The number of illegal immigrants caught entering the country has continued to drop since President Donald Trump took office one month ago, plummeting over the weekend to the lowest figure seen in a single day in 15 years.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday afternoon that the number of apprehensions made at the U.S.-Mexico border on Saturday dropped lower than the several hundred arrests made per day to just a couple of hundred people.
“On Saturday, CBP encountered just 200 aliens at the US Southern Border. That’s the lowest single apprehension day in over 15 years. Thank you to President @realDonaldTrump and our brave men & women of @CBP. Make America Safe Again,” Noem wrote in a post to X.
The numbers are in line with what the Washington Examiner witnessed firsthand this month during a trip to the border in South Texas, where no illegal immigrants could be found during a five-hour Border Patrol tour of the Rio Grande.
The trip marked the first time in dozens of visits to the border that no migrants were observed attempting to cross the southern border, a show of how Trump’s border and immigration crackdown have dealt real results.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has attributed the decline to its “no longer catching and releasing illegal aliens into the U.S.”
In total, federal Border Patrol agents stationed at the southern border intercepted 29,116 illegal immigrants in January, down from more than 47,000 in December 2024 and upward of 124,000 a year ago in January 2024.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said last week that the Trump administration has helped state forces effectively shut down illegal immigration along the Texas-Mexico border and touted a major decline in unlawful crossings in a town that was a hot spot during the Biden administration’s border crisis.
HUNDREDS OF NATIONAL GUARD SOLDIERS STAND BY TO ARREST AND DEPORT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Statewide, crossings from Mexico have dropped to an average of 150 illegal immigrants per day, Abbott added.
Texas is one of four states along the southern border, but it makes up more than 60% of the 1,950-mile boundary.