Southwest land border encounters dropped to 11,709 in the February, the first full month of President Donald Trump’s tenure in office, according to data gathered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the lowest ever on record in data dating all the way back to 2000.
Compared to one year ago, in Feb. 2024 it was 189,913, now it is down to 11,709, a 93.8 percent decrease in border encounters — showing that President Donald Trump’s decision to immediately deploy the U.S. military to the southern border is having the effect that he was hoping to serve as a deterrent and as construction has resumed on the southern border wall that former President Joe Biden left incomplete.
A part of the success is also undoubtedly President Trump’s threatened 25 percent tariff on Mexico — an ultimatum leveled before he even took office — that has resulted in Mexico putting 10,000 of its own troops on the U.S.-Mexican border as well.
Announcing the dramatic step on Truth Social on Feb. 3, President Trump wrote that Mexico had agreed to send 10,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexican border to assist with stopping illegal immigration and drug trafficking of fentanyl by the cartels, “I just spoke with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico. It was a very friendly conversation wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican Soldiers on the Border separating Mexico and the United States. These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country.”
Trump still says there’s more work to be done to keep fentanyl from flowing into the U.S. from both Mexico and Canada, and he paused imposition of the 25 percent tariff on cars from both countries until April but are set to go into effect.
President Trump declared a national border emergency on Jan. 20 under the National Emergencies Act: “THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States…”
And Trump said the national border emergency requires the use of the military under 10 U.S. Code Sec. 12302, “Ready Reserve”: “and that section 12302 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretaries of the military departments concerned, subject to the direction of the Secretary of Defense. To provide additional authority to the Department of Defense to support the Federal Government’s response to the emergency at the southern border, I hereby declare that this emergency requires use of the Armed Forces…”
And, like in 2019, Trump is using the emergency to finish construction of the southern border wall under 50 U.S. Code Sec. 1631 and 10 U.S. Code. Sec. 2808: “and, in accordance with section 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1631), that the construction authority provided in section 2808 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretary of Defense and, at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, to the Secretaries of the military departments.”
In addition, President Trump declared Tren de Aragua and other drug cartels as terrorist organizations on Jan. 20 by executive order in accordance with 8 U.S. Code Sec. 1189, “Designation of foreign terrorist organizations.”
And on March 15, Trump issued a proclamation invoking the 1798 Alien Enemy Act that the international criminal organization Tren de Aragua, supported by Venezuela, is a “hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.” The same day, about 250 enemy aliens were expelled to El Salvador for processing.
All this in just two months in office and the results speak for themselves. Mexico is cooperating to a certain extent with the U.S. on securing the border. The U.S. military is on the border. And the numbers are down almost 94 percent from a year ago.
The contrast from the prior administration of former President Joe Biden is simply stunning, combining data from both the United States Border Patrol encounters and the Office of Field Operations inadmissibles by the Office of Immigration Statistics, there were some 10.8 million border encounters all told from January 2021 to November 2024.
The whole time, Biden tried to say that the reason for the border crisis was that Congress had not acted. But just a month into Trump’s second term, Congress has not done anything special, but the number of encounters are rapidly approaching zero. It’s almost as if border security was simply a matter of political will — of which Trump appears to have an ample supply.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
