Eye-Popping February CBP Numbers Show How the Border Has Changed under Trump

CBP has released its Southwest border encounter and apprehension statistics for February, and they reveal how much the world has changed — or more precisely how much it has returned to normalcy following four years of upheaval and disruption under the Biden administration. That said, even by historical standards the numbers are somewhat eye-popping, showing that the “Trump effect” is real, and if anything, more “effective” as Biden’s “catch and release” policies are ended and detention is again the norm.

The “Trump Effect”. My colleague Todd Bensman, the Center, and I all discussed the impact that then-candidate Trump’s immigration rhetoric on the 2016 campaign trail had on illegal immigration at the Southwest border at the outset of the current president’s first administration, back in early 2017.

Border Patrol apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico line dropped from more than 47,000 in November 2016 (Obama’s second-to-last full month) and to just over 12,000 in March 2017 before cratering at 11,127 the next month.

Monthly apprehension totals ticked up from there, slowly and then gradually, eventually nearing 133,000 in May 2019 just before Trump implemented a number of policies (notably the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico”) that drove the migrant flow down yet again.

Border Patrol publishes monthly apprehension stats going back to October 1999, however, and even over that period, the April 2017 figure sticks out as an anomaly. Prior to Trump I, the lowest monthly total was just short of 19,000, in December 2011.

Decembers and Januarys have traditionally seen the lowest number of Southwest border crossings, as the weather at the border gets cold and would-be migrants stop coming, all the better to celebrate the holidays at home. So, even that December 2011 number could be considered an outlier. Crossings surge in the spring, though, but they didn’t in the spring of 2017.

February 2025. All of which sets the stage for what happened last month.

In February, Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border nabbed just 8,347 aliens coming illegally over the border from Mexico. More likely than not, that monthly apprehension total is the lowest since some month in FY 1969, a year in which agents made just fewer than 138,000 apprehensions.

That said, it’s also important to note that up until FY 2012, agents apprehended less than half of all the migrants who entered illegally. Given that, the number of migrants illegally crossing the Southwest border in FY 1969 was likely closer to 400,000 than it was to 140,000.

By FY 2019, the “apprehension rate” — the percentage of aliens who crossed illegally and were caught — was 89.5 percent, as infrastructure improvements (like fencing) slowed entrants and border technology improved to such an extent that agents could more effectively respond to most incursions.

Having just returned from the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector and seen how efficient agents are at securing the border now that crossings are historically low, I would estimate that the apprehension rate at present is around 95 percent or more. Consequently, the Southwest border is likely more secure — from incursions of migrants, drugs, guns, criminals, and terrorists — at present than it’s ever been.

What About Biden’s Hemispheric “Push Factors”? Immigration — legal and illegal — is influenced both by “push factors” that encourage foreign nationals to leave their countries and “pull factors” that draw them to come here.

This is best thought of in terms of moving to another state. Your spouse takes a better job in Florida for more money, so you move with her. There are push and pull factors in that scenario. The push factors are your desire not to live alone and pay for two residences and the pull factors are that Florida is where your spouse and a higher living standard will be.

One major claim made under the Biden administration was that the migrant surge between FY 2021 and 2024 wasn’t driven by then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas curbing ICE enforcement in the interior (allowing most illegal aliens to stay) and releasing more than 88.5 percent of illegal entrants despite statutory mandates requiring him to detain nearly all of them.

Instead, the Biden DHS’s assistant secretary for border and immigration policy claimed that “hemispheric” push factors — “violence, food insecurity, severe poverty, corruption, climate change, the continuing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and dire economic conditions” — had “all contributed to a significant increase in irregular migration around the globe, fueling the highest levels of irregular migration since World War II”.

The February border numbers reveal how wrong that assessment was.

The assistant secretary, Blas Nuñez-Neto, highlighted three countries (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), as well as a fourth (Haiti) for special attention, arguing that “failing authoritarian regimes” in the former and “an ongoing humanitarian crisis” in the latter “have driven millions of people from those countries to leave their homes”.

He continued:

Additionally, violence, corruption, and the lack of economic opportunity — challenges that are endemic throughout the region — are driving noncitizens from countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru to make the dangerous journey to the U.S. border. This is in addition to the continuing economic headwinds and rule of law concerns in traditional sending countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

If that were all true, we’d expect to see roughly the same number of illegal migrants continuing to flow into the United States, and yet apprehensions from all of those countries dropped significantly between December and February.

Here are the numbers:

• Cuba: 1,055 apprehensions in December; 107 in February (89 percent decline).
• Nicaragua: 399 apprehensions in December; 33 in February (92 percent decline).
• Haiti: 31 apprehensions in December; 2 in February (94 percent decline).
• Brazil: 820 apprehensions in December; 73 in February (91 percent decline).
• Colombia: 3,648 apprehensions in December; 126 in February (97 percent decline).
• Ecuador: 2,141 apprehensions in December; 214 in February (90 percent decline).
• Peru: 667 apprehensions in December; 39 in February (94 percent decline).
• Guatemala: 7,098 apprehensions in December; 1,438 in February (80 percent decline).
• Honduras: 4,193 apprehensions in December; 561 in February (87 percent decline).
• El Salvador: 1,684 apprehensions in December; 272 in February (84 percent decline).

And then, there’s Venezuela.

In December, Southwest border agents apprehended 4,022 nationals of that country; by February, that dropped to 125 — a 97-percent decline, and a lower monthly total for apprehensions of Venezuelan nationals than at any point in the past four fiscal years under Biden.

Venezuelan apprehensions plummeted even though Trump ended the “CHNV parole” program that had allowed nationals of that country, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua to fly directly here, and stopped allowing migrants to schedule interviews at the ports of entry using the CBP One app in lieu of entering illegally.

The world didn’t suddenly become a paradise free of woe just because Donald Trump returned to the White House, and yet none of those push factors Biden’s DHS claimed were “fueling the highest levels of irregular migration since World War II” — not the endemic factors like violence, poverty, and corruption, or the exotic ones like climate change and disease — were driving illegal entrants here.

In reality, it was the Biden administration’s own “catch and release” policies that powered the largest surge of illegal hemispheric migrants to the United States over the Southwest border in history, either before World War II or after.

Extra-Hemispheric “Irregular Migration” Down, Too. And by lining the pockets of increasingly sophisticated smuggling operations, those Biden policies also drove extra-hemispheric “irregular migration”, too.

Southwest border apprehensions of Chinese nationals fell 84 percent between December and February (to 130), and whereas agents caught 1,060 Indian nationals entering illegally in December, that figure fell 87 percent, to 141, last month. I could go on, but you get the point.

Detention Is the Ultimate Deterrent. One point was repeated time and again as I toured the San Diego sector: Illegal migrants are not being released, in a sea change from the last administration. Detention is the ultimate deterrent, because would-be migrants won’t pay thousands to enter illegally if they won’t be released to work here, and as any (honest) immigration expert will tell you, the “jobs magnet” is the ultimate pull factor.