Number of Apprehensions at Border Has Never Been So Low

"We have never seen numbers this low. Never," wrote border czar Tom Homan on Tuesday in an X post praising the "Trump effect." CBS News reports he is correct: Unlawful border crossings sank to a historic low in June, with just 6,070 apprehensions of migrants recorded, per preliminary Customs and Border Protection data. That's down from the previous low of around 7,200 apprehensions set in March. Four details that give a sense of the decrease:

• The New York Post reports it's a 93.1% year-over-year drop, with the Border Patrol logging 87,606 such encounters last June.
• Under the Biden administration, daily apprehensions often exceeded 6,000, at times peaking over 10,000 in late 2023.
• CBS News reports Border Patrol's publicly available monthly apprehension data stretches back to 2000, but historical figures suggest numbers haven't been this low since the late 1960s.
• NBC News' tracker shows that through May there have been 108,658 attempted southwest border crossings. At the same point in 2024, the number was 905,920.

Officials attribute the drop to aggressive deportation efforts by the Trump administration. Homan added that not one of the 6,070 migrants was released into the US, marking the second month in which no releases occurred. In contrast, tens of thousands were handed immigration court dates and released under Biden's policies.