Fighting illegal immigration and border management was the focus of US President Donald Trump‘s address on Wednesday night, with him directly attacking Joe Biden, claiming his administration has achieved “zero illegal entries” without the need for new legislation.

Opening his address to the nation, Donald Trump praised his administration’s policies to curb illegal immigration, claiming that in the past seven months “not a single illegal immigrant” has been allowed to enter the United States. “For seven months, zero illegal aliens have entered our country, which everyone said was absolutely impossible,” he said from the White House.

The US president turned against his predecessor, Joe Biden, recalling that the former president had said that legislative intervention from Congress was needed to close the border. “It turned out we didn’t need legislation. We needed a new president,” he said, adding that his administration took “the worst border in the world” and turned it into “the strongest in the history of the country.”

Illegal immigration has been a central issue in both Trump’s presidency and his policy agenda.

Trump administration officials point to a dramatic decline in border crossings, a trend that, it is noted, began in 2024, when the Biden administration moved to impose severe restrictions on asylum status at the U.S.-Mexico border over the summer.

The low levels of apprehensions at the border, however, indeed stand in stark contrast to the early years of the Biden administration, when at times hundreds or thousands of people were crossing into the United States every day.

In contrast to his first term, Donald Trump has now focused his crackdown on illegal immigration at home, stepping up arrests of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States and increasing deportations. The Department of Homeland Security announced this month that more than 605,000 deportations have taken place since January.