From Hundreds of Thousands to Hundreds: Illegal Border Crossings Plummet Under Trump

We Just Needed a New President

Since Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025, illegal border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped to historic lows, marking a dramatic shift from the unprecedented highs recorded during Joe Biden’s presidency. This sharp decline underscores the willful negligence, elective neglect, and manifest hatred that the previous administration had for the American people. At one point the Biden administration had ordered that literal flood gates in the border wall remain open so that more than 1,400 illegal immigrants a day could flow through them.

While all of this was going the Biden administration argued that the country desperately needed legislation in order to fix the illegal immigration problem. As it turns out we only needed a new president.

Trump’s Remarkable Turnaround

In February 2025, Trump’s first full month in office, U.S. Border Patrol apprehended just 8,347 migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally between ports of entry, according to preliminary data reported by the Department of Homeland Security. This figure represents the lowest monthly total since at least fiscal year 2000 and represents just 330 border crossings per day. For added context, the previous low during Trump’s first term was approximately 11,100 in April 2017, a number that has now been eclipsed by this recent plunge.

Trump’s flood of executive actions and his surge of troops, materiel, and supplies to the Southern border is clearly working. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported a nearly 96% decrease in the average number of “gotaways”—migrants who evade apprehension—from 1,800 per day under Biden to just 132 per day under Trump as of mid-March 2025. This means that between apprehensions and gotaways roughly 12,300 people crossed the border illegally in February.

If the Trump administration a maintain these figures then just 147,700 people will illegally enter the United States in the year 2025. For some added context, some 140,6541 people entered the United States in just February of 2024.

Biden’s Record-Breaking Numbers

Under Joe Biden’s administration, illegal border crossings soared to levels not seen in decades, peaking in fiscal year 2022 with 2.2 million Border Patrol apprehensions at the southwest border while total encounters at the Southern border exceeded 2.76 million. The yearly average from 2021 to 2023 stood at approximately 2 million encounters, with monthly totals frequently exceeding 200,000 during peak periods. December 2023, for instance, saw a record 249,785 “arrests”, the highest monthly total since the government began releasing such data. Even after Biden implemented stricter asylum policies in June 2024, fiscal year 2024 still recorded over 1.5 million apprehensions—a significant drop from prior years but still far above historical norms.

The Biden administration’s early policies, including a rollback of Trump-era restrictions like the Title 42 expulsion authority and a pause on interior ICE arrests, coincided with a surge in crossings. Unaccompanied minors and families from Central America and beyond arrived in record numbers, not to mention the waves of Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, and other illegal immigrants from peaceful, stable, countries around the world. By the time Biden left office, DHS data showed over 9.5 million encounters nationwide since 2021. The Center for Immigration Studies preliminary reporting shows Biden released at least 5.6 million people into the country and that the illegal immigrant population is at least 14 million people, a number they stress is both preliminary and a likely underestimate.

And this is not even the full scope of immigration. Legal immigration was also incredibly high, more on this in a future piece. It is sufficient here to say that net immigration exceeded 2 million each year Biden was in office.

Comparing the Numbers: Trump vs. Biden

A side-by-side comparison of February data across recent years illustrates the disparity between the two administrations:

• February 2022 (Biden): 159,170 apprehensions

• February 2023 (Biden): 130,521 apprehensions

• February 2024 (Biden): 140,641 apprehensions

• February 2025 (Trump): 8,347 apprehensions

Under Biden, monthly apprehensions rarely dipped below 100,000, with daily averages often exceeding 6,000—and at times surpassing 10,000 during peak surges. This represents a decrease of over 90% from Biden’s monthly averages in his final year, aligning with claims from Trump administration officials and supporters that border crossings have been reduced to approximately 6,000 per month—compared to 6,000 per day under Biden at times.

Trump’s Enforcement in Action

Beyond border crossings, the Trump administration has ramped up interior enforcement and released the agents of DHS into the streets to round up illegal immigrants. In Trump’s first three weeks in office (January 20 to February 10, 2025), ICE arrested approximately 14,000 immigrants, averaging 667 arrests per day, according to border czar Tom Homan. This pace doubled the daily average of 333 arrests from the last full year of Biden’s term, when ICE recorded 271,000 deportations across fiscal year 2024.

In the first 50 days of the new administration 32,809 people were arrested in enforcement actions by ICE agents. This number is nearly identical to the 33,242 arrests ICE made in the entire previous year. Of the illegals arrested, some 14,111 had criminal convictions and another 9,980 have pending criminal charges.

And the president is still not happy with these low deportation figures. The president was displeased with the low immigration detainment figures and so fired or reassigned several leading ICE executives in order to put more capable people in place.

Border Czar Tom Homan is also not satisfied with the low number of arrests and is lobbying Congress to provide DHS with an additional, and record breaking, $175 billion in order to carry out much larger scale immigration enforcement. This funding request is reportedly being worked into the upcoming budget reconciliation package that will help to codify and fund many of the President’s priorities. This will rapidly increase the pace and ability of DHS to find, detain, and ultimately deport illegal aliens.

If Trump’s administration were to merely continue along its current trajectory without changes it would still result in a net decrease in the illegal alien population of at least 92,000 people. Something you cannot say for any administration in the last 16 years, including the first Trump administration.

The Data Is Clear

America has turned a corner on illegal immigration and the administration is clearly dedicated to not just maintaining its changes but supercharging them to allow for millions more deportations.

Next comes the fight to end birthright citizenship, something the administration is still pursuing with great vigor. Finally, it will take a movement of popular sentiment to ensure that DACA recipients are deported and ultimately that the US born children of illegal aliens are deported as well, they are no Americans.

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