration, however, one executive order signed last week stands out and could be the game changer the country so desperately needs.

President Trump’s  order to end federal spending on those here illegally is one of the most meaningful steps taken to end America’s long-running problems with illegal immigration.

“The surge in illegal immigration, enabled by the previous Administration, is siphoning dollars and essential services from American citizens while state and local budgets grow increasingly strained,” the order states. “With this Executive Order, President Trump is ensuring taxpayer resources are used to protect the interests of American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

How many dollars are there in question? A report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last year targeted federal expenditures on illegal aliens during the four years of the Biden administration. The CBO claimed that that the federal government spent $177 billion in benefits for adult illegal aliens and their children who were admitted under Biden. Add that to another $101 billion of other federal spending on illegals, and CBO’s figure comes to $277 billion.

The report further specified where that money goes. Among the biggest categories were Obamacare premium tax credits ($59 billion), Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit ($43 billion), Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as CHIP ($40 billion), and food stamps ($15 billion). This only includes federal spending. A study in 2023 found the annual net cost of illegal immigration to the United States at the federal, state, and local levels, is $150.7 billion.  

While using expenditures in this way clearly offers no benefit to American citizens, there are additional negative consequences for Americans that result from using such vast resources on illegal aliens. Namely, it serves as a huge incentive for further waves of foreign nationals to make passage to America. In spite of what activists and the media would have you believe, illegal aliens and those who encourage them to come here are not all poverty-stricken, largely uneducated peasants. In reality they pay close attention to changes and developments in U.S. government immigration policy, and act accordingly.

While speaking in a Democratic presidential primary debate in 2019, Joe Biden urged those outside the United States seeking entry to “surge the border” if he were to become president. As a result of that invitation, combined with ample social welfare benefits promised to them by sanctuary cities and a markedly permissive federal posture toward illegal immigration, more than 10 million foreigners entered the country illegally during Biden’s presidency.

Compare that to United States under new management with Trump. Federal benefits to illegals have been halted. Sanctuary cities are being threatened with loss of federal money for harboring border crossers. Border Czar Tom Homan has led a nationwide effort to apprehend and deport criminal aliens. Human trafficking cartels on the borders have been designated as terrorist groups. Construction of the border wall system has resumed. These are just some of the many components of Trump’s full-court press on border insecurity.

The result? Since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration to the end of the month, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped 85 percent from the same period in 2024, according to data obtained by ABC News. In the 11 days after Jan. 20, migrants apprehended at ports of entry declined by 93 percent. When benefits and lax enforcement of immigration laws dries up, so too does the relentless push of illegal aliens to cross our borders.

Every immigration-related executive order and policy change in the second Trump administration—including border enforcement, arrests, and deportations from the interior, defunding sanctuary cities, and rehabilitating morale at enforcement agencies under Homeland Security—was long overdue after four lawless years under Biden. Ending federal benefits to illegal aliens, however, is perhaps the most meaningful step to de-incentivizing lawbreaking at our borders and resetting the government’s priorities back to its lawful citizens and residents.