A Real Border Matters to Saluda County – and Every American Community
For years, Washington treated the southern border as someone else’s problem. The costs did not stay there. They reached communities like ours—through strained schools and emergency rooms, pressure on housing, higher local tax bills, and a labor market where people who follow the rules can be undercut by off-the-books hiring.
This is not an argument against legal immigration. America has always welcomed people who come lawfully, work hard, respect the law, and want to become part of this country. It is an argument for a country that still has a border.
When millions enter or remain illegally, the costs do not vanish. They are passed to schools, hospitals, local governments, churches, charities, and working families. Unauthorized immigrants generally cannot collect many federal benefits in their own names. But households often include U.S.-citizen children who are eligible for Medicaid, school meals, WIC, and tax credits; so, downstream from that illegal immigration, is a rapidly growing number of babies that qualify for citizenship – an taxpayer-funded benefits.
Those children should not be blamed, but taxpayers should still be honest about the public cost of large-scale illegal immigration.
One recent Center for Immigration Studies analysis, using Census data, estimated that 61% of households headed by an illegal immigrant used at least one major welfare program, compared with 37% of U.S.-born households. That is an estimate from an enforcement-minded group, not the last word—but it points to a common-sense fact: when Washington loses control of the border, local communities pay.
Saluda is not “somewhere else.”
Saluda School District 1 serves about 2,500 students in a rural county with a limited tax base. More than 45% of students are Hispanic/Latino, and many families face economic hardship. Teachers work hard, but there are only so many specialists, so many hours in a school day, and so much room in a local budget.
When a small district must absorb extra language, transportation, counseling, and classroom demand, every student feels it. The question is not whether every child deserves a good education. Of course they do. The question is whether Washington was justified in creating this crisis and then sending the bill to small counties and towns.
The Trump Effect
Policy matters.
When illegal entry no longer means automatic release into the interior, fewer people pay smugglers for the trip. In May 2025, Border Patrol recorded 8,725 southwest-border apprehensions between ports of entry—a 93% drop from May 2024. CBP also reported zero Border Patrol releases into the interior that month. In June, it reported zero parole releases at the southwest border for a second straight month.
Those numbers do not reset school enrollment or local budgets overnight, but the direction a policy sets does matter.
A secure border means fewer families risking the journey, fewer openings for cartels, more fairness for legal immigrants and honest workers, and a chance for communities to plan.
That is the Trump Effect: not a slogan, but laws that mean what they say.
Why Party Matters
A president can set the direction. He cannot fund detention beds, agents, infrastructure, immigration courts, and removals by himself.
He needs a Congress that will support enforcement instead of weakening it in every budget fight.
Individual Democrats differ in what they say on illegal immigration and border enforcement. But be honest with yourself, Congressional Democrats, as a party, almost always vote together—and their national leadership has repeatedly backed weaker enforcement, broad release policies, and resistance to the tools that brought crossings down. In fact, immigration and border enforcement were a major part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) and not one single Democrat in Congress voted for it.
Not one.
President Trump’s progress will not last without a Republican Congress willing to fund and defend the policies that produced it.
A Republican vote is a vote to keep reducing illegal crossings, discourage smugglers, and give communities room to recover from Biden disastrous border policies.
A Democratic vote, in Congress, is a vote for the party that created and protected the opposite approach—and sent the costs to local taxpayers, schools, hospitals, and working families.
This election is bigger than one candidate. It is about which party writes the laws, controls the budget, and decides whether the United States enforces its own border.
You do not have to hate immigrants to want a secure border.
You do not have to live on the Rio Grande to know this reaches every school district and every working family.
The border was neglected. Americans paid the price.
Protect the gains: keep Republicans in Congress.
A vote for Republicans on November 3 does mean you support everything President Trump says or does. But it does mean you recognize that his policies- specially on border enforcement have been very good for America.
And very good for Saluda County.
~ The Trump Effect Hit the Border. Only a Republican Congress Can Keep It. ~
Sources
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection, May 2025 Monthly Update and June 2025 enforcement updates.
• Saluda 01 enrollment and demographic data.
• Center for Immigration Studies, “Welfare Use by Immigrants and the U.S.-Born, 2024.”
