▶ Watch Video: Reactions to President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation promise Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Unlawful crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border are on track to drop to a new low for the Biden administration in November, according to internal Customs and Border Protection figures obtained by CBS News.
U.S. Border Patrol is on pace to record fewer than 50,000 apprehensions of migrants crossing the southern border unlawfully this month. The agency has been averaging roughly 1,550 apprehensions between legal border entry points each day so far in November, according to the internal data.
While U.S. officials had been worried about a spike in migrant crossings after President-elect Donald Trump won the presidential election, due to his promises to seal the southern border, that has not materialized — at least not yet. In fact, illegal border crossings dropped slightly after Election Day.
If the trend holds, illegal border crossings in November will be below the 54,000 apprehensions logged by Border Patrol in September, the current Biden-era low. The last time illegal border crossings were lower was in the summer of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced migration.
Spikes in migrants journeying to the U.S. border have bedeviled Republican and Democratic presidents alike. But migrant apprehensions soared to record highs under Mr. Biden, peaking at 250,000 in December. The Trump-era monthly high was 133,000 in May 2019.
The current four-year-low in illegal immigration reflects a broader decrease that began earlier this year and that has been mainly attributed to efforts by the Mexican government to stop migrants from reaching American soil and asylum restrictions enacted by President Biden in June.
