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Illegal crossings along U.S.-Mexico border plummet to lowest annual level since 1970

Illegal crossings along U.S.-Mexico border plummet to lowest annual level since 1970

Unlawful crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025 plummeted to the lowest annual level since the early 1970s, amid the Trump administration's sweeping clampdown on illegal immigration, internal federal statistics obtained by CBS News show.

U.S. Border Patrol agents recorded nearly 238,000 apprehensions of migrants crossing the southern border illegally in fiscal year 2025, which began in October of last year and ended on Sept. 30, according to the preliminary Department of Homeland Security data, which has not been previously reported.

The number is the lowest annual tally recorded by Border Patrol since fiscal year 1970, when the agency reported roughly 202,000 apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border, historical figures indicate.

It also represents a seismic change from the record-high levels of Border Patrol apprehensions recorded under the Biden administration, which faced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. In fiscal year 2022, Border Patrol made 2.2 million apprehensions there — a record, and almost 10 times the levels recorded in 2025.

More than 60% of the apprehensions made by Border Patrol in fiscal year 2025 along the U.S.-Mexico border were recorded in the last full three months of the Biden administration, the preliminary data shows. Government fiscal years start in October and end in September, and some of them encompass different administrations.

Over President Trump's first full eight months in office, Border Patrol agents assigned to the southern border have recorded fewer than 9,000 apprehensions each month — a number that the agency recorded in 24-hour periods during some days under former President Joe Biden.

The internal DHS figures show Border Patrol made nearly 8,400 apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border in September, an increase from 6,300 in August and 4,600 in July, a monthly record low.

Border Patrol apprehensions denote the number of times agents intercepted and processed migrants entering the country between official ports of entry, which is illegal. Some migrants can be counted multiple times, if they attempt to enter the U.S. more than once after being turned back to Mexico.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, "President Trump has overwhelmingly delivered on his promise to secure our Southern Border.

"As a result, Americans are safer — unvetted criminal illegal aliens and dangerous drugs are no longer pouring over our border unchecked," Jackson added. "And for all the Democrats who claimed it was impossible to secure the border or that they needed new policy, turns out all we needed was a new President."

"A new normal"

Ariel Ruiz Soto, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, noted that illegal border crossings began to fall sharply in the summer of 2024, after the Biden administration enacted strict limits on asylum. But he said the Trump administration had set "a new normal" for migration flows in just a few months.

Ruiz Soto said the Trump administration's stringent policies — at the border and inside the U.S. — "have had a significant effect on people being deterred from coming illegally to the United States." 

Soon after Mr. Trump took office for a second time, his administration moved to seal and militarize the southern border, closing down the American asylum system using emergency powers, dispatching thousands of soldiers to repel illegal crossings and shutting down Biden-era programs that allowed some migrants to enter the U.S. legally.

While parts of the asylum ban have been curtailed and declared illegal by courts, the Trump administration has virtually ended the practice of releasing migrants who cross into the U.S. illegally, deporting them quickly or holding them in detention while their cases are reviewed. 

Beyond the border, the Trump administration has staged highly publicized operations targeting those living in the U.S. illegally, dispatching teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents across the country with the objective of overseeing a deportation campaign of unprecedented proportions. 

The crackdown has not been without controversy. The administration's border policies have been denounced as inhumane, draconian and illegal by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which has challenged them in federal court on the grounds that they are at odds with U.S. and international asylum law as well as the Constitution.

The federal immigration raids well beyond the border have also triggered significant backlash, particularly in major American cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, where large-scale protests have erupted. National and local Democrats have decried the raids as indiscriminate and overly harsh, accusing the Trump administration of not solely focusing on deporting violent offenders.

Citing confrontations and instances of violence, Mr. Trump in recent days has ordered National Guard troops to deploy to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to protect immigration agents and facilities there. A federal judge has so far blocked the plan to send National Guard units to Portland.  

Amid the national debate over immigration enforcement, those living along the southern border say there's no denying the reality on the ground has changed markedly.

John Martin said his network of shelters in the Texas border city of El Paso housed hundreds of migrants during spikes in illegal crossings during the Biden administration. On Monday, he said his organization was not housing a single migrant, saying he's received "little to no" new arrivals who are not local homeless residents in recent months. He attributed it to Mr. Trump's crackdown.

"If the goal is to decrease the number of individuals, I would say that appears to have been successful, without getting into the politics about whether or not I like it or dislike it," Martin said. "We're just simply not seeing the people."

Source: CBS News:

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