The Border Patrol apprehended simply 8,326 unlawful immigrants on the southern border in February, President Trump introduced Saturday, calling it the perfect month on report.
“The month of February, my first full month in Workplace, had the LOWEST variety of Unlawful Immigrants making an attempt to enter our Nation in Historical past – BY FAR!” the president stated on social media. “The Invasion of our Nation is OVER.”
February’s determine tops the earlier low of roughly 11,000 unlawful immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol brokers in April 2017, close to the beginning of Mr. Trump’s earlier time period, when the president’s powerful discuss scared individuals into not making the journey.
It didn’t final that point, and Mr. Trump confronted ups and downs for many of his first administration, though he turned a comparatively calm border over to President Biden in 2021.
Mr. Biden then unlocked the doorways and spurred the worst migrant disaster in U.S. historical past, with numbers topping out at almost 250,000 unlawful immigrants — an all-time report — caught by brokers alongside the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2023.
The overwhelming majority of these had been caught and launched, whereas Mr. Trump stated those caught on his watch final month had been “shortly ejected from our Nation or, when obligatory, prosecuted for crimes.”
The border numbers had been calming within the remaining months of Mr. Biden’s tenure, with brokers catching between 46,000 and 58,000 individuals a month for the final half of 2024. With Mr. Trump taking workplace in January, the quantity dropped under 30,000.
However to fall to about 8,000 is close to miraculous.
Todd Bensman, a border professional on the Middle for Immigration Research, stated Mr. Trump’s success “disproved and debunked” the claims of immigrant rights teams that exterior components brought about the migrant surge.
“There’s no mental alternative left now however to only lastly settle for that beginning and stopping occasions like that is so easy,” Mr. Bensman informed The Washington Occasions. “You simply detain, expel, deport. That’s it. That’s closing the border. It’s nothing difficult.”
He stated it additionally challenged the declare of former Vice President Kamala Harris, who blamed “root causes” in different nations for spurring the wave of migrants, and congressional Democrats, who stated Congress wanted to cross laws to cease the migrant surge.
“We didn’t want any Senate invoice then, we don’t want any Senate invoice now,” Mr. Bensman stated. “We by no means wanted complete immigration reform to ship billions of {dollars} to scale back root causes of immigration by rebuilding different nations. The immigration system was by no means damaged and wanted to be mounted. All of that stands as completely debunked now.”
Mr. Trump has made his success by vigorously flexing powers he already has — in some instances testing the bounds of what Congress gave him — with a view to shut down the border.
He declared a border emergency and cited an “invasion.”
It’s not clear whether or not his declaration that the invasion is over will undercut his authorized justification for the emergency.
