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How a former factory worker rose to South Korea’s presidency 

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How a former factory worker rose to South Korea’s presidency 

South Korean President-elect Lee Jae-myung has always described his politics as deeply personal, born of the “wretchedness” of his youth.

In his last presidential run three years ago, when his conservative opponent Yoon Suk Yeol, a former prosecutor, appealed to the rule of law, Lee told a story from his childhood: how his family’s poverty pushed him into factory assembly lines while his peers were entering middle school — and how his mother would walk him to work every morning, holding his hand.

“Behind every policy that I implemented was my own impoverished and abject life, the everyday struggles of ordinary South Koreans,” he said in March 2022. “The reason I am in politics today is because I want to create … a world of hope for those who are still suffering in the same puddle of poverty and despair that I managed to escape.”

Lee Jae-myung, foreground center, joins a rally against then-President Yoon Suk Yeol at the National Assembly in Seoul in December 2024.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

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Although Lee lost that race by 0.73 of a percentage point — or 247,077 votes — it was Yoon who set the stage for Lee’s comeback. Impeached halfway into his term for his declaration of martial law in December, the former president is now on trial for insurrection.

In the snap presidential election that took place Tuesday, the liberal Lee emerged the winner, with South Korea’s three major television broadcasters calling the race just before midnight here.

On the campaign trail, Lee framed his run as a mission to restore the country’s democratic norms. But he also returned to the theme that has, over the years, evolved from childhood yearning into his signature political brand: the promise of a society that offers its most vulnerable a “thick safety mat” — a way out of the puddle.

Born in December 1963, the fifth of seven siblings, Lee grew up in Seongnam, a city near the southeastern edge of Seoul that, by the time his family settled there in 1976, was known as a neighborhood for those who had been evicted from the capital’s shantytowns.

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The family rented a single semi-basement room by a local market, where his father made a living as a cleaner. At times his family lived on discarded fruit he picked up along his route. Lee’s mother worked as a bathroom attendant just around the corner.

Lee spent his teenage years hopping from one factory to another to help. His first job, at 13, was soldering lead at a jewelry maker for 12 hours a day, breathing in the acrid fumes. At another job, the owner skipped out without paying Lee three months’ worth of wages.

A few years later, while operating a press machine at a baseball glove factory, Lee suffered an accident that permanently disfigured his left arm. In despair, Lee attempted to end his own life. He survived only because the pharmacist he went to for sleeping pills had caught wind of his intentions, giving him digestive medication instead.

People walk past rows of banners on a street

Banners featuring ruling and opposition presidential candidates hang over a street in Seoul days before an election in March 2022.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

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Lee then began studying for middle school and high school at night after getting off work. He proved to be a gifted student, earning himself a full ride to Chung-Ang University to study law.

After passing South Korea’s bar exam in 1986, he was moved by a lecture given by Roh Moo-hyun, a human rights lawyer who went on to become president in 2003, and the 26-year-old Lee opened up his own legal practice to do the same.

Seongnam by then was rapidly developing, becoming the site of several projects, and Lee threw himself into local watchdog activism.

Ha Dong-geun, 73, who spent a decade organizing in the city with Lee, recalled the day they met: The latter wore an expression of great urgency — “like something bad would happen if he didn’t immediately hit the ground running.”

He added: “He wasn’t afraid of what others thought of him.”

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Ha remembered Lee as a keen strategic mind, with a knack for “finding out his opponent’s weaknesses.” Yet despite the noise they made, substantive change proved harder to achieve, leading to Lee’s political awakening in 2004.

A year earlier, two of the city’s major hospitals had shut down, threatening the accessibility of emergency care in its poorest neighborhoods. But though Lee’s campaign had gathered nearly 20,000 signatures from residents to build a public hospital in their place, the proposal was struck down almost immediately by the city council.

“Those in power do not care about the health and lives of people unless there are profits to be made,” Lee wrote in 2021 of his reaction then. “If they won’t do it, let’s do it ourselves. Instead of asking for it from someone else, I will become mayor and do it with my own hands.”

 A man with dark hair, in glasses, lying on the ground with eyes closed, with hands placed over his neck

Lee Jae-myung was attacked and injured during a January 2024 visit to the city of Busan in South Korea.

(Sohn Hyung-joo / Yonhap / AP)

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Lee was mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018. During that time, he repaid over $400 million in municipal debt left behind by his predecessor. He moved his office down from the ninth to the second floor, frequently appearing in person to field questions or complaints from citizens.

But he was best known for his welfare policies, which he rolled out despite intense opposition from the then-conservative central government: free school lunches, free school uniforms for middle-schoolers and financial support for new mothers seeking postpartum care. For all 24-year-old citizens, the city also provided an annual basic income of around $720 in the form of cash vouchers that could be used at local businesses.

In 2016, when the plight of a high school student who couldn’t afford sanitary pads using a shoe insole instead made national headlines, the city also added a program that gave underprivileged teenage girls cash for female hygiene products. A few years later, Lee also made good on his campaign promise to build the public hospital that had first propelled him into politics.

“My personal experiences made me aware of how cruel this world can be to those who have nothing,” he said in 2021.

Though it has been years since Lee left the city to become the governor of Gyeonggi province and to stage three presidential runs, his track record still inspires fierce loyalty in Seongnam’s working-class neighborhoods, where Lee is remembered as a doer who looked after even the little things.

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“His openness and willingness to communicate resonated with a lot of people,” said Kim Seung-man, 67, a shop owner in Sangdaewon Market, where Lee’s family eked out a living in the 1970s. “Working-class people identify with him because he had such a difficult childhood.”

A man raises a fist as he speaks while holding a red sign, joined by a large crowd also holding signs in the street

People shout slogans during a rally on April 4, 2025, to celebrate impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s removal from office by the Constitutional Court.

(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)

And while the Seongnam Citizens Medical Center — which opened in 2020 — is deep in the red and has become a target for Lee’s critics who dismiss his welfare policies as cheap populism, Kim says it is a lifeline to this working-class neighborhood.

“It was a treatment hub for COVID patients during the pandemic,” he said. “Serving the public good means doing so regardless of whether it is profitable or not.”

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Beyond Seongnam’s working-class neighborhoods, Lee has provoked in many an equally intense dislike — a fact that cannot be explained by his policies alone.

Some have attributed this to his brusque, sometimes confrontational demeanor, others to classist prejudice. Lee has pointed to his status as an “outsider” in the world of South Korean establishment politics, where the paths of most ambitious young politicians follow a script he has eschewed: getting in line behind a party heavyweight who will open doors to favorable legislative seats.

“I have never become indebted to anyone during my time in politics,” Lee said at a news conference last month.

He has faced attacks from within his own party, and conservatives have cast him as a tyrant and a criminal, noting allegations against him in legal cases. Former President Yoon cited the “legislative tyranny” of the Lee-led liberal opposition as justification for declaring martial law in December.

“There are still controversies over character or ethics trailing Lee,” said Cho Jin-man, a political scientist at Duksung Women’s University. “He doesn’t have a squeaky clean image.”

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Since losing the 2022 election, Lee has faced trial on numerous charges, including election law violations and the mishandling of a real estate development project as mayor of Seongnam — indictments which Lee has decried as politically motivated attacks by Yoon and his allies.

A man with dark hair, in glasses, dark suit and tie, speaks before a microphone

Lee Jae-myung speaks during a Dec. 15 news conference about the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol.

(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)

Few of the allegations against Lee have stuck. Others, like an election law clause that prohibits candidates from lying during their campaigns, is an oft-abused technicality that would leave few politicians standing were it consistently enforced.

“On the contrary, these have only led to perceptions that there are problems with the prosecution service,” Cho said.

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In recent months, Lee has tried to smooth the rougher edges of his public persona, vowing to mend the country’s increasingly combustible partisan rifts.

Last year, after he survived an assassination attempt in which the assailant’s blade nicked a major vein in his neck, Lee denounced the “politics of hate” that had taken root in the country, calling for a new era of mutual respect and coexistence.

In his recent campaign, Lee has billed his welfare agenda, which includes pledges for better labor protections as well as more public housing and public healthcare, not as class warfare but as commonsense pragmatism, reflecting his efforts to win over moderate conservatives.

But there are still questions whether Lee, whose party now controls both the executive and legislative branches, will be successful.

”He now has a clear path to push through what he wants very efficiently,” Cho said. “But the nature of power is such that those who hold it don’t necessarily exercise restraint.”

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Although Lee has promised to not seek retribution against his political enemies as president, he has also made it clear that those who collaborated with former President Yoon’s illegal power grab will be held accountable — a move that will inevitably inflame partisan discord.

His working-class background has not staved off criticisms from labor activists, who say his proposal to boost the domestic semiconductor industry would walk back the rights of its workers.

That background will also do little for Lee’s first and most pressing agenda item: dealing with President Trump, whose tariffs on South Korean cars, steel and aluminum are set to fully go into effect in July.

“I don’t think Lee and Trump will have good chemistry,” Cho said.

“They both have such strong personalities, but they are so different in terms of political ideology and personal upbringing.”

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Sen Murphy warns ‘people are going to die’ as Congress punts on expiring Obamacare subsidies

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Sen Murphy warns ‘people are going to die’ as Congress punts on expiring Obamacare subsidies

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A bipartisan Obamacare fix remains out of reach in the Senate, for now, and lawmakers can’t agree on who is at fault. 

While many agree that the forthcoming healthcare cliff will cause financial pain, the partisan divide quickly devolved into pointing the finger across the aisle at who owns the looming healthcare premium spikes that Americans who use the healthcare exchange will face. 

Part of the finger-pointing has yielded another surprising agreement: Lawmakers don’t see the fast-approaching expiration of the Biden-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies as Congress failing to act in time.

“Obviously, it’s not a failure of Congress to act,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital. “It’s a failure of Republicans to act. Democrats are united and wanting to expand subsidies. Republicans want premium increases to go up.”

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Partisan rancor over Obamacare has seeped into how lawmakers view the effect that expiring subsidies will have on their constituents. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., argued that it was a “life or death” situation, while Republicans contended that Democrats set up the very cliff they maligned.  (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

DEMOCRATS’ LAST-MINUTE MOVE TO BLOCK GOP FUNDING PLAN SENDS LAWMAKERS HOME EARLY

Senate Republicans and Democrats both tried, and failed, to advance their own partisan plans to replace or extend the subsidies earlier this month. And since then, no action has been taken to deal with the fast-approaching issue, guaranteeing that the subsidies will lapse at the end of the year.

A report published last month by Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit healthcare think tank, found that Americans who use the credits will see an average increase of 114% in their premium costs.

The increase can vary depending on how high above the poverty level a person is. The original premium subsidies set a cap at 400% above the poverty level, while the enhanced subsidies, which were passed during the COVID-19 pandemic, torched the cap.

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For example, a person 60 years or older making 401% of the poverty level, or about $62,000 per year, would on average see their premium prices double. That number can skyrocket depending on the state. Wyoming clocks in at the highest spike at 421%.

SENATE MULLS NEXT STEPS AFTER DUELING OBAMACARE FIXES GO UP IN FLAMES

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., doesn’t want to blow up Obamacare or get rid of Obamacare subsidies, but he does want to provide Americans with more options for healthcare.  (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

In Murphy’s home state of Connecticut, premiums under the same parameters would hike in price by 316%.

“When these do lapse, people are going to die,” Murphy said. “I mean, I was talking to a couple a few months ago who have two parents, both with chronic, potentially life-threatening illnesses, and they will only be able to afford insurance for one of them. So they’re talking about which parent is going to survive to raise their three kids. The stakes are life and death.”

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Both sides hold opposing views on the solution. Senate Republicans argue that the credits effectively subsidize insurance companies, not patients, by funneling money directly to them, and that the program is rife with fraud.

Senate Democrats want to extend the subsidies as they are, and are willing to negotiate fixes down the line. But for the GOP, they want to see some immediate reforms, like income caps, anti-fraud measures and more stringent anti-abortion language tied to the subsidies.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who produced his own healthcare plan that would convert subsidies into health savings accounts (HSAs), argued that congressional Democrats “set this up to expire.”

SENATE REPUBLICANS LAND ON OBAMACARE FIX, TEE UP DUELING VOTE WITH DEMS

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., panned Senate Democrats’ Obamacare subsidy proposal as “obviously designed to fail.”  (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

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But he doesn’t share the view that the subsidies’ expected expiration is a life-or-death situation.

“I’m not taxing somebody who makes 20 bucks an hour to pay for healthcare for somebody who makes half a million dollars a year, that’s what they did,” he told Fox News Digital. “All they did was mask the increase in healthcare costs. That’s all they did with it.”

Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., similarly scoffed at the notion, and told Fox News Digital, “The Democrat plan to extend COVID-era Obamacare subsidies might help less than half a percent of the American population.”

“The Republican plan brings down healthcare costs for 100% of Americans,” he said. “More competition, expands health savings accounts. That needs to be the focus.”

Democrats are also not hiding their disdain for the partisan divide between their approaches to healthcare.

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Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told Fox News Digital that the idea that this “is a congressional failure and not a Republican policy is preposterous.”

“They’ve hated the Affordable Care Act since its inception and tried to repeal it at every possible opportunity,” he said, referring to Obamacare. “The president hates ACA, speaker hates ACA, majority leader hates ACA, rank-and-file hate ACA. And so this is not some failure of bipartisanship.”

While the partisan rancor runs deep on the matter of Obamacare, there are Republicans and Democrats working together to build a new plan. Still, it wouldn’t deal with the rapidly approaching Dec. 31 deadline to extend the subsidies.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., predicted that the Senate would have a long road to travel before a bipartisan plan came together in the new year, but he didn’t rule it out.

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“It’s the Christmas season. It would take a Christmas miracle to execute on actually getting something done there,” he said. “But, you know, I think there’s a potential path, but it’ll be heavy lift.”

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Column: What Epstein ‘hoax’? The facts are bad enough

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Column: What Epstein ‘hoax’? The facts are bad enough

Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen were among the familiar faces in the latest batch of photographs released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in connection to the late Jeffrey Epstein. With the Justice Department preparing to make additional files public, the images underscore an uncomfortable truth for us all: The convicted sex offender moved comfortably among some of the most intelligent men in the world. Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.

Also in the release was a photograph of a woman’s lower leg and foot on what appears to be a bed, with a paperback copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” visible in the background. The 1955 novel centers on a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl. Epstein, a serial sexual abuser, famously nicknamed one of his private planes “The Lolita Express.” And we are to believe that some of the globe’s brightest minds could not put the dots together?

Donald Trump, who once described himself as “a very stable genius,” included.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Later, the two had a public falling out, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Great. But denial after the fact is only one side of this story. The other is harder to digest: Either the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” spent nearly two decades around Epstein without recognizing what was happening in plain sight — or he recognized it and chose silence. Neither explanation reflects on intelligence as much as it does on character. No wonder Trump’s defenders keep raising the most overused word in American politics today: hoax.

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“Once again, House Democrats are selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Here’s the reality: Democrats like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender. The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked, and the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”

Jackson has a point.

Democrats were cherry-picking which photos to release, even if many of the men pictured were aligned with progressives. That includes the president, who was a Democrat when he and Epstein were running together in New York in the 2000s. Trump didn’t register as a Republican until 2009. Now whether the choice of photos and timing was designed to shield political friends or weaponize against perceived enemies isn’t clear. What is clear is that it doesn’t take a genius to see that none of this is a hoax.

The victims are real. The flight logs are real. The millions that flowed into Epstein’s bank account have wire transfer confirmation numbers that can be traced. What Democrats are doing with the information is politics as usual. And you don’t want politics to dictate who gets justice and who gets vilified.

Whatever the politicians’ intentions, Americans can decide how to react to the disclosures. And what the men around Epstein did with the information they gathered on his jet or his island fits squarely at the heart of the national conversation about masculinity. What kind of men could allow such abuse to continue?

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I’m not saying the intelligent men in Epstein’s ecosystem did something criminal, but the lack of whistleblowing before his arrest raises questions about their fortitude for right and wrong. And the Trump White House trying to characterize this conversation as a partisan witch hunt — a hoax — is an ineffective strategy because the pattern with their use of that word is so clear.

We saw what happened on Jan. 6, and Trump tells us the investigation is a hoax. We hear the recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to find votes, and he tells us the investigation is a hoax. Trump campaigned on affordability issues — the cost of bacon, no taxes on tips — but now that he’s in office such talk is a hoax by Democrats. As if we don’t know the price of groceries in real time. Ten years ago, Trump told us he had proof that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. We’re still waiting.

In his book, “Art of the Deal,” Trump framed his lies as “truthful hyperbole” but by now we should understand for him hyperbole matters more than truth — and his felony convictions confirm that some of his claims were indeed simply false.

So if there is a hoax, it is the notion that none of the brilliant men whom Epstein kept in his orbit had any idea what was going on.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

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Ideas expressed in the piece

  • The release of photographs and documents from the House Oversight Committee demonstrates that Epstein moved freely among some of the world’s most accomplished and intelligent individuals, including Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.

  • Either these prominent men failed to recognize warning signs despite obvious indicators like Epstein’s “Lolita Express” nickname referencing a novel about child sexual abuse, or they recognized the reality and chose silence—neither explanation reflects well on their character.

  • Claims that this is a hoax lack credibility because the evidence is concrete: the victims are real[1], the flight logs are documented[1][3], and the millions flowing through Epstein’s bank accounts have verifiable wire transfer confirmation numbers.

  • The apparent lack of whistleblowing from the men in Epstein’s ecosystem before his 2019 arrest raises serious questions about their moral fortitude and willingness to stand against wrongdoing.

  • The Trump administration’s strategy of characterizing these disclosures as a partisan witch hunt is ineffective, given the pattern of applying the term “hoax” to numerous matters that subsequently proved to be substantiated, from investigations into January 6 to documented pressuring of Georgia officials.

  • Regardless of whether Democrats’ selection of which photographs to release was politically motivated, legitimate questions about masculinity and moral responsibility remain central to the national conversation.

Different views on the topic

  • Democrats selectively released cherry-picked photographs with random redactions designed to create a false narrative while attempting to shield their own political allies, including figures like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries who solicited money and meetings from Epstein after his conviction.

  • The timing and selection of photographs released by House Democrats appear strategically designed to weaponize the Epstein matter against political opponents while deflecting scrutiny from Democratic figures who also maintained connections to the convicted sex offender[2].

  • The Trump administration has demonstrated greater commitment to transparency on the Epstein matter through the release of thousands of pages of documents and calls for further investigations into Epstein’s connections to Democratic associates.

  • Characterizing this as purely a partisan response overlooks the fact that prominent figures across the political spectrum, including those who were Democrats when they associated with Epstein in the 2000s, had connections requiring examination[2].

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Trump administration touts ‘most secure border in history’ as 2.5 million migrants exit US

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Trump administration touts ‘most secure border in history’ as 2.5 million migrants exit US

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Friday that more than 2.5 million illegal immigrants have left the United States since President Donald Trump returned to office this year, citing a sweeping immigration crackdown that it says led to the “most secure border in American history.”

In a year-end report highlighting the agency’s accomplishments, DHS claimed that illegal border crossings plunged 93% year-over-year, fentanyl trafficking was cut in half, and hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal immigrants were either arrested or deported, amounting to a dramatic shift from the Biden administration.

“In less than a year, President Trump has delivered some of the most historic and consequential achievements in presidential history—and this Administration is just getting started,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are making America safe again and putting the American people first. In record-time we have secured the border, taken the fight to cartels, and arrested thousands upon thousands of criminal illegal aliens.”

EXCLUSIVE: MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS LEAVE US IN RECORD-BREAKING YEAR UNDER TRUMP POLICIES, DHS SAYS 

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U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Friday that President Donald Trump “has delivered some of the most historic and consequential achievements in presidential history” since he took office on Jan. 20. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

While Trump’s first year back in office was “historic,” the administration “won’t rest until the job is done,” Noem added.

Of the 2.5 million illegal immigrants that left the country since Trump took office on Jan. 20, an estimated 1.9 million self-deported and more than 622,000 were deported, according to DHS.

The Trump administration has encouraged anyone living in the United States illegally to return to their native countries using the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Home Mobile App, which allows users to claim a complimentary plane ticket home and a $1,000 exit bonus upon their return.

BIDEN ADMIN MARKED ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, ALLEGED MURDERER AS ‘NON-ENFORCEMENT PRIORITY,’ DHS REVEALS

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United States Customs and Border Protection sent boats to the Chicago River amid “Operation Midway Blitz” on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025.  (Chicago Tribune/Getty Images)

CBP seized nearly 540,000 pounds of drugs this year, almost a 10% increase compared to the same time frame in 2024, DHS said, adding that the U.S. Coast Guard has retrieved roughly 470,000 pounds of cocaine, or enough to kill 177 million people.

Taxpayers have been saved more than $13 billion at DHS, the agency said, noting that several agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Secret Service have returned “to their core missions.”

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Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem touted the progress made during President Trump’s first year back in office. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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Secretary Noem awarded $10,000 bonuses earlier this year to TSA officers and personnel who displayed exemplary service, overcame hardships, and displayed the utmost patriotism during the 43-day government shutdown.

DHS touted the administration’s achievements, asserting that “countless lives have been saved” this year and “the American people have been put first again.”

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