January numbers prove Trump right on the border

This decline in border encounters shows President Donald Trump was right on three key claims he made in the debate over border policy: 1) enforcement works, 2) former President Joe Biden’s policies caused the crisis, and 3) congressional action was not needed to end it.

Before diving into the data, let us first make plain that there was indeed a crisis at the southern border for most of Biden’s presidency. Biden admitted as much three months into his term, but like many of his statements, this one was quickly walked back by the White House press team, and Biden later denied ever making such a statement.

His officials went on claiming there was no crisis for years. His homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, repeatedly testified under oath to Congress that there was no crisis at the border. It was not until April 10, 2024, that he finally admitted the truth of the crisis two months after denying it. 

Biden and his minions mostly admitted nothing because doing so would have forced them also to admit that their policies caused it. In the last full month before Biden was first sworn into office, there were 73,994 encounters with illegal immigrants at the southern border. After just one full month of Biden’s open border policies, including a suspension of all interior deportations, the end of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, and the loosening of Title 42, encounters had risen to more than 100,000. 

Biden first blamed seasonal cycles, and unrest in Central and South America, but the numbers kept rising before peaking at 301,981 illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border in December 2024. As these pages have documented, those numbers then fell not because of any new migrant pathway created by Biden but because of increased border enforcement by Mexico at the behest of the administration. 

Some Democrats claim Biden’s parole programs, which were illegal, allowed the southwest border numbers to fall. And indeed, Biden has allowed more than 2 million inadmissible immigrants into the country through his CHNV (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) and CBP One app parole programs. But Trump ended both on his first day in office, and instead of illegal crossings surging, they fell further.

You can see this in the data. In December, 96,035 inadmissible immigrants were encountered on the border, including 47,316 arrested by Border Patrol between ports of entry and 48,719 encountered at ports of entry, many by appointment through the CBP One app.

In the full month of January, just 32,349 migrants were encountered at ports of entry, including a decline of 93% in the 11 days after Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20. Instead of rising as CBP One app encounters fell, illegal crossing apprehensions between ports fell to 29,116. Preliminary data from February indicate that illegal crossings between ports of entry have continued to fall.

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Not only do these data prove that enforcement works but also that policy change was possible without congressional action. Biden did not need new legislation, as he had claimed, to push Mexico to help strengthen the border. Trump did not need congressional action to reinstate his successful Remain in Mexico policy. Congress can still improve our immigration system, but Biden’s claims that his hands were tied by limited resources dictated by Congress was always a lie. He and the Democrats didn’t want to fix the problem. Now, with new data, their lie has been exposed.

There is more that the Trump administration can do to reverse the border crisis. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s new ad campaign encouraging illegal immigrants to self-deport is a step in the right direction, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could raid and prosecute employers who employ illegal immigrants. But Trump is off to a good start fixing immigration, and not a single migrant detention camp was needed.