Unlawful crossings at the US-Mexico border are expected to reach a new low for the Biden administration in November, according to internal Customs and Border Protection data obtained by CBS News.
The U.S. Border Patrol is on track to catch less than 50,000 illegal immigrants crossing the southern border this month. Internal data shows that the agency has arrested about 1,550 people between legal border entry points every day so far in November.
Because President-elect Donald Trump promised to seal the southern border, U.S. officials were afraid that there would be a rise in the number of migrants crossing after the election.
However, that has not happened yet. In fact, the number of illegal border crossings went down a little after Election Day.
As things stand, the number of people crossing the border illegally in November will be less than the 54,000 people caught by Border Patrol in September, which is the lowest number seen since Biden took office.
Last time there were fewer illegal border crossings was in the summer of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic made migration much less likely.
Both Republican and Democratic presidents have had trouble dealing with increases in the number of people trying to cross the U.S. border.
However, the number of migrants arrested hit a record high of 250,000 in December, when Mr. Biden was in office. In May 2019, 133,000 were added, which was the highest number ever in a Trump administration month.
The current four-year low in illegal immigration is part of a larger drop that started earlier this year and is mostly due to the Mexican government’s efforts to stop migrants from coming to the United States and President Biden’s restrictions on asylum in June.
Government data shows that the strict asylum policy has greatly decreased the number of migrants who are let into the U.S. and given the chance to apply for legal protection.
Trump has promised to make things even stricter. He has said that he will be in charge of the biggest deportation operation in U.S. history and will end programs started by the Biden administration that let some migrants come to the U.S. legally.
The U.S. is currently processing about 40,000 migrants each month at official border crossings after they make appointments through a smartphone app. This is because of one of those policies.
Speaking to CBS News, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, said that the Biden administration created a new “model” for border policy that follows U.S. law and morals.
“Through tough measures at our border, newly-built capabilities to remove people more quickly, the construction of lawful pathways that enable people to obtain relief in a safe and orderly way, and an unprecedented attack on the smuggling organizations.
We have driven border encounters below their 2019 level, made the border more secure than it was then, and upheld our standing as a country of refuge for those who qualify under the law,” he said.
The “ultimate irony”
Trump made the situation at the border under Mr. Biden a big part of his campaign, and many voters liked his strict immigration plans.
Gallup polls from CBS News show that most Americans still support mass deportation as an example. But it is possible that Trump will take over a border that is mostly quiet.
“It is the biggest irony, and Trump will be able to claim victory,” said Doris Meissner, who used to run the defunct Immigration Naturalization Service while Hillary Clinton was president and is now a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
If the calm at the border lasts, the new Trump administration might be able to focus its limited immigration enforcement resources on the interior of the country to carry out the president-elect’s plan to deport a lot of people, even though it will be very hard to make this happen.
The deportation branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement only has about 6,000 police officers and 41,000 beds for detention.
This is not enough to arrest, detain, and deport the millions of illegal immigrants that Trump and his supporters have promised to send back to their home countries.
Trump’s top advisors have talked about using the Department of Defense’s many resources, such as by using military planes to deport people and giving National Guard soldiers the job of arresting immigrants. But those plans are still not clear in terms of whether they are possible and legal.
Meissner said that because things are not too bad at the southern border, Trump’s administration might be able to move Border Patrol resources to enforce immigration laws in the interior.
That being said, she warned that the drop in illegal border crossings could be short-lived if Mexican law enforcement loosens up or if programs that offer migrants a legal way to enter the U.S. stop working.
“There is a formula right now that even though it is fragile, is working,” he said. “The Trump administration is very disruptor oriented, and it could actually find itself having more of a problem than is now the case at the border.”
