Over 21,000 were flooding small-town American hospitals and stretching their resources to the limit. Agents were getting sick. They were also coming for surgeries, and we were paying for it. No, I’m not talking about Chinese coronavirus. I’m describing the public health crisis at our border thanks to what was essentially a court-driven invasion exactly this time last year. Yet our government refused to simply enforce our sovereignty, no matter how bad it got. It’s only now due to coronavirus that the DHS is finally enforcing our sovereignty.

Let’s face it: Most of our public policy is not directed by the rule of law but by the signaling of the media’s lack of virtue. The media, with their excessive panic-driven narrative, have driven governors to near-martial-law actions restricting movement of citizens. Thus, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) finally feels it has the ability to at least enforce our border laws against people who have no right to be here.

On Friday, the White House announced that all unauthorized aliens caught crossing illegally or coming without proper documentation will face immediate return to their home countries. No processing, no endless court cases, no detention, no games. Straight-up enforcement of our sovereignty. Why exactly can’t we expect our government to do that all the time?

Last year, I must have written several dozen articles detailing the president’s inherent constitutional and delegated authority to turn away those who seek entry to this country under any circumstance. Yet no matter how bad the situation got for America’s security, including the straining of our hospitals and the concern of communicable diseases (4,200 exposed to mumps), one excuse after another was given as to why we somehow had to indulge bogus asylum claims.

It’s truly hard to understate the degree of public health crisis when you have 1 million people coming from third-world countries in Central America and elsewhere around the world, with hundreds of thousands of them being released into our country immediately without quarantine and incubation. We will never know how much of the resurgence in measles, mumps, whooping cough, and TB in this country is due to this and prior influxes. Yet the CDC never seemed to be concerned.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last March, former acting CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said during his testimony, “Migrants travel north from countries where poverty and disease are rampant,” and large numbers of them “may have never seen a doctor, received immunizations, or lived in sanitary conditions.” Randy Howe, head of operations for CBP’s Office of Field Operations, testified that “their health can be aggravated by the physical toll of the journey.” He elaborated:

In many cases, they arrive at our southern border already exhibiting symptoms of a health issue. … Close quarters on trains and buses that smugglers procure for moving them through Mexico can hasten the spread of communicable diseases. All of these factors leave migrants vulnerable to serious medical complications.

Shockingly, we went another half a year through this massive influx without enforcing our sovereignty. It wasn’t until last week that Trump finally turned them back. The administration invoked 42 U.S. Code § 265 authority “to prohibit, in whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property from such countries or places as he shall designate in order to avert such danger” as communicable diseases.

A Washington Examiner report claimed CBP officers were continuing to let in nonessential persons at ports of entry despite the order to the contrary. Is this the deep state sabotaging the order?

I spoke with a senior DHS official and a White House policy official, and they both confirmed that, in general, the order is indeed being implemented. Illegal aliens without documentation are all being turned around immediately, and that includes the so-called unaccompanied alien minors. The only ones who are not being turned back immediately, according to my sources, are those who are not from Mexico or Central America. But even those are being flown back by ICE immediately to their home countries.

As for the travel between the ports of entry, my DHS source confirmed that nobody without documentation is being let through. “Yes, we are obviously trying to keep our commerce open, so if there is someone who works at a local McDonald’s, we definitely want to keep them working here. We use the same inspection standards that airports are using, no more, no less.”

Thus, conservatives should be pretty happy with the results at the border now. The issue is how long it took us to get here and whether this will continue. While Democrats are using coronavirus to remake America, this administration should at least use it to make illegal immigration illegal permanently. No more lawfare.