INCENTIVES WORK: DHS Touts Half-Century Low in Migrant Crossings

The Border Patrol recorded 237,538 encounters with migrants at the border with Mexico in the 2025 fiscal year, which began in October 2024 and ended in September 2025.

That was down from more than 1.5 million encounters in fiscal 2024, more than 2 million in fiscal 2023 and a record of more than 2.2 million in fiscal 2022.

The 2025 total was the lowest in any fiscal year since 1970, according to data covering the past half century from the Border Patrol.

Since February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s current term, the Border Patrol has recorded fewer than 10,000 encounters a month at the southwestern border, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Those are the lowest totals in more than 25 years of available monthly data. Recent totals have been even lower than the 16,182 encounters in April 2020, when international migration fell sharply in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.

Impressive.