Illegal crossings at the southern border hit the lowest annually recorded number since 1970 during the 2025 fiscal year, preliminary data from the Department of Homeland Security show, CBS News reported Oct. 6.
The internal federal data obtained by the outlet show that federal agents stopped about 238,000 illegal border crossings in fiscal year 2025, which is comparable to 1970, when approximately 202,000 apprehensions occurred at the southern border, according to the report.
In contrast, in the 2022 fiscal year, under the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents apprehended 2.2 million illegal migrants at the border, CBS reported. The federal fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.
According to the outlet, “Border Patrol apprehensions denote the number of times agents intercepted and processed migrants entering the country between official ports of entry, which is illegal. Some migrants can be counted multiple times, if they attempt to enter the U.S. more than once after being turned back to Mexico.”
Over 60% of the 2025 Border Patrol interceptions occurred in the last few months of the Biden administration. Ariel Ruiz Soto, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told CBS that the levels had already begun to fall in summer 2024 after former President Joe Biden signed an order to secure the border.
However, Ruiz Soto credited the Trump administration with setting “a new normal” for immigration, according to CBS News. So far in President Donald Trump’s second term, agents reported fewer than 9,000 cases of illegal immigration every month, which CBS News noted is “a number that the agency recorded in 24-hour periods during some days under former President Joe Biden.”
White House officials touted the numbers as indicators of Trump’s success. In a post on X, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the low illegal immigration levels a demonstration of “the Trump effect.”
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