A series of milestones indicate that the Trump administration is delivering on its goal of dramatically boosting the federal government’s immigration enforcement apparatus.
In just the few months since President Donald Trump re-entered office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has supercharged its arrest and detention numbers, and the U.S.-Mexico border has reached historically low levels of activity, according to information shared by the White House. The latest data mark a sharp contrast from the border crisis of the Biden era.
“President Trump is doing exactly what he promised the American people – securing the Southern Border and deporting illegal aliens,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Friday to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Just this week, ICE has detained over 2,000 illegal immigrants on back-to-back days, and ICE arrests during President Trump’s second term have topped 100,000,” Jackson continued. “The President is cracking down on cartels, cutting the flow of fentanyl coming across our border by over half in the last year.”
ICE arrests surged to 2,200 in a single day on Tuesday, according to the White House — marking a dramatic uptick in the number of daily arrests from the week prior. The agency has notched more than 100,000 illegal migrant arrests since Trump began his second term.
Customs and Border Protection now touts “total control” of the southern border, with daily border encounters down 93% and encounters with “gotaways” — illegal migrants that avoid apprehension and considered to be a top safety threat — down 95%, according to data released after the administration’s first 100 days in office. Migrant crossings altogether have fallen by 99.99%.
There are now roughly 53,000 foreign nationals in detention preparing for deportation, according to the White House.
The current border numbers are a far cry from the activity experienced under the Biden administration.
Under President Joe Biden, the average number of monthly border encounters nearly reached 160,000 and the daily average peaked at 15,000, according to Department of Homeland Security data. Over the course of Biden’s four years in office, CBP recorded roughly 11 million border encounters — a wave of immigration that severely strained federal and local resources at the time.
Interior enforcement was also dramatically different under the previous administration. When Biden entered office in January 2021, he immediately attempted to enact a 100-day moratorium on deportations across the U.S., While that executive order was ultimately struck down in court, deportation numbers in fiscal year 2021 plummeted to the lowest level in ICE’s history.
Increased immigration enforcement has also led to a drop in one of the most deadly drugs to reach U.S. soil. Fentanyl traffic at the southern border fell by over half from March 2024 to March 2025, according to CBP data.
In the meantime, deportation officers have continued to rack up arrests of heinous criminal migrants across the country.
In the past 24 hours, ICE agents arrested a Salvadoran national in Los Angeles for sodomy of a child, a Mexican national in Chicago for criminal sexual assault of a child and another Mexican national in Houston for indecent sexual contact with a child, according to a source familiar with operations. Additionally in the past day, a Honduran national was arrested in El Paso for possession of child pornography and a Laotian national was apprehended for murder and attempted murder.
“Under President Trump’s America First leadership, it’s a bad day to be an illegal alien and a great day to be an American,” Jackson said to the DCNF.
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