Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently completed a three-country tour in South America to capitalize on the momentum the Trump administration has with ensuring illegal immigrants and hardened criminals do not reach the United States’ southern border.

Noem and her team traveled to Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador. While it is all considered Latin America, each country and its politics are unique in terms of how the United States approaches them to help combat the various factions that want to have open borders.

In Argentina, President Javier Milei and his administration are more than happy to work with the United States to meet the thresholds required to be part of the Visa Waiver Program once again. The Trump administration says the country is a prime candidate to be in the VWP because Argentinians have the lowest visa overstay rate in Latin America.

Argentina was part of the VWP but it was removed in 2002 after many of its citizens started to stay in the U.S. illegally past the 90-day limit due to economic hardships. Noem also signed agreements to streamline repatriations and to put safeguards in place so certain hardened criminals are not immediately released from custody once they are back in Argentina.

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Chile is a different story. The country’s president is a far-leftist who is not shy to criticize President Donald Trump. However, like the United States, Gabriel Boric had to deal with the large influx of Venezuelans in his country and the problems that sprang up, namely dealing with Tren de Aragua. With a population of nearly 20 million, over one million of those people are Venezuelans.

Unlike far-leftists in the United States, Boric realized if he wants to have any chance to be reelected, he was going to have to take measures to address public safety threats like TdA.

That is why Chile is going to work with the United States to be fully integrated into the Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program. The program will be used to help screen out potential public safety threats attempting to enter the United States from Chile, along with helping Chile’s law enforcement of identifying those threats residing in their country.

All of that to say is the Trump administration is exposing the farce the Biden-Harris administration was putting on in their attempts to “address” the border crisis they deliberately created. Harken back to how at the very beginning, Joe Biden tasked his DEI-hire of a vice president to solve the “root causes” of illegal immigration within Central America.

How did Harris work on the issue? All she accomplished was creating a viral meme template by telling people while she was in Guatemala: “Do not come. Do not come.” Did illegal immigrants listen to her? No, of course not and the data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection prove it. Sure, the Biden-Harris administration was telling people to not illegally enter the U.S. but their policies were proving to those same people that they could invade our nation.

Now under Trump 2.0, not only does our secured border tell those who waited too long that the opportunity has passed, but their home nation is going to actually work with the U.S. to deter them from leaving in the first place. The policies finally match with the messaging coming from the federal government.

There is still a long way to go within South America. While we have some strong allies and countries who may not fully like us, but will work with us, there are other places like Brazil and Colombia where we are nearly still at square one.

Ultimately, the more deals the Trump administration makes within the continent, the more pressure is put on those adversarial nations who would rather thumb their noses at us. Even if they want to try to run out the clock on Trump since he can’t run for president again, it’s not a guarantee much would change with, say, a JD Vance administration.

The tides are changing as foreign nations know the time of taking advantage of “los gringos” is over. Noem put in the work of flying far south and packed a busy schedule to be Trump’s surrogate on this important issue. The deals made this week confirm they are doing more than paying lip service. As always with Latin America on the topic of immigration, it will be up to the U.S. to ensure our partners are holding up their end of the deal.