Last week, over 60,000 migrants — mostly military-age men — surged into Ceuta, a Spanish city of just 84,000. They swam around sea barriers, climbed fences, and charged the land border in a chaotic rush that briefly swelled the enclave’s population by more than half. Dozens died by drowning or in the crush. Local authorities were overwhelmed. Spain’s government scrambled the military and police. A human wave briefly swallowed a tiny European outpost on the edge of Africa.
That is not a faraway tragedy. It is a warning shot for us.
America already lived the slower, larger version of the same failure under the Biden-Harris regime. For four years, the previous administration systematically dismantled operational control of the border. Catch and release became standard practice. Parole authority was stretched far beyond its original purpose to admit hundreds of thousands. The asylum system was gamed into a revolving door by lowering the credible fear standard and allowing claims from those who had already passed through multiple safe countries. The Flores settlement continued to incentivize adults to bring or send children, knowing release into the interior was nearly guaranteed. The result was predictable: record illegal crossings, an overwhelmed Border Patrol, and a steady flow of gotaways.
Cities and towns across the country absorbed the consequences. Hotel rooms and shelters filled. School systems were strained. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids poured across the same border, killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. Criminal migrants — including gang members — were released pending hearings that often never materialized. Ordinary citizens paid the bill in higher taxes, and, in too many cases, their lives.
President Donald Trump fixed the crisis the only way it has ever been fixed: restoring deterrence. Enforcement priorities changed. Catch and release was curtailed. The message reached the cartels and the would-be crossers: the border is no longer open. Operational control returned. That success is real and undeniable.
But it is also temporary. Executive actions last only as long as the president who issues them. The next Democratic administration can reopen every loophole with a signature. We do not need another four-year experiment to prove what the last one already demonstrated.
Congress has the tool to make the progress permanent. The Permanent Trump Secure Border Act, authored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and supported by the House Freedom Caucus, closes the gaps that enabled the previous crisis. It raises the credible fear standard so that migrants cannot simply claim fear and walk free. It bars asylum for those who transited safe third countries. It ends the mass abuse of parole. It requires detention or prompt return when operational control cannot be maintained. Additional provisions expand criminal bars to asylum, tighten enforcement against visa overstays, and restore the principle that entry must occur at ports of entry under legal process. These are not extreme or radical measures. They are the basic requirements of any country that intends to remain a sovereign nation rather than a temporary landing zone.
The Left will predictably scream “cruelty.” That charge should be rejected without apology. There is nothing cruel about a nation protecting its citizens, its laws, and its future. Real cruelty is advertising an open border, then watching people die in the desert or drown off a Spanish beach. Real cruelty is releasing known criminals into American communities and pretending the next preventable murder is an unforeseeable tragedy. Borders are not hate. They are the difference between a functioning country and a jurisdiction that has surrendered control of who enters and who stays.
Ceuta showed what happens when that line collapses overnight in a city the size of a midsize American suburb. Scale the same failure to Texas, Arizona, and the rest of the country, and the costs become catastrophic. Europe is already living with the long-term consequences of similar policy failures: strained welfare systems, parallel societies, and rising political backlash. America does not have to repeat the experiment.
TRUMP WAS RIGHT: EUROPE’S BORDER CHAOS PROVES WEAK POLICY KILLS
When Congress returns in September, Republican leadership must put the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act on the floor and pass it.
Codify the policies that worked. Close the doors that failed. America still gets to choose whether it remains a sovereign nation capable of self-government or becomes the next soft target for whoever decides to walk across.
Michael Cloud, Mark Harris, and Sheri Biggs are members of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving the people of Texas’s 27th District, North Carolina’s 8th District, and South Carolina’s 3rd District, respectively.