The change at the border between President Biden and President Trump is nothing short of staggering, and two numbers tell that story best of all: 189,604 and 20.
The first is the number of illegal immigrants Border Patrol agents caught and immediately released into the U.S. in December 2023, at the depths of the Biden border chaos.
The second is the number of illegal immigrants agents caught and released into the U.S. in February — roughly one-hundredth of 1% of the total in Mr. Biden’s worst month.
For years, Border Patrol agents have been telling anyone who would listen that catch-and-release was the driver of illegal immigration.
Migrants would be willing to pay $10,000 or more to smugglers to reach the border, if they had a reasonable sense that they would get what they were seeking — a chance to live and work here. But they wouldn’t pay, nor make the trip, if their chances of release were slim.
Mr. Trump’s new web of policies has drastically cut the chances of catch-and-release at the border, from 778 per 1,000 border crossers in December 2023 to just 2 per 1,000 in February.
Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge who’s now with the Center for Immigration Studies, said Mr. Trump has created a virtuous cycle where success is breeding more success.
“This is what it looks like when it’s properly implemented,” he said. “The more people that you detain, the fewer people are going to come, which means the fewer people you have to detain and the more detention space you have to detain everybody.”
Mr. Trump has talked about the releases.
“Nobody’s coming through our border practically,” the president said late last week. “Two weeks ago, we had nine people come through all for medical reasons. We allowed them — we brought them through because one had a heart attack, one had something else. All for medical reasons.”
He said the border was “at 99%” right now.
The drop in catch-and-release is just part of the story.
Of the 8,346 people the Border Patrol nabbed at the southern border in February, the government has dispositions listed for 8,334 of them. Take away the 20 who were caught and released, and that leaves 8,314.
Of those, 451 were given voluntary return, or allowed to leave on their own; 745 were immediately issued Notices to Appear, or immigration court summonses, and detained; 1,793 had previously been deported and had those orders of removal reinstated; and 4,811 — roughly 56% — were transferred to other federal agencies, most of them likely to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE probably issued NTAs to most, though ICE records also showed it paroled 559 people in February. The agency declined to offer details but said in general, it uses parole when someone has an urgent humanitarian reason or the government wants them here for a specific reason, such as to serve as a witness or to stand trial.
Mexicans made up two-thirds of illegal border crossers nabbed at the southern boundary by the Border Patrol in March.
That marks a return to more usual patterns of illegal immigration that existed years ago, before Central Americans began to dominate the flow.
Illegal immigrant families and unaccompanied children accounted for about 15% of arrests. That’s the lowest, save for the depths of the pandemic.
Call-outs for search and rescues are way down — another reflection of the slimmed-down flow of people.
And the Border Patrol hasn’t detected a single new terrorist suspect in February and March, marking the first time since Homeland Security began releasing those records.
From 2022 to 2024, under President Biden, agents averaged 10 terrorism suspect arrests a month.
The rate of migrants to smugglers, which had soared in the first weeks of the new administration, has turned more chaotic in April.
Mexicans, who had been shelling out a typical payment of about $10,000 in February, are now typically paying $7,000 to $8,000 in Texas and Arizona. But in southern California, their rates have risen to as much as $15,000, according to The Washington Times’ database of border smuggling cases.
