Under former President Joe Biden, America’s border was a chaotic mess, deliberately thrown open to millions upon millions of foreigners without regard for American law or Americans’ safety. President Donald Trump has worked hard to seal the border, stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country, and initiate a mass deportation campaign to return illegal immigrants to their home countries. However, there is still work to do.

Appearing on Wednesday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Executive Director Mark Krikorian described the difference between the border under Biden and the border under Trump as “night and day.” Krikorian noted that the Biden administration ushered millions of illegal immigrants into the U.S. under such programs as parole and temporary protected status (TPS). “That’s on top of the gotaways, the people who got by the Border Patrol, because the Border Patrol was so busy acting as a Walmart greeter at the border for illegal aliens [that] they couldn’t control the border,” he commented. “So it’s literally night and day. It’s the sharpest contrast in policy on anything I’ve ever seen in any area of policy, not even just immigration.”

“The thing that gets everybody’s attention, it’s like the most dramatic change, is at the physical border with Mexico, we’re not letting people go anymore,” Krikorian observed. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported its twelfth consecutive month with zero releases into the U.S. interior, further recording a 94% decrease in encounters with illegal immigrants attempting to violate U.S. immigration law. “There’re still illegal aliens going to try to cross, there’s no question about it, that’s never going away,” Krikorian commented. “But I would say it’s actually better than just the best — not just in the past 50 years, I think, and this is something not hard to prove, but I think the level of illegal crossings is probably the lowest level since the 19th century.”

Krikorian touted other Trump administration victories, like the recent announcement from the U.S. State Department that the U.S. has secured agreements with 20 other countries willing to serve as “third countries” when an illegal immigrant cannot be deported to his home country. “These are safe countries where individuals who refuse to go back to their country of origin can be sent to that country instead,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed in a White House cabinet meeting this week. “What often happens, when you go to the person who’s here unlawfully and say, ‘We’re going to send you to this third country,’ is all of a sudden they decide they’d rather go back to their home country instead.”

“This is a powerful thing,” Krikorian said of the “third country” deportation deals. “Usually their home countries won’t take them back, so we pay Cameroon and Africa or somewhere else to take the illegal aliens,” he explained. Before the second Trump administration, however, “If your country wouldn’t take you back and you were, say, finished your jail sentence, we just had to release people into the country. It was ridiculous,” Krikorian added. “That’s a huge change we’ve seen.”

Krikorian also suggested that the Trump administration could take additional steps to cut off the illegal immigrants population’s access to the labor market and to financial incentives to enter the U.S. “The big thing that we haven’t seen enough of yet from this administration is work-related enforcement, making it harder for illegal immigrants to get jobs, making clear to businesses that if they hire illegals they’re going to be in trouble,” he said. Krikorian added that Border Czar Tom Homan has reported that he is “putting together a broad strategy rather than just sort of going after, you know, raiding the Denny’s, and then everybody just goes and goes across the street to the Golden Corral to work.”

“The reason it’s important to make illegal aliens unemployable is that’s what’s drawing most illegals,” Krikorian shared. While most illegal immigrants are not “public safety threats,” the fact that they can enter the U.S. illegally and get paid and open bank accounts is an attractive motivating factor. “They’re just regular people, they just have no right to be here. If we just focus on criminals, then the people who aren’t criminals are going to say, ‘Look, well, I’m not a rapist. I’m just doing a job here. So I’m not going to pack up and leave,’” Krikorian summarized. “The way you get self-deportation to ramp up is to make it impossible for illegal immigrants — as impossible as you can — to get jobs, to get bank accounts,” he continued. “All of those things, so that it’s impractical to live here as an illegal immigrant, so more people will decide to pack up and go back home.”

In a recent executive order, Trump issued new guidance to banks, correcting long-standing Treasury Department errors and requiring that banks and other financial institutions seek proof of U.S. citizenship or legal work authorization before allowing individuals to open accounts, take out loans, or conduct business.