The current volume of illegal entries is the lowest since Biden took office, with about 1,900 per day at the border during the past week, according to a White House fact sheet citing the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Those numbers are comparable to the final weeks of Donald Trump’s term as president, CBP data show.
The theme of the second night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee will be “Make America Safe Again,” and speakers were expected to hammer Biden’s border security record. Trump, the Republican nominee, has put a spotlight in recent months on a handful of lurid killings and crimes involving immigrant suspects.
Illegal crossings rose to record levels during Biden’s term, reaching a peak in December 2023 when U.S. agents encountered 250,000 migrants, the highest monthly total ever. The numbers have dropped steadily since then. Mexican authorities tightened checkpoints and increased arrests at the behest of Biden administration officials, but the most dramatic decline has occurred since Biden announced emergency measures June 4 to cut off access to the U.S. asylum system for migrants who cross illegally.
Last month, the Border Patrol recorded 83,536 encounters at the Mexican border, the lowest level since January 2021. The decline has accelerated during the first half of July, leaving once-busy areas of the southern border quieter than they have been in years.
The White House statement celebrated the drop while blaming lawmakers for rejecting a bipartisan border security deal negotiated last winter that Trump urged his party to reject.
“While the President’s action has led to significant results, our nation’s immigration system requires Congressional action to provide needed resources and durable authorities,” the White House statement said. “Congress must still act.”
The bill would have funded thousands of additional border agents, asylum officers and other personnel to shore up the overwhelmed U.S. immigration system. Republican critics said it did not go far enough, calling for even tougher enforcement measures.
Trump has pledged to aggressively restrict border crossings and carry out a vast deportation campaign using U.S. troops if he returns to the White House.
Biden ran for office repudiating Trump’s approach and rhetoric. The measures his administration has taken to block migrants from seeking protection have abhorred immigrant rights groups and some Democrats. Biden officials say the president is generously allowing tens of thousands of migrants per month to apply to enter the United States in an orderly fashion, with new programs that expand “lawful pathways” to the United States.
The drop in illegal crossings over the past six weeks has allowed U.S. authorities to make even greater reductions in the number of migrants released into the United States with pending humanitarian claims, according to the White House. That decline — more than 70 percent in the past six weeks — has curtailed the number of migrants arriving to U.S. cities where shelter space and municipal budgets have been stretched thin.
Twice as many border crossers are being quickly deported or returned to Mexico by U.S. agents under the rules established by Biden’s asylum restrictions, the White House said.
Those rules, which are being challenged in federal court, call for the emergency restrictions to lift — and access to the U.S. asylum system to be restored — if average daily crossings drop below 1,500. Some U.S. border officials have privately expressed concern that the level could be reached in the final months of the U.S. presidential campaign, creating a perception that the border would be “reopened.”
Biden’s emergency measures call for the asylum restrictions to resume if daily average crossings once again surpass 2,500. U.S. officials have said they are confident they can avoid another surge as long as they have the capacity to quickly process migrants and deport those who don’t qualify for access to the U.S. asylum system.
