EXCLUSIVE — The Biden administration achieved a major feat in May as the number of immigrants arrested for entering the United States illegally from Mexico dropped to the second-lowest number in nearly 40 months at a time of the year when crossings typically spike.
Internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection data leaked to the Washington Examiner revealed that between 117,000 and 122,000 immigrants were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents along the southern border last month.
The figures are still in flux, thus the small discrepancy between counts at headquarters and among senior officials in the field who provided the numbers. CBP’s headquarters in Washington publishes the monthly counts in the second half of the following month.
The figure is down from more than 128,000 in April and nearly 250,000 in December 2023.
The Biden administration’s ability to keep arrests down through the spring defies the trends as more migrants have historically attempted to travel to the U.S. during the springtime and summer months and the number of arrests has risen every year over the past two decades.
Immigration experts and one congressman pointed to different reasons for the shift: actions that the state of Texas and the government of Mexico have taken since the start of the year.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), who represents more than 40% of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, attributed the decline in crossings to Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) beefing up of enforcement at the state’s border.
“President Biden made it clear from his first day in office that border security is on his back burner. He abandoned the communities I represent, and has repeatedly ignored our calls for help,” Gonzales said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Governor Abbott on the other hand has put Texans first, and tackled illegal immigration head-on. We’re seeing the positive results of our state’s efforts play out — now we need the federal government to follow suit, enforce against illegal crossings, and finish the job.”
Joshua Trevino of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, said the dip in migrant arrests was “likely a combination of Texas border-security efforts and also AMLO-Biden election-year collusion.”
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, was elected last weekend and will take office in October. The U.S. presidential election between Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is slated for early November.
Trevino alleged Lopez Obrador’s administration and the incoming Sheinbaum administration — both from the leftist Morena political party — may be helping reduce migration through Mexico to boost Biden’s chances in November.
“The Mexican regime understands very well that its interest lies in a Biden reelection, and they’ll do their part to make it happen,” Trevino said.
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Adam Isacson, defense oversight director for the nonprofit human rights group Washington Office on Latin America, suggested Mexico as being the more important of factors that have caused migration to stay at its current level since January, a week after Biden administration officials visited with Lopez Obrador’s administration in Mexico.
“The change in Mexico seems to coincide with December: the 12/27 Blinken/Mayorkas visit to AMLO in CdMx, and the closure of a few ports of entry so that CBPO’s could help BP with processing, which dealt a big economic blow to Mexico that they don’t want to suffer again,” Isacson said in a text message on Thursday.