(The Center Square) – In the first four months of 2025, illegal border crossing encounters and apprehensions reported nationwide totaled 168,390, an 83% drop from the number reported during the same time period last year.
Under the Biden administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 993,035 illegal border crosser encounters/apprehensions from January through April 2024.
More than 29,000 were reported in April and in March of this year, record lows by comparison to those months under the Biden administration, according to the latest CBP data.
In the first four months of 2023, 958,569 illegal border crosser encounters were reported; in 2022, 889,899 were.
April’s 29,238 encounters were 88% fewer than the 247,929 reported in April 2024; nearly 90% less than the 276,036 reported in April 2023 and the 274,992 reported in April 2022, according to the data.
The reason for the dramatic drop is due to the Trump administration enforcing federal immigration law, eliminating Biden administration programs, and “for the first time in years, more agents are back in the field – patrolling territories that CBP didn’t have the bandwidth or manpower to oversee just six months ago,” Acting CBP Commissioner Pete Flores said. “Thanks to this administration’s dramatic shift in security posture at our border, we are now seeing operational control becoming a reality – and it’s only just beginning.”
Fiscal year to date, from Oct. 1, 2024, through April 30, there were 560,618 illegal border crosser encounters reported nationwide, according to the data. The majority were reported under the Biden administration, stretching into most of January. The numbers began to drop off in February. In Trump’s first full three months in office, the numbers hovered between 28,624 and 29,238, according to the data.
After the Trump administration ended the Biden administration “catch and release” policy, the number of illegal border crossers released into the U.S. dropped to nearly zero.
“Only five illegal aliens were temporarily allowed into the U.S. in April for U.S. special interest court cases – a staggering drop from the roughly 68,000 released along the southwest border during the same month last year,” CBP said.
CBP is also categorizing apprehensions slightly differently, referring to apprehensions and encounters at ports of entry as “at entry” and those in the interior as “at large.”
Of April’s 29,238 encounters and apprehensions reported, 8,383 occurred at the southwest border, including 906 that remain at large. Southwest border apprehensions represent a 93% drop from the 128,895 apprehensions reported last April, according to the data.
Last April, there were an average 4,297 apprehensions a day; last month there was an average of 279, according to the data.
As under the Biden administration, the majority apprehended were single adults, followed by single adults claiming to be in a family unit, unaccompanied minors and accompanied minors.
In the last four years, the greatest number of single adults encountered and apprehended totaled more than one million in 2023. The greatest number of unaccompanied minor illegal border crossers reported nationwide totaled nearly 153,000 in 2022.
The number represents a reversal of more than 14 million illegal border crossers reported under the Biden administration, including two million who evaded capture, The Center Square reported.
