President presses Congress for funding, touts new detention law and expanded deportations

The president used his address to intensify his administration’s focus on border enforcement and immigration detention, telling lawmakers the country faces an ‘‘invasion’’ at the southern border and that his administration had achieved sharply lower illegal crossings after deploying forces there.

He said he had declared a national emergency on the southern border ‘‘within hours of taking the oath of office’’ and that those deployments had ‘‘repelled the invasion.’’ The president asked Congress to approve a detailed funding request he said would allow his administration to "eliminate these threats to protect our homeland" and to complete what he called the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.

The president recounted several violent crimes he attributed to unauthorized immigrants and said the very first bill he signed into law ‘‘mandates the detention of all dangerous criminal aliens’’ and is ‘‘called the Lincoln Riley Act.’’ The transcript records the president describing the new law and its stated purpose; the text of the law is not reproduced in the address.

He also highlighted individual stories and enforcement actions: family members of victims, and an account of an agent, Roberto Ortiz, who the president said returned fire during a border patrol encounter. The president characterized criminal cartels as dominating territory immediately south of the border and called for greater cooperation from neighboring countries.

In the speech the president framed these measures as urgent, and he asked congressional leaders by name to send the requested funding so he could sign it quickly. The president’s assertions about crossings, the scale and effectiveness of operations, and the legal reach of the law are reported here as stated; the transcript does not include independent documentation of those claims.