Homeland Security said Wednesday that it has just completed its sixth straight month without catching and releasing any illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border.
The department said that was part of a continued record period of calm that includes not just the boundary with Mexico but the northern border and airports.
Customs and Border Protection tallied 30,561 encounters with unauthorized migrants nationwide last month. That’s the lowest October on record, and it is 79% lower than the same month in 2024 under President Biden.
“History made,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. “Thank you, President Trump and our brave DHS law enforcement. You make America proud!”
The catch-and-release number is particularly striking. In the Biden years, there were months with more than 100,000 releases of migrants nabbed by the Border Patrol.
The department said every migrant arrested by agents now is processed according to the structures of the law, which means they are either ousted or sent to another federal or state agency for further action.
The department said that it is unmatched in modern border history.
The average day in October saw agents nab just 258 people across the entire 1,954-mile boundary, or about 8,000 for the month.
That’s up from an all-time monthly low of about 4,600 in July, but it’s far better than any month under the Biden administration.
Nationwide, including the northern boundary, the Border Patrol recorded 9,845 apprehensions in October.
“Our mission is simple: secure the border and safeguard this nation,” CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said. “And that’s exactly what we are doing. No excuses. No politics.”
On no other issue during the last decade has there been as big a reversal, and then a re-reversal, as the border.
Mr. Trump had left a largely secure border when he departed office in January 2021, bolstered by executive actions to discourage illegal immigration and reduce catch-and-release.
Mr. Biden erased much of that in his early days in office. He canceled border wall construction, revoked Trump policies and sparked an unprecedented and sustained rush at the border.
By the end of his term, he had started to re-embrace Trump-style policies, albeit to a lesser extent, and the numbers dropped.
Mr. Trump has restarted wall construction and imposed new and even more restrictive policies than in his first term, leading to record lows.
Immigrant rights advocates say the tradeoff for the success is that desperate migrants are being turned around at the border before they can apply for asylum.
The numbers at the border are part of Mr. Trump’s broader push on immigration, which includes mass deportations of those already in the interior, limits to refugee admissions and new controls to discourage fraud in legal immigration channels.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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