SW Border Monthly Arrests Lowest in a Generation

On Monday, CBP released its latest statistics. According to those stats, Border Patrol’s Southwest border apprehensions fell to fewer than 7,200 in March — a 14 percent decline compared to February’s already historically low total, and tellingly a 95 percent drop compared to March 2024. Not coincidentally, the Washington Times reported on April 8 that the backlog in pending immigration court cases declined for the first time since FY 2008. As a district court judge predicted in a case that was a short-term victory for the Biden administration in November 2023, “The immigration system … dysfunctional and flawed as it is, would work if properly implemented” — and for the first time in a long time, it is.

CBP’s March Encounters

Nationwide, CBP encounters at the borders and the ports rose slightly in March, to just over 29,000, from fewer than 28,650 in February, a modest 1.5 percent increase. Keep in mind, however, that smugglers don’t follow the calendar, and March has nearly 11 percent more days than February.

Total CBP encounters at the Southwest border and ports declined in March to just over 11,000, from more than 11,700 the month before.

The Southwest border is more secure today than it has been since at least the Johnson administration.

CBP officers in the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) at the Southwest border ports recorded 3,386 encounters in March.

That was 14 percent more than in the prior month but 86 percent fewer than in March 2024, when the Biden administration was funneling up to 1,400 would-be illegal migrants who used the CBP One app through those ports daily.

On March 11, Trump’s CBP repurposed that app into “CBP Home”, a tool to facilitate departures instead of arrivals, which it had been.

Or, as the acting CBP commissioner explained in announcing the roll-out: “The app provides illegal aliens in the United States with a straightforward way to declare their intent to voluntarily depart, offering them the chance to leave before facing harsher consequences.”

Total CBP northern border encounters rose modestly, to fewer than 4,500 from nearly 4,100 in February. Monthly Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal southbound migrants at the U.S.-Canada line increased by 25 to 504 last month, a 5.2 percent month-over-month increase, while OFO encounters at the ports there rose 10 percent to 3,975.

OFO encounters at the coastal and interior airports rose to 13,061 in March, up from 12,421 in February, but 27,500-plus fewer than in March 2024.

That interior and airport encounter decline is almost exclusively due to the Trump administration’s termination of a Biden-era program — CHNV Parole — that brought up to 30,000 nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to the United States monthly.

Although the prior administration referred to CHNV Parole as a “lawful pathway” to the United States, none of its beneficiaries were admissible to the United States by definition and therefore were subject to encounter by OFO when they arrived at U.S. airports of entry (though nearly all were then released).

March Border Patrol arrests average out to one illegal alien per day for every nine miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ending new CHNV paroles will alleviate the burdens the program placed on CBP officers at airports, leaving them better able to exclude alien applicants for admission inadmissible on other grounds, such as criminals, national-security threats, drug traffickers, and aliens seeking admission through fraud.

The most important statistic in the minds of most, however, is Southwest border apprehensions, and as noted at the outset, they declined to a level in March that was unthinkable in the recent past.

Agents there apprehended 7,181 illegal migrants in March, a rate of about 232 per day or roughly one alien for every nine miles of the 1,954-mile international boundary between the United States and Mexico.

Border Patrol publishes monthly apprehension numbers dating back to October 1999 and, aside from the current administration, the lowest monthly Southwest border apprehensions total during that period, 14,519, was in April 2017 — two months into the first Trump administration.

Border Patrol’s March Southwest border apprehensions were less than half that.

Moreover, while there are no solid monthly Southwest apprehension statistics for any period prior to October 1999, Border Patrol keeps stats on annual total apprehensions there dating to FY 1960.

March’s total puts Border Patrol on track to make just over 98,000 apprehensions in the next 12 months.

You have to go back to FY 1968 to find a year in which there were fewer than 100,000 Southwest border apprehensions, and even then, it was close — 96,641. In other words, the Southwest border is more secure today than it has been since at least the Johnson administration.

“Immigration Courts are Seeing Best Numbers Since 2008”

Fewer CBP encounters at the borders and the ports mean fewer aliens are being placed into removal proceedings, so it’s no surprise that the backlog at the immigration courts is beginning to abate.

On April 8, the Washington Times published an analysis of that backlog by Stephen Dinan headlined “Under Trump, immigration courts are seeing best numbers since 2008”.

DHS added fewer than 30,000 new cases to the immigration courts’ dockets in February and in March, while immigration judges completed more than 60,000 cases in each of those months.

Dinan reports that the number of removal cases pending before the immigration courts has dropped by 115,000 since Trump took office for a second time, the first decline in the courts’ dockets since 2008.

As he explained, the number of new cases filed by DHS with the courts averaged more than 100,000 during the last nine months of 2024 “as illegal immigrants streamed into the U.S.”

In February and March, respectively, DHS added fewer than 30,000 new cases to the immigration courts’ dockets, while immigration judges completed more than 60,000 cases in each of those months.

Justice Department spokesman Gates McGavick aptly summarized the reasons for this decline in the courts’ pending workload, telling Dinan:

President Trump’s policies to secure the border have been an overwhelming success and helped stop an historic influx of illegal migrants. … This has allowed [the immigration courts] to effectively address the large backlog of immigration cases that the prior administration’s policies created.

Expect this trend to continue, at least as long as CBP encounters remain low. The decline in the backlog means aliens in immigration courts will have their cases heard more quickly, which in turn means those who merit relief and protection will receive it more quickly — and aliens with non-meritorious and fraudulent claims will be ordered removed more expeditiously, too.

“The Immigration System … Would Work if Properly Implemented”

In her November 2023 order in Texas v. DHS, U.S. district Judge Alia Moses held that the Biden administration had a right to destroy barriers the state erected along the Rio Grande to deter illegal migration, if Biden’s CBP wanted to.

More saliently, however, she also observed:

The U.S.-Mexico border presents a unique challenge that is equal parts puzzling to outsiders and frustrating to locals. The immigration system at the heart of it all, dysfunctional and flawed as it is, would work if properly implemented. Instead, the status quo is a harmful mixture of political rancor, ego, and economic and geopolitical realities that serves no one. So destructive is its nature that the nation cannot help but be transfixed by, but simultaneously unable to correct, the present condition. [Emphasis added.]

The recent rapid decrease in CBP encounters, coupled with the decline in the immigration courts’ backlogs over the past two months, proves how right Judge Moses was.

Even though it remains a “harmful mixture of political rancor and ego”, and that it’s still “dysfunctional and flawed”, our immigration system clearly “works” — “if properly implemented”. The results at the borders and in the courts speak for themselves.