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President Donald Trump was elected on a promise to secure the border and deport illegal aliens. On day one, he declared a national emergency, rescinded Biden-era catch-and-release policies, and restored a clear legal standard of entry.
The result? In June, illegal crossings hit a record low for the second consecutive month. And once again, not a single illegal border crosser was released into the interior. This is more than a return to normality; it is the most secure border in American history.
But restoring the rule of law does not stop at the border. Interior enforcement pertains to the entire immigration lifecycle—from arrest to detention to removal. To execute mass deportation, everything at President Trump’s disposal must be fully activated, properly executed, and statutorily entrenched.
Now, with the One Big Beautiful Bill finally signed into law, the Trump administration has no excuse not to deliver across the board on immigration enforcement. The tools exist, and artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important among them.
DETAILS OF TRUMP’S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED AI PLAN REVEALED BY WHITE HOUSE AHEAD OF MAJOR SPEECH
Just last week, the White House officially unveiled America’s AI Action Plan, recognizing AI as a pillar of national strength and charting a bold course to harness it in service of national security and operational efficiency. For immigration enforcement, the plan’s focus on speed, security, and sovereignty aligns perfectly with the tools Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies need to fulfill their missions.
AI is no longer a pilot project or futuristic experiment. If expanded, AI will give immigration enforcement muscle—not by “humanizing” a lawful system, but by accelerating it, cutting bureaucratic bloat, and clearing the path for both mass deportation and faster processing for those doing things the right way.
There is still so much modernizing left to be done. Americans would be surprised to learn that much of the immigration bureaucracy still runs on paper, with some case files flown across the country.
Steps have been taken, however, with DHS now operating 200 AI systems. Some flag human traffickers in real time. Others assist with casework and detect fraud. Most importantly, the best AI tools do what our federal bureaucracy cannot: resolve identities, sync fragmented case data, and preempt years of duplicative review. Used correctly, these tools supercharge enforcement from the inside out.
Consider MetroStar’s modernization of USCIS’s legacy application systems, which marked a turning point in efficiency. By enhancing identity matching, digitizing workflows, and eliminating redundancies like repeat interviews, these upgrades laid the groundwork for faster removals of visa overstays and frivolous asylum seekers. As new leadership moves to cut backlogs across asylum and green card adjudications, AI can help transform a once-paralyzed agency into a streamlined engine.
Other private-sector innovators, such as Airship AI, are already helping agents in real time. Their object detection technology is being deployed to identify human smugglers, drug traffickers, and illegal entrants along the southern border—an operational edge that can’t be understated.
AI is now an operational necessity. President Trump’s January 20 executive order on protecting the U.S. from terrorists and national security threats explicitly requires DHS to screen—to the maximum degree possible—all aliens seeking visas or relief. That means eliminating ambiguity and clearing backlogs, two functions perfectly suited for AI.
The DHS Advisory Council’s AI Mission-Focused Subcommittee has already called artificial intelligence integration into border and immigration operations a core mission imperative and urged rapid deployment with proper oversight. RAND reached a similar conclusion, identifying AI-powered surveillance, behavior detection, and facial recognition as essential to disrupting trafficking and illegal entry.
AI is active, indispensable, and in need of thoughtful expansion. But it is not a magic shield against future administrations.
Any tech that can accelerate enforcement can just as easily be twisted to process millions under a Biden 2.0. That is why this moment matters. Officials must entrench statutory and programmatic guardrails that tether these tools to enforcement outcomes—not to mass entry or ideological discretion.
We’ve already seen what happens when discretion runs wild, with quasi-legal mass entry processed through an app. Employers quietly replacing American workers with cheap foreign labor. And even now, some in the Trump administration want to ensure that illegal aliens can continue working as indentured servants. That path leads straight back to the industrial-scale parole abuse of the Biden era.
The goal, then, is to make this mission endure—contractually, statutorily, and programmatically. That means full-scale detention, streamlined removal, and lawful entry for those who earn it.
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AI is one tool to help make that happen faster, cheaper, and more precisely. It can also supplement proven technology like the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), which, if expanded, can deliver deportation at scale while preserving custody alternatives for overflow.
Still, no form of technology can meet its full potential without proper brick-and-mortar investments and aggressive policy direction. Innovation alone is no substitute for willpower. And pop-up play tents are no substitute for custodial detention facilities.
But we must view AI for what it is: a weapon in the arsenal of enforcement—one that can help ICE finish what the Border Patrol started, while keeping USCIS focused on merit, not mercy.
That’s Trump’s vision: strength at the border, certainty in removal, and using tools to safeguard the rule of law—not subvert it.
AI innovators and proven long-term partners stand ready to help.
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