Trump’s Historic Border Crackdown, First 100 Days Media Tour, Eagles at White House: AM Update 4/29

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Megan Kelly.

It's Tuesday, April 29th, 2025, and this is your AM update.

The numbers are down to historic levels.

We have never seen numbers like this.

If we stay on track, it'll break the national record that predates 1960.

In an exclusive interview, Center for Immigration Studies Fellow Todd Bensman breaks down the Trump administration's historic crackdown at the southern border.

So many people are saying, you've got to run again.

President Trump speaks with the Atlantic about his first 100 days and what may be coming next.

And which Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl star spent a morning golfing with President Trump ahead of his team's visit to the White House, and which didn't show up at all?

All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM update.

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In 100 days, the second Trump administration flipping U.S.

immigration policy on its head, dismantling four years of Biden-era policies that effectively opened the southern border.

President Biden taking a series of steps to reverse Trump-era policies, ending the Remain in Mexico program that required asylum seekers to wait outside the U.S.

for their court hearings, terminating Title 42 expulsions, a COVID-era policy that allowed the government to quickly remove illegal aliens as public health threats, launching mass parole programs, facilitating the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries like Venezuela and Haiti, and expanding catch and release practices, leading to a tremendous backlog of illegal immigrants waiting for their never-coming court dates.

President Biden then asking Congress to pass an immigration reform bill, saying without their help, his hands were tied.

For much too long, as you all know, the immigration system has been broken.

And it's long past time to fix it.

That's why months ago I instructed my team to begin negotiations with a bipartisan group of senators to seriously and finally fix our immigration system.

President Trump cruising to victory largely on a promise to lock down the border.

On January 20th, the second Trump administration getting right to work.

President Trump signing a series of immigration-related executive orders, declaring a national emergency at the southern border, reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, terminating the CBP1 app used by the Biden administration to make it easier for migrants to enter the country, and many, many more.

The result?

A historic drop in illegal border crossings.

In March, total border patrol encounters totaling 7,100 in change, representing a 95% decrease from the same time period in 2024.

We spoke to Todd Bensman, fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and author of Overrun, How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S.

History about the historic effort.

This is probably his earliest signature achievement is closing the border and putting it to a place as close to operationally secure as we have ever seen.

The numbers are down to historic levels.

We have never seen numbers like this.

If we stay on track, it'll break.

the national record that predates 1960.

That's when we first started keeping track of the numbers.

So this is a major achievement.

It took all of one hour on the first day of inauguration.

The new president, Trump, just came in and used the tools that were always available to end catch and release and to begin detentions and deportations at 100%.

And that was all it took.

No comprehensive immigration reform necessary.

No root causes had to be

addressed in Central America or any of that stuff.

That was all just a bunch of junk, nothing about it true.

That last reference to root causes, recalling Vice President Kamala Harris's tenure as Biden's border czar, during which she was supposed to prioritize addressing migration through foreign aid initiatives in Central and South America, rather than through direct enforcement at the U.S.

border.

On Monday, President Trump's border czar Tom Homan highlighting the dramatic turnaround in morale among border patrol and ICE agents under the Trump administration.

The morale of ICE and and Border Patrol is at all time high because they're getting to uphold the oath they took and they're enforcing the law.

Border Patrol under Biden administration, I met with hundreds of them.

They felt like Uber drivers and tourist agents.

These men and women joined the ranks of ICE and Border Patrol to enforce the law, make the community safer, and protect national security.

Mr.

Bensman saying the damage ran even deeper, describing how Biden-era policies stripped agents of their core mission, crippling enforcement efforts at the border and inside the country as well.

Border Patrol agents are trained to catch, tackle, arrest, detain, cuff, deport.

That's their cops, they're border cops.

That's what they do.

And so imagine if you were to tell any cop that you have to release all the criminals and reward them for their criminal activity.

ICE agents who were by and large prohibited from

arresting anyone in the interior without permission from Washington go through this whole approval process, and they were chained to their desks.

They were not allowed to do their jobs at all.

In the initial weeks of the second Trump administration, the president receiving strong public support for his handling of the border.

February polling from Pew Research showing 59% of U.S.

adults approved of his efforts to deport individuals in the country illegally.

However, a Friday poll from ABC slash Washington Post finding 53% of Americans now disapprove of President Trump's handling of immigration, the possible shift in public sentiment following intense and slanted media focus on emotional cases.

Stories Mr.

Bensman says are designed to undercut support for the administration's enforcement policies.

One such story now making headlines claiming that the Trump administration deported three American citizen children from two families to Honduras.

On Friday, there were three American citizen children born here who were deported along with their mothers from Louisiana down to Honduras.

A U.S.

district judge says the deportation, quote, had no meaningful process.

These children, ages two, four, and seven are U.S.

citizens and were sent with their mothers who were deported Friday morning.

This gets at the central question about whether the administration is moving too aggressively, too quickly, to carry out these mass deportation operations.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Border Czar Tom Holman dumping cold water on those reports.

On the headline, that's a misleading headline.

Okay, three U.S.

citizens ages four, seven, and two were not deported.

Their mothers who are legally in this country were deported.

The children went with their mothers.

If those children are U.S.

citizens, they can come back into the United States if there's their father or someone here who wants to assume them.

What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested the children to depart with them.

This was a parental decision.

Parenting 101.

The mothers made that choice.

And I tell you what, if we didn't do it, the story today be Trump administration separating families again.

No, we're keeping families together.

So when a parent says,

I want my two-year-old baby to go with me, we made that happen.

They weren't deported.

We don't report U.S.

citizens.

The parents made that decision, not the United States government.

Mr.

Benjamin saying the decrease in public support is part of a strategy by the president's detractors to stymie his agenda.

The public elected him on this and the public uh all the way up until relatively recently uh was overwhelmingly in favor of uh mass deportations uh in the 50 percentile range even for non-criminals but in the 80 percentile range for criminals so the task and challenge for the pro-criminal alien crowd and the pro-illegal immigrant crowd is to put

sob stories, I call it injustice porn, to fill the media with injustice porn stories that are mostly fraudulent, fake, untrue, using narratives that are easily disproved, but which

make their way into multiple news cycles long enough that it can influence public opinion.

And we've seen recently swings in public opinion away from the mass deportation program and some of the particular programs that Trump is doing.

Coming up, President Trump reveals to The Atlantic magazine just how seriously he's considering a run for a third term in office.

And a star Philadelphia Eagles player snaps back at critics angered by his round of golf with President Trump.

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On Monday, the Atlantic dropping a lengthy piece chronicling the president's political comeback from the lowest days in the aftermath of January 6th until now.

The piece, which includes excerpts from an interview with the president, coming as a shock given the Atlantic's contentious history with Mr.

Trump, publishing the infamous suckers and losers story during Mr.

Trump's first term, claiming he disparaged fallen troops during during a 2018 trip to France.

At least 21 Trump officials, including John Bolton, no friend to Mr.

Trump, went on record denying that claim.

More recently, The Atlantic triggering Trump 2.0's first major scandal after National Security Advisor Mike Walls mistakenly looped in Mr.

Goldberg on a chat discussing attacks on Houthi rebels.

Last Thursday, President Trump posting on Truth Social that he would be meeting with, quote, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me.

Mr.

Trump adding that Mr.

Goldberg would be joined by Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, quote, not exactly pro-Trump writers, saying he was doing the interview, quote, out of curiosity to see if The Atlantic could be truthful, adding, the way I look at it, what can be so bad?

I won.

President Trump telling The Atlantic the second term feels much different from the first, saying, quote, the first time I had two things to do, run the country and survive.

I had all these crooked guys.

And the second time, I run the country and the world.

The president later saying, quote, I'm having a lot of fun considering what I do, he said.

You know, what I do is such serious stuff.

The report describes a 2024 team much more focused on building a government committed to the president's agenda.

One staffer summing up the new strategy telling the Atlantic, quote, don't hire anyone who wasn't committed to the agenda the last time.

Despite the natural confidence boost of winning the popular vote, the Atlantic reporting President Trump recognizes and accepts certain limitations on his presidential power.

From the piece, quote, in our March conversation, he seemed frustrated at the notion that a court might try to curb his ability to deport anyone he wanted, however he wanted.

Yet when we asked if he would go so far as to actively disregard a judicial order, his answer suggested that he understood the Constitution would not allow that.

Quote, I think the judge is horrible, he said, referring to James Boesberg, the federal district court judge who had tried to stop deportations of Venezuela migrants to El Salvador.

But Trump then referenced the Supreme Court's more congenial opinion in Trump v.

U.S., which had given him immunity from criminal prosecution for anything he does as part of his core official duties as president.

Quote, but I've had a lot of horrible judges, and I won an appeal, right?

I got immunity on appeal, he said.

He told us that the court is going to do what's right when reviewing his expansive use of executive power.

In recent weeks, the president publicly floating the idea of a third term.

No matter how you look at it, we've got a long time to go.

The president even selling Trump 2028 hats.

The Atlantic asking directly if Mr.

Trump tasked the DOJ with studying the feasibility of running again.

The Atlantic writes, he said he had not, but then seemed to leave open the possibility.

Was this the rare democratic norm he was unwilling to shatter?

That would be a big shattering, wouldn't it?

He mused, laughing.

Well, maybe I'm just trying to shatter.

He noted twice that his supporters regularly shout for him to seek a third term, but concluded, it's not something that I'm looking to do, and I think it would be a very hard thing to do.

The president also addressing the fallout from the Atlantic's so-called signal gate story.

In recent weeks, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth facing a steady stream of media reports portraying the Pentagon as chaotic and out of control.

President Trump once again standing by his team, saying of Hegseth, I think he's going to get it together.

I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him.

Trump also said that Waltz was fine despite being beat up by accidentally adding Goldberg to the Signal chat.

What had Trump told his staff after the controversy?

Maybe don't use Signal, okay?

Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley spotted on Sunday golfing with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Critics of the president quickly sounding off on X.

Mr.

Barkley responding on X, writing, LOL.

Some people are really upset because I played golf and flew to the White House with the president.

Maybe I just respect the office.

Not a hard concept to understand.

Just golfed with Obama not too long ago.

And look forward to finishing my round with Trump.

Now you get out of my mentions with all this politics and have an amazing day.

The star running back and Super Bowl winner ending the post with a laughing, smiling emoji.

On Monday, the Eagles attended a White House ceremony honoring their Super Bowl win, despite earlier reporting that the team might decline the invitation, as many players did during Trump 1.0, causing Mr.

Trump to rescind that invitation.

Quarterback Jalen Hurts, however, opting to skip the event.

Press Secretary Caroline Levitt releasing a statement reading,

The vast majority of the team is coming, and those who cannot attend had scheduling conflicts.

And that'll do it for your AM update.

I'm Megan Kelly.

Join me back here for the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph channel 111 at Newveast, on youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly, and on all podcast platforms.

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