FASTER, PLEASE: Border Patrol: 70 Percent Drop in Successful Evasions Since Title 42 Ended.

Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens confirmed last week that the number of known successful evasions of Border Patrol (“gotaways”) have fallen to just 800 per day in fiscal year 2024—down 70 percent from 2,671 the week before the Title 42 expulsion authority ended on May 11. A decline in gotaways this large and fast is unprecedented in Border Patrol’s history, and even as the administration faces unrelenting criticism, this stands as a major immigration win.

I have previously written about this phenomenon, using numbers leaked by Border Patrol to friendly journalists who report them without the context of the broader trend. But this update confirms that the low numbers continued into January and February. Figure 1 shows the monthly data using the chief’s update and media reporting for more recent numbers and a Freedom of Information Act for the older numbers. Gotaways fell from a high of 73,463 in April 2023 just before Title 42 ended to about 21,758 in February 2024. Ending Title 42 appears to have been the biggest single benefit to border security in its history.

Of course, that’s not the only way to goose the numbers lower: Biden Admin admits it secretly flew 320,000 “asylum seekers” into US (in 2023 alone) to reduce numbers at the border.