Southwest Border Apprehension Numbers Remain at All-Time Lows

On September 16, CBP released its “Nationwide Encounters” statistics, its year-to-date (through August 31) recap of the number of illegal migrants apprehended by Border Patrol and “applicants for admission” deemed inadmissible by CBP officers in the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) at U.S. ports of entry this fiscal year. The key takeaway is that the number of illegal entrants whom agents are nabbing at the Southwest border remains at an all-time low. “Border hawks” should enjoy it while they can, because the indefinite continuation of the factors that brought such unprecedented security to the border is, at present, very much in doubt.

Southwest Border Apprehensions

In August, Border Patrol agents apprehended 8,870 aliens attempting to enter the United States illegally, bringing the year-to-date total to 89,760.

To be fair, nearly 90,000 aliens is roughly equivalent to the population of Duluth, Minn. (“Gateway to the Great Lakes” ) or Ft. Smith, Ark. (home to the U.S. Marshals Museum and the fourth largest city in the Natural State), but the latest apprehension stats don’t hold a candle to the pre-Trump II border numbers.

The FY 2026 YTD Southwest border apprehension total is lower than the monthly totals in every month between February 2021, the first full month of the Biden administration (one shy of 102,000), and May 2024 (nearly 118,000).

And those were “good months” by the standards of the last administration. In December 2023, agents apprehended nearly 250,000 aliens entering illegally over the Southwest border. During the same month a year earlier, the total was more than 222,000, and the yearly total that fiscal year was more than 2.045 million.

Or, given seasonal variations in illegal “travel patterns” at the Southwest border, compare last month’s apprehension totals to prior Augusts.

Total Border Patrol encounters in August 2026 were just 15.3 percent of what they were in August 2024 (just over 58,000) and a fraction — 4.9 percent or less than one-twentieth — what they were in August 2023 (181,000-plus).

Then, there’s August 2022, one of the worst months in history at the Southwest border, when agents apprehended more than 204,000 illegal migrants — more than 23 times last month’s total.

Border Patrol is on pace to apprehend roughly 98,000 aliens by the time FY 2026 ends on September 30, and if that trend holds it will be the lowest annual apprehension total at the Southwest border since FY 1967 (just less than 74,000).

That said, given that agents apprehended fewer than half of the illegal aliens coming north prior to FY 2013 (in many years, much less), it’s possible, even likely, that fewer aliens total attempted to enter illicitly this year than in any prior one since at least FY 1925, when Border Patrol was founded and the very concept of “illegal entry” began.

The Reasons for the Decrease

There are at least three reasons for this decline.

The first and most prominent is Donald Trump himself.

The Center has, since 2017, used the term “Trump effect” to describe the impact that the incumbent’s rhetoric has had on the ardor of would-be migrants to pay smugglers to bring them to this country illegally, and that effect has been more notable in his second term than in his first.

Second has been the willingness of the Mexican government to halt the flow of “other than Mexican” (OTM) migrants traversing our neighbor to the south on their way to the Rio Grande, the Sonoran desert, and the industrial plains south of San Diego.

In FY 2023, 71.7 percent of all illegal entrants encountered by Border Patrol at the Southwest border — nearly 1.467 in total — were OTMs; year-to-date in FY 2026, less than a third, 32 percent or fewer than 29,000, were.

That is an extreme improvement from a law-enforcement perspective, because Mexican nationals can be quickly processed and returned back across the border in a matter of hours. OTMs usually must be placed into removal proceedings and either detained or released, delaying their removals (assuming they are deported at all) by years.

Detention Is Key

The third reason for the massive decline in illegal entries at the Southwest border has to do with Trump’s CBP Commissioner, Rodney Scott, and his adherence to congressional mandates in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Scott is the first confirmed CBP commissioner to have previously served as U.S. Border Patrol chief in the agency’s 23-year history (though Mark Morgan and David Aguilar were both former chiefs and acting CBP commissioners), and he is familiar with both how the INA works and how agents secure the border.

Key to Scott’s strategy is detaining illegal entrants in accordance with sections 235(b)(1)(B)(iii)(IV) (for aliens subject to “expedited removal”) and 235(b)(2)(A) (other illegal entrants) until those aliens are either granted some relief that would allow them to remain or are removed.

On September 16, Scott tweeted:

The vast majority of aliens apprehended under Biden at the Southwest border were “give ups”, aliens who crossed illegally and then waited patiently for Border Patrol agents to arrive.

Why would migrants pay $7,000 or more to smugglers, travel hundreds to thousands of miles, and cross the barren desert or wildly unpredictable Rio Grande only to turn themselves in to agents on the U.S. side? Because they knew the odds were good that after they were processed, they’d be released.

Look at the statistics from August 2023. That month, as noted, agents apprehended just over 181,000 illegal entrants at the Southwest border, and the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) reports that Border Patrol released 101,650 of them — 56.1 percent of the apprehension total.

Just 30,370 of those migrants (16.8 percent of the total) — likely Mexican nationals and OTMs from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — were “repatriated” according to OHSS; 12,380 (6.8 percent) were unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who were transferred by CBP to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for placement in shelters and then with “sponsors” in the United States; and 36,560 (20.2 percent) were transferred to ICE for detention.

That same month, as per OHSS, ICE “booked out” 8,720 aliens first encountered at the border on their own recognizance, parole, bond, or orders of supervision, bringing the total border release percentage, including UACs who were transferred to HHS to 67.8 percent, more than two-thirds of all apprehensions that month.

To be fair, 260 migrants apprehended last month at the Southwest border were OTM UACs and they too will likely be released, and some of the adult migrants apprehended in August and detained will also be released on medical grounds, because they are granted relief, or for some other reason, and not all aliens who cross illicitly are detained — they evade encounter and become “got aways”.

But compared to the veritable “on ramp” into the United States that the Southwest border functioned as during the Biden administration, the international boundary is now more of a “dead end” and as a consequence, paying a smuggling fee of $7,000 and up — and risking injury or death while crossing — doesn’t look like such a wise investment anymore.

Consequently, as InSight Crime reported in December, the migrant “smuggling market” has gone from “boom to bust”, sending “organized crime groups scrambling to plug a multibillion-dollar hole in their profits”.

Don’t pity them too much; they likely made enough under Biden to secure themselves for years.

Don’t Get Too Comfortable

That said, don’t get too comfortable with a secure Southwest border yet, because while there aren’t any dark clouds on the horizon quite yet, the wind is definitely picking up.

As my colleague, George Fishman recently explained, an additional reason why illegal entries have been so low under Trump II is because on his first day back, the president issued a proclamation declaring that aliens engaged in the invasion across the southern border are restricted from invoking provisions of the INA that would permit their continued presence here, including by seeking asylum.

In April, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit) held that proclamation was unlawful to the extent it bars migrants from asylum, and in July the D.C. Circuit denied the government’s request for a rehearing en banc of its appeal on the issue before the entire court.

On August 24, DOJ filed a petition for writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court to review the D.C. Circuit’s orders, and it noted therein that the circuit court’s action “threatens to dismantle what [DHS] Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin describes as an ‘indispensable’ tool for controlling the border”.

That was filed a month after the D.C. Circuit agreed to put its decision on hold while the justices decide what to do, and at this point the government’s review request remains pending at the Supreme Court.

Anything “indispensable” is, by definition, “absolutely necessary: essential”, and while ICE has enough detention space for now to hold the thousands of migrants Scott’s agents won’t release, new beds are a limited commodity.

So, if the Supreme Court won’t review the D.C. Circuit’s order, or ultimately rules against the Trump administration, plenty of currently unemployed smugglers may find a new class of clients.

New Factors Loom

And if Democrats win control of one or both houses of Congress in the November midterms, don’t expect them to assist CBP in any way, let alone fund any new migrant detention, especially if the border sees a massive rush of “family units” (FMUs), adult migrants entering illegally with children.

The last FMU rush prior to Biden — when aliens in every demographic (UACs, FMUs, and single adults) came pouring in — was under Trump I in FY 2019.

Of the just over 851,508 illegal entrants apprehended at the Southwest border that year, just fewer than 474,000 (55.6 percent) were aliens in FMUs.

That prompted then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to declare a “border emergency” in March 2019 but not only didn’t Democrat then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) do anything to help Trump to resolve his migrant issues, but she also possibly made them worse.

Yet Another “Indispensable Tool”

Trump subsequently took matters into his own hands by launching the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP), better known as “Remain in Mexico”, under which illegal migrants — including those in FMUs — were sent back across the border to await removal hearings at border “port courts”.

In its October 2019 assessment of the program, DHS described MPP as “an indispensable tool” (that phrase again) “in addressing the ... crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system”, particularly as related to FMUs. Asylum cases were expedited under the program, while MPP also removed incentives for aliens to make weak or bogus claims when apprehended.

Biden “paused” and then ended Remain in Mexico, triggering state challenges that dragged on until August 2022, when the Supreme Court refused to force him to use it, but Trump brought MPP back shortly after he returned.

Not that he or Scott have had to use it this go-around, but it remains an option should Democrats return to control of Congress and smugglers start brushing off their sales pitches.

The Long-Range Forecast

Border security requires implementing the right policies to ensure the costs of illicit crossing are greater than the gain to be had from ignoring our laws and sovereignty. That’s what’s happened under Trump II, but whether it continues indefinitely is dependent on a number of factors — many of which are outside the president’s control.