The Trump administration says it’s broken a record for all-time lowest border encounters in a single month, marking a dramatic turnaround from the monthly border encounters experienced under the Biden White House.
Border Patrol agents counted roughly 7,180 crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border during March, according to data released Tuesday by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This figure comes in sharp contrast to the monthly average of 155,000 border crossings from the previous four years and the average daily border encounters of 5,100 per day from that era.
Daily southern border apprehensions have now dropped to around 230 per day, a figure the administration says is the lowest in recorded U.S. history.
“Under the leadership of President Trump and [Homeland Security Kristi] Noem, the administration has taken bold, decisive action to restore control at the border,” Acting CBP Commissioner Pete Flores said in a prepared statement. “Border Patrol agents are empowered like never before to shut down unlawful entry and protect American lives.”
“The message is clear: the border is closed to illegal crossings, and for those still willing to test our resolve, know this — you will be prosecuted, and you will be deported,” Flores continued.
Border encounters have been steadily falling since Trump entered office. Noem confirmed in March that there were only 200 migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border on Feb. 22, marking the lowest single-day apprehension number in over 15 years.
The incredible turnaround follows President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the immigration enforcement system. Since re-entering the White House in January, his administration declared an emergency that allowed more resources — including the military — to be diverted to the border, successfully coerced the Mexican and Canadian governments to beef up their own border security, scrapped a popularly used asylum app and prioritized border wall construction.
The Trump White House has also heavily leaned into interior enforcement, detaining and deporting criminal illegal migrants en masse across the country — resulting in many illegal migrants too discouraged to even try their chances at illegal entry at the U.S.-Mexico border.
More than half a million migrants crossed the Darien Gap — a dense jungle region between Panama and Colombia popularly used by U.S.-bound illegal migrants — at the height of the migrant crisis in 2023. Passage across the Darien Gap has since fallen well over 90%, with a total of just 2,159 illegal migrant crossings in January 2025 compared to the 34,839 crossings tallied in January 2024.
Sanctuary jurisdictions across the country and other areas inundated with illegal migrants, once overrun by the national border crisis, have steadily begun closing many of their migrant shelters. With so few illegal migrants coming in, local leaders said the cost of running these shelters is no longer justified.
The dramatic changes at the southern border also sharply contrast from a prevailing narrative during the 2024 presidential question, in which many Democratic opponents of Trump claimed a botched Senate border deal was needed to address the illegal immigration crisis. The changes currently happening at the border have largely resulted from administrative changes by the Trump White House.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, border patrol agents are now back to doing the jobs they signed up for: securing the border, rather than serving as travel agents for illegal aliens,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. “Deportations of illegal aliens who threaten the safety of the American people are also continuing at a rapid pace.”
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