President Donald Trump has completely secured the southern border, with just 108,361 border encounters since he took office on January 20, the latest data through November from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows.
That compares to more than 10 million such border encounters the entire time former President Joe Biden was in office from 2021 to 2024, averaging more than 2.5 million a year.
What a difference a president can make.
Biden, who insisted the border could only be secured by an act of Congress, instead was shown up by Trump, who showed that no, it takes a Commander-in-Chief who is willing to put the U.S. military on the border to protect the country.
Deployed since January, combined with continued construction of the southern border wall, there is finally a deterrent against the unbridled illegal immigration that Biden allowed — and invited.
That’s a decrease of around 95 percent of southwest border encounters from its 2024 level of 2.1 million, stopping any net gains in the foreign-born population, which, as a result, has declined by 2.03 million since January to 48.6 million, according to the latest data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the largest decrease seen since President Trump was last in office.
Only part of the equation are formal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removals, according to the Department of Homeland Security. “Since January 20, DHS has arrested more than 595,000 illegal aliens,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin on Dec. 10, adding, “DHS has deported more than 605,000 illegal aliens and another 1.9 million have self-deported.”
So, that’s a total decrease of 2.5 million illegal aliens, offset partially by the normal legal immigration and temporary tourism, showing the net decrease of more than 2 million.
In other words, just by cutting off the flow of new illegal aliens, and creating an opportunity for those already here to leave, many are choosing to just go.
Now, one data point worth noting is the Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a statistical population adjustment of the overall population every January. Sometimes it goes up, and sometimes it goes down.
For example, from Dec. 2024 to Jan. 2025, there was an increase of 3 million in the overall population, of which 1.6 million was attributed to the foreign-born population. If that happened again, it would appear to offset the removals to date, but that’s not the way to look at it. It would just mean the population had been underestimated in the preceding adjustment. Whereas, if it decreased, that would mean the preceding adjustment had overestimated the population. Whichever way that goes, don’t read too much into it.
The numbers to focus on the arrivals and the departures reported by the Department of Homeland Security. And on that count, President Trump has kept his word to secure the border and see the removal of illegal aliens who should have never been here in the first place.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
