Illegal border crossings on track to reach new Biden-era low

Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border are on track to drop to a new low for the Biden administration in November, according to internal Customs and Border Protection figures obtained by CBS News.

U.S. Border Patrol is on pace to record fewer than 50,000 apprehensions of migrants crossing the southern border unlawfully this month. The agency has been averaging roughly 1,550 apprehensions between legal border entry points each day so far in November, according to the internal data.

While U.S. officials had been worried about a spike in migrant crossings after President-elect Donald Trump won the presidential election, due to his promises to seal the southern border, that has not materialized — at least not yet. In fact, illegal border crossings dropped slightly after Election Day.

If the trend holds, illegal border crossings in November will be below the 54,000 apprehensions logged by Border Patrol in September, the current Biden-era low. The last time illegal border crossings were lower was in the summer of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced migration.

Spikes in migrants journeying to the U.S. border have bedeviled Republican and Democratic presidents alike. But migrant apprehensions soared to record highs under Mr. Biden, peaking at 250,000 in December. The Trump-era monthly high was 133,000 in May 2019.

The current four-year-low in illegal immigration reflects a broader decrease that began earlier this year and that has been mainly attributed to efforts by the Mexican government to stop migrants from reaching American soil and asylum restrictions enacted by President Biden in June.

That stringent asylum policy has dramatically cut the number of migrants released into the U.S. and allowed to apply for legal protection, government statistics show.

Trump has vowed to enact even stricter measures, promising to oversee the largest deportation operation in American history and dismantle Biden administration programs that allow certain migrants to enter the country legally. Under one of those policies, the U.S. is currently processing about 40,000 migrants each month at official border crossings after they secure appointments through a smartphone app.

The “ultimate irony”

Trump made the situation at the border under Mr. Biden central to his campaign, and his hardline immigration proposals resonated with many voters. Mass deportation, for example, continues to enjoy support from a majority of Americans, CBS News polling shows. But Trump could very well inherit a border that is relatively quiet.

“It is an ultimate irony, and it is going to put Trump in a position of declaring victory,” said Doris Meissner, who led the now-defunct Immigration Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration and currently serves as a senior fellow at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute.

The lull at the border, should it persist, could allow the incoming Trump administration to focus limited immigration enforcement resources in the interior of the country, to carry out the president-elect’s mass deportation plan, which faces formidable logistical hurdles. 

With roughly 6,000 law enforcement officers and 41,000 detention beds, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation branch currently lacks the manpower and resources to arrest, detain and deport the millions of unauthorized immigrants Trump and his allies have promised to expel from the country.

Trump’s top advisers have floated proposals to tap into the Department of Defense’s vast resources, including by using military planes for deportations and tasking National Guard soldiers with carrying out immigration arrests. But the feasibility — and legality — of those plans remain open questions.

Meissner said the relatively calm at the southern border could allow Trump’s administration to redirect Border Patrol resources towards interior immigration enforcement. But she warned that the lull in illegal border crossings could be disrupted if Mexican enforcement eases or if programs that discourage migrants from crossing the border illegally by offering them a legal path to enter the U.S. are terminated.

“There is a formula right now that even though it’s fragile, is working,” Meissner said. “The Trump administration is very disruptor oriented, and it could actually find itself having more of a problem than is now the case at the border.”