Illegal Immigration Falls to Trump-Era Levels Just in Time for Election

The number of migrants arrested after trying to enter the United States from Mexico has fallen to levels not seen since the Trump administration, a sharp turnaround just ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential election.

Four Border Patrol officers who have access to federal government data have shared Washington Examiner The number of migrants apprehended each day for illegally entering the U.S. from Mexico ranged from 1,670 to 2,500 arrests over the past 10 days.

Those numbers match the final months of 2020, just before former President Donald Trump prepared to leave office, when arrests averaged between 2,350 and 2,500 per day — or between 65,000 and 75,000 arrests per month, according to Border Patrol statistics.

A man posing as an Indian national crosses the Roosevelt Easement after climbing over border fencing in the Tucson sector of the U.S.-Mexico border, trying to be stopped by Border Patrol agents, Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near Lukeville, Arizona. U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the Tucson sector has been the busiest area of the border since 2008 because of smugglers who are suddenly funneling migrants from Africa, Asia and elsewhere through some of the most desolate and dangerous areas of the Arizona border. (AP Photo/Matt York)

With three months to go before the November election and immigration still a top concern for voters, President Joe Biden faces pressure to keep the border in check, passing the baton to Harris as the new presumptive Democratic nominee. Harris has been tasked with addressing the root causes of the migrant crisis as vice president, a role the GOP has dubbed “border czar.”

Border crossings, which are based on the number of migrants arrested because not all those crossing the border are detained, peaked in December 2023. Daily arrests topped 10,000 on several days this month.

In February, Republicans initiated impeachment proceedings Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has criticized the country’s management of the southern border and has long touted Trump’s border policies as the only way to return illegal immigration levels to previous norms.

The sharp decline in illegal immigration since last December is a significant change of course for Biden, who has overseen a historic border crisis. Monthly arrests have been slowly declining over the past six months, falling from 250,000 last December to 83,000 in June.

July’s figure is expected to be even lower than June’s and match the 71,000 reported by Trump in his final full month in office.

The agency that oversees the Border Patrol, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, attributed the decline to several actions, as well as bilateral talks with Mexican government officials last December that led to improved cooperation between the countries in combating illegal immigration.

In May, CBP announced an increase in deportation flights, or repatriations of undocumented immigrants to their home countries once they reach the southern border.

“We have conducted the largest wave of deportations and disruptions against human smuggling networks in the past decade,” Troy A. Miller, the commissioner’s senior acting official, said in a statement. “We have redoubled our efforts, working with partners across the hemisphere and around the world, to disrupt criminal organizations and transportation networks that put vulnerable migrants at risk while spreading and profiting from lies.”

People pour water out of their tents after heavy rain at a migrant camp on the Vallejo train tracks in Mexico City, Thursday, July 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

The American Immigration Council has admitted that the decline is the result of repression in Mexico.

“Beginning in January 2024, Mexico’s crackdown on migrants has made it harder for people to reach the U.S. border,” AIC senior researcher Aaron Reichlin-Mellnick wrote in a July 19 blog post. “As a result, apprehensions at the border have declined in every month of 2024.”

That decline continued in June, when Biden took executive action and introduced new rules that aimed to turn people away at the border rather than releasing the thousands who crossed into the interior every day and waited for court hearings for years.

“This precipitous decline has brought border crossings to a four-year low. It also reflects the fragile state of asylum seekers, caught in an increasingly tight vise between state pressure and growing desperation,” Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the human rights group Washington Office on Latin America, wrote in an email update last week.

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The crackdown on illegal immigration in the US and Mexico has left migrants frustrated and looking for other ways to gain admittance.

By late July, migrants had begun to gather and march in a “caravan” through Central America and southern Mexico, heading for the United States.