The change at the border between President Biden and President Trump is nothing short of staggering, and two numbers best tell that story: 189,604 and 20.
The first is the number of illegal immigrants Border Patrol agents caught and immediately released into the U.S. in December 2023, at the depths of the Biden border chaos.
The second is the number of illegal immigrants agents caught and released into the U.S. in February — roughly one-hundredth of 1% of the total in Mr. Biden’s worst month.
For years, Border Patrol agents have been telling anyone who would listen that catch-and-release was the driver of illegal immigration.
Migrants who had a reasonable sense that they could live and work in the U.S. would pay $10,000 or more to smugglers to reach the border. If their chances of release were slim, they wouldn’t pay or make the trip.
Mr. Trump’s policies have drastically cut the chances of catch-and-release from 778 per 1,000 border crossers in December 2023 to just 2 per 1,000 in February.
Andrew “Art” Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now with the Center for Immigration Studies, said Mr. Trump has created a virtuous cycle in which success breeds more success.
“This is what it looks like when it’s properly implemented,” he said. “The more people that you detain, the fewer people are going to come, which means the fewer people you have to detain and the more detention space you have to detain everybody.”
Mr. Trump has talked about the releases.
“Nobody’s coming through our border practically,” the president said late last week. “Two weeks ago, we had nine people come through, all for medical reasons. We allowed them. We brought them through because one had a heart attack, one had something else. All for medical reasons.”
He said the border was “at 99%.”
The drop in catch-and-release is just part of the story.
The government has dispositions listed for 8,334 of the 8,346 people whom the Border Patrol caught at the southern border in February. Minus the 20 who were caught and released, that leaves 8,314.
Of those, 451 were given voluntary return, or allowed to leave on their own; 745 were immediately issued notices to appear, or immigration court summonses, and detained; 1,793 had previously been deported and had those orders of removal reinstated; and 4,811, roughly 56%, were transferred to other federal agencies, most of them likely to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE probably issued notices to appear to most, though ICE records also showed it paroled 559 people in February. The agency declined to offer details but said it generally uses parole when someone has an urgent humanitarian reason or the government wants them in the U.S. for a specific reason, such as to serve as a witness or to stand trial.
Mexicans made up two-thirds of illegal border crossers whom the Border Patrol caught at the southern boundary in March.
That marks a return to more usual patterns of illegal immigration of years ago, before Central Americans began to dominate the flow.
Illegal immigrant families and unaccompanied children accounted for about 15% of arrests. That was the lowest, save for the depths of the pandemic emergency.
Call-outs for search and rescues are way down, another reflection of the lower flow of people.
The Border Patrol didn’t detect a single terrorist suspect in February and March, marking the first time since the Homeland Security Department began releasing those records.
From 2022 to 2024, under Mr. Biden, agents averaged 10 terrorism suspect arrests a month.
The rate of migrants to smugglers, which soared in the first weeks of the administration, has turned more chaotic in April.
Mexicans, who had been paying about $10,000 in February, now typically pay $7,000 to $8,000 in Texas and Arizona. In Southern California, rates have risen to as much as $15,000, according to The Washington Times’ database of border smuggling cases.
