The number of migrants detained by U.S. authorities after crossing the Mexico-U.S. border between official ports of entry declined to the lowest level in 55 years in Fiscal Year 2025, the U.S. government said Tuesday.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced “preliminary enforcement numbers” on Tuesday that showed that there were 237,565 apprehensions at the Mexico-U.S. border in Fiscal Year 2025, which began on Oct. 1, 2024, and concluded on Sept. 30, 2025.
The number was “the lowest fiscal year total in 55 years, compared to 201,780 in Fiscal Year 1970,” DHS and CBP said in a statement.
They also said that the figure was 87% below the average of the last four fiscal years, which was 1.86 million.
CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said that the data for Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) “shows what happens when we enforce the law without compromise.”
“For too long, agents and officers were handcuffed by failed policies. Today they are empowered to do their jobs – and the result is the lowest apprehensions in more than five decades, and the most secure border in modern history,” he said.
DHS and CBP said that the reduction of border apprehensions to a 55-year low “is a testament to the Trump Administration’s success in restoring control at the border despite the handicap of more than three months of Biden’s open-border chaos at the start of the fiscal year.”
More than 70% of apprehensions in FY25 occurred in the final months of the Biden administration
DHS and CBP said that 72% of the apprehensions of migrants in FY25 occurred during the Biden administration.
Joe Biden was in office for the first 111 days of FY25, a period in which 172,026 migrants were detained at the border, according to the preliminary U.S. data.
During the first 254 days of the Trump administration — a period accounting for the remainder of FY25 — 65,539 migrants were detained after illegally crossing the Mexico-U.S. border. That figure represents 27.6% of the total apprehensions in FY25.
The preliminary data indicates that during the second Trump administration, an average of around 8,000 migrants per month have been apprehended after illegally crossing the Mexico-U.S. border.
CBS News, which obtained the preliminary DHS data before it was released, reported that as many as 9,000 migrants were detained at the border on some single days during the Biden administration.
In Fiscal Year 2022, U.S. Border Patrol detained a record high 2.2 million migrants at the Mexico-U.S. border, a figure more than 800% higher than that recorded in FY25.
Migrants can be counted more than once if they are detained again by U.S. authorities after having previously been turned back to Mexico.
Why have border apprehensions dropped so dramatically?
CBS News reported that soon after U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term, “his administration moved to seal and militarize the southern border, closing down the American asylum system using emergency powers, dispatching thousands of soldiers to repel illegal crossings and shutting down Biden-era programs that allowed some migrants to enter the U.S. legally.”
Migrants have thus been dissuaded from attempting to enter the United States since Trump began his second term on Jan. 20.
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In recent years, large numbers of migrants from Western Hemisphere countries, and further afield, came to Mexico en route to the United States. While millions of migrants crossed into the United States during the Biden administration, Mexico detained and deported a significant number of foreigners in the same period.
Just two weeks after Trump took office, President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops to Mexico’s northern border region as part of a deal with the United States that postponed a proposed blanket tariff on Mexican exports to the U.S.
Trump said at the time that the Mexican “soldiers” would be “specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country.”
Even before Trump took office, apprehensions of migrants at the Mexico-U.S. border were declining, the result of Biden’s implementation of a new border policy in June 2024.
Migrant apprehensions in September 95% lower than Biden-era average
DHS and CBP said that an average of 279 migrants were apprehended per day in September.
There are fewer apprehensions “in an entire day now than in just two hours under the last administration,” the government departments said.
DHS and CBP also said that apprehensions in September were 95% lower than the Biden administration’s daily average of 5,110 from February 2021 through December 2024.
However, apprehensions in September — which numbered almost 8,400 — increased around 80% from the monthly low of 4,600 in July.
DHS and CBP also highlighted that “September marked the fifth consecutive month with ZERO releases [of migrants] by the Border Patrol along the southwest border, compared to 9,144 releases in September 2024.”
White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said that “President Trump has overwhelmingly delivered on his promise to secure our Southern Border.”
“As a result, Americans are safer — unvetted criminal illegal aliens and dangerous drugs are no longer pouring over our border unchecked,” she said in a statement.
The White House said in a separate statement that “after Biden-era chaos unleashed a record-shattering invasion, the seismic turnaround proves that strong leadership can, in fact, stop the flood of illegal crossings, deadly cartels, and security threats dead in their tracks.”
With reports from CBS News
