In his first term was any indication at all, we knew border crossings would drop under President Donald Trump. What you might not have guessed was that they would all but come screeching to a halt altogether.
The first full month under the new Trump administration saw the lowest illegal alien crossings at the Southwest U.S. border in 25 years, according to a new report from CBS News, of all places, which obtained data showing the month of February saw only 8,450 apprehensions during that entire 28-day span. That’s an average of only about 302 crossings per day across the entire southern border with Mexico.
For comparison, border apprehensions were known to spike to about 8,000 per day under the Biden administration, which saw a total of more than 10 million illegal border crossings in four years.
But it looks like that turnstile has stopped rotating.
CBS reports:
February's total, which could be adjusted when the government officially publishes the statistics, would be the lowest monthly apprehensions tally recorded by Border Patrol since at least fiscal year 2000, the last period with public monthly data.
The last recorded monthly total that even came close to hitting this February’s record low was in April of 2017, three months after Trump took office during his first term, when border apprehensions hit a then-record low of 11,000.
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CBS adds that monthly apprehension totals aren’t available for the years preceding 2000. But the last time the average monthly apprehension total was around 8,000 was in 1968 - meaning February’s total might actually indicate border crossing numbers that haven’t been seen for more than half a century.
Promises made, promises kept.