Funny how the media hasn't touted it much, but the great border crisis of 2019 appears to be receding. Not even the cooler weather of fall revived it. Take a look at how Mexico border stories have declined in importance in Axios's graphic on news coverage intensity throughout the past year. It's nearly flatlined.

Which is why the news from Yuma, Arizona is so significant.

According to Fox News:

The mayor of the border city of Yuma, Arizona has withdrawn his city’s state of emergency that was declared in response to this year’s migrant crisis at the southern border -- saying that the crisis has diminished in recent months. “I am grateful to be able to withdraw the Proclamation of Emergency due to the Trump Administration's policy changes that diminish the flow of the migrant family units to the Yuma area and prevent releases into the Yuma community,” Mayor Douglas Nicholls said in a statement earlier this month.

That's a sign that something is working. Yuma had been flooded with illegal migrants and their infrastructure had been threatened. Now the problem is over. Not even the cooler temperatures of fall managed to bring them in. They've now lifted the emergency decree and are busing the migrants they can get to the far more leftist city of El Paso.

What was accomplished by the Trump administration, then, clearly made a difference. National Review's Kevin Williamson recently complained about President Trump being a "failure" because the wall hadn't gone up, but his analysis was pure #neverTrump nonsense (and I wish he'd get off it). The reality is, Trump had been thwarted at every stage of the project to get control of the U.S. borders, by Congress, radical leftwing lawyers, and the press, yet he still managed to find an end-run around the matter to stop the flood of foreign incomers.

In this case, he used diplomatic leverage on Central American countries to persuade them to sign on to deals to force the crush of low-merit asylum seekers to apply for asylum in El Salvador and Guatemala rather than at the U.S. border, where the unvetted incomers would be free to roam around the country.

That was what people wanted, a proper procedure for migrants to enter the country in a legal process if they have merit, and for those who refuse to obey laws, a shutout. Who cares if a wall goes up or not if the diplomatic solution is keeping the illegal inflow to manageable levels?

For all the kvetching about whether there is a wall or not, something is working, something won against great odds and the entire left-industrial establishment. Promises kept. Thanks, President Trump.

Image credit: Ken Lund, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0