With immigration among the top issues as voters nationwide begin casting their votes, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a 55% decrease in illegal border crossings between ports of entry at the southwest border since June 5, when President Joe Biden implemented an executive action severely limiting asylum.
The number of noncitizens processed for quick removal from the country has also tripled.
The agency attributed the border improvements to increased enforcement in the southwest following Biden’s Presidential Proclamation on Securing the Border in early June. That proclamation suspended and limited the entry of noncitizens into the U.S. who lacked valid documents.
“The data published today by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that since the President announced new executive actions to secure the border on June 4, unlawful border crossings have dropped … to the lowest levels in over four years,” White House Spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez said in a statement after the numbers were released.
From June 5 through the end of September, the Department of Homeland Security returned or removed more than 160,000 people to over 145 countries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also operated more than 495 international repatriation flights during the same period.
Between the federal fiscal year that ran Oct. 1, 2023, through Sept. 30, 2024, the CPB said it removed or returned 700,000 people who entered the country illegally – more than any fiscal year since 2010. The agency said the number of people who crossed the border without encountering the CPB decreased by about 60% during the last fiscal year.
Arrests for illegal border crossings at the U.S. border with Mexico reached an all-time high in December 2023 but have been declining since June.
The border is a frequent talking point for former President Donald Trump, who has made it a centerpiece of his campaign. During a Latino Roundtable in Florida Tuesday, he said the border is the biggest problem facing the country and repeated an unfounded accusation he often makes against Vice President Kamala Harris that she’s allowed “thousands of murders and drug dealers and terrorists and people from mental institutions” to illegally enter the U.S.
Harris frequently criticizes Trump for scuttling a bipartisan border bill introduced earlier this year in the Senate to reform U.S. immigration policy. It would have added 1,500 CPB agents and officers; 4,300 new asylum officers and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff; 100 new immigration judge teams; and 1,200 new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personal to help with enforcement and deportations.
That legislation failed in a 50-49 vote after Trump said the plan was weak and encouraged Senate Republicans not to support it, despite its backing by the National Border Patrol Council and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
With border encounters between ports of entry now lower than they were during the last few months of the Trump administration, White House spokesperson Fernandez Hernandez said, “For months, the Biden-Harris Administration worked with a bipartisan group of Senators to craft a historic bipartisan border security agreement that would have added thousands of frontline personnel to the border, but Congressional Republicans voted against the agreement twice, proving that they are more interested in cynically playing politics than securing the border.”