The number of immigrants arrested for entering the United States from Mexico illegally has been cut in half since October, marking a stark decline since the election and the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term.
A Washington Examiner analysis of both public and undisclosed U.S. Customs and Border Protection data revealed that illegal border crossings dropped 54% from the month of October to the first part of this week.
The decline came as President Joe Biden implemented programs to facilitate lawful migration toward the end of his term, while Trump has begun a crackdown at the southern border in his first week in office.
More than 56,000 immigrants were taken into custody at the southern border in October, or an average of 1,823 arrests per day.
By comparison, 946 immigrants were arrested across the southern border, on average, between Monday and Wednesday of this week — the first days of Trump’s second term. On Tuesday, 840 were arrested followed by 843 arrests on Wednesday.
Biden had brought down levels of illegal immigration significantly since they peaked during the first three and a half years of his administration, at one point reaching a record 250,000 arrests in December 2023 following his rollback of Trump policies.
Last June, Biden took executive action that made it much more difficult for immigrants in custody at the border to seek asylum, thus allowing them to be repatriated to their countries of origin or Mexico more easily. Numbers dropped to below 60,000 arrests per month through the fall.
But the decline now puts Trump on pace to see 25,000 to 30,000 arrests per month, if the current trend continues.
Data obtained by the Washington Examiner for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday leading up to the inauguration revealed that arrests fluctuated from 1,314 to 1,416 per day, possibly offering early indications of a further decline now that Trump has taken office.
Trump signed more than a dozen executive orders related to the border and immigration this week as the White House attempts to show Day One impacts on cartel operations.
Trump declared a national emergency at the border, asked the Pentagon to deploy more troops to assist border agents, ended “catch and release,” reinstated “Remain in Mexico,” restarted border wall construction, and designated criminal cartels as global terrorists, among other executive actions.
On Thursday, the Defense Department began repatriating illegal immigrants at the southern border by way of military cargo planes.
The president also did away with the CBP One app’s immigration functions. The federal agency’s phone app was expanded by the Biden administration to allow more than 730,000 non-U.S. citizens to fly into the country from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as well as apply for appointments at ports of entry — moves that were intended to deter illegal immigration at the southern border.
“On day one, President Trump took decisive action to secure the border and deport criminal illegal immigrants from American communities,” said Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, in an email. “Beyond that, he sent a powerful message that the United States is no longer a refuse for migrant criminals who seek to harm our country. Promises made, promises kept: President Trump is already Making America Safe Again.”
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Doctors Without Borders warned this week that the massive crackdown at the southern border had already put immigrants in danger in Mexico.
“The recent executive orders on migration from the Trump administration leave hundreds of thousands of people along the Latin American migration corridor in even greater uncertainty, and exposed to heightened risks on a route already marked by extreme violence,” Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières warned in a statement.
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