Under the LA declaration, the Biden-Harris administration has secured unprecedented cooperation to curb irregular migration. Today, for example, Mexico is doing more to stem irregular migration to the United States than it has ever done before.

Critically, the LA declaration built on successful migrant integration efforts in Latin America and spurred multiple countries to create new temporary legal status programs for migrants in order to stabilize these populations and to provide an alternative to migrating further. In May 2024, countries such as Ecuador, Colombia, and Costa Rica at the third ministerial meeting on the LA declaration announced regularization programs for various irregular migrant populations - building on the nearly 2 million Venezuelans who had already been provided status in Colombia alone. Today, more than 80 percent of those displaced in Latin America and the Caribbean have found a home in the region and have not proceeded to the U.S.-Mexico border.

So far in fiscal year 2024, compared with fiscal year 2021, there has been a 14 percent drop in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection average monthly encounters from Guatemala, a 39 percent drop from El Salvador, and a 50 percent drop from Honduras.

Combined with a recent executive order signed by President Biden related to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border and the use of the statutory immigration parole authority to build new, lawful pathways, these layered efforts to mitigate, manage, and order migration have, in recent months, reduced encounters between ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border to below what they were during the same months in 2019.

Vice President Harris' work in northern Central America and the Biden-Harris administration's efforts through the LA declaration have set the United States up for precisely that kind of sustained order - but only if elected leaders turn away from weaponizing immigration and work on real solutions.

Thousands of new jobs had been created there, thanks to a successful effort by the city's leadership and Chamber of Commerce to attract new business to Springfield, which sits between Columbus and Dayton. Once a manufacturing hub, Springfield saw its economy shrink after factories closed and jobs migrated overseas. By about 2015, its population had dwindled to under 60,000, from about 80,000 in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Companies that set up shop, however, confronted a dire labor shortage.

Haitians in Florida, Haiti and South America heard from friends and family about Springfield and its need for workers. They began arriving to take jobs in warehouses, manufacturing and the service sector, and employers urged the new workers to encourage other Haitians to join them.

What started as a trickle swelled to a surge after the Covid-19 pandemic, coinciding with deepening political and economic instability in Haiti after the assassination of the president in 2021. Some of the Haitians in Springfield have lived in the United States for many years and have permanent legal status, or green cards. Some crossed the southern border or flew directly to the United States over the last few years.

Many are beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status, a federal designation that gives nationals of a country in crisis - typically after a natural disaster or political upheaval - the opportunity to remain in the United States legally, regardless of whether they entered the country lawfully.

The Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status through Feb. 3, 2026 for Haitians who arrived in the United States on or before June 3, 2024, and that status can be renewed. Haiti is one of a number of countries whose nationals can qualify for TPS, including Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia and is at war.

Some of the Haitians in Springfield have applied for asylum, which allows them to remain in the country until their case has been adjudicated by immigration authorities. Still others have been aided by a Biden administration initiative that enables people from Haiti who have a financial sponsor in the United States to apply to enter the country and remain here legally for two years. They do not receive green cards.

By August that number was down to 10 million since President Biden took office, then back up to 15 million.

In more recent rallies, it's topped 20 million.

"The simple part is seal the border, deport all the illegals," Stephen Miller told an audience at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.

"You get in; you have two policy objectives that you proceed with utter determination on: seal the border, no illegals in, everyone here goes out. That's very straightforward," Miller said.

"You deputize the National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement. And then you also deploy the military to the southern border, not just with a mission to observe but with an impedance and denial mission," Miller said. "In other words, you reassert the fundamental constitutional principle that you don't have a right to enter into our sovereign territory to even request the asylum claim. The military has the right to establish a fortress position on the border and to say no one can cross here at all.