US-Mexico encounters fall as border activity slows while deportations rise, new data shows

SALT LAKE CITY — As President Joe Biden’s administration winds down, enforcement encounters — a measure of illicit activity at the U.S.-Mexico border — are down while deportations are up, according to new U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures.

The numbers suggest a dramatic turnaround in border activity since late last year and early this year, when surging apprehension and encounter figures sparked angry calls by many political leaders for tighter border security. The issue figured big in the U.S. presidential campaign, won by Republican Donald Trump, who promised a crackdown on immigrants here illegally and charged the Biden administration with not doing enough to stem illegal immigration.

According to the data released Tuesday, encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border in October — which includes apprehensions of immigrants who entered illegally or were deemed to be inadmissible — totaled just 106,344. That’s the fourth consecutive monthly figure under 108,000 and contrasts the high of 301,981 registered last December, when clamoring over illegal crossings reached a pitch. Moreover, the monthly figures since June have been the lowest since October 2022 and the total for fiscal year 2024, which ended in September, totaled 2.14 million, lower than 2.48 million in 2023 and 2.38 million in 2022.

Customs and Border Protection agents’ “enhanced enforcement efforts are continuing to keep border encounters low, and we continue to take unprecedented measures to dismantle and disrupt the operations of transnational criminal organizations,” Troy Miller, acting commissioner of the office, said in a statement. He singled out efforts to stop organizations trafficking fentanyl and other illicit drugs “to keep our communities safe.”

The Customs and Border Protection statement referenced the June 4 executive order enacted by Biden, which restricted the number of permissible asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border and augmented other enforcement mechanisms. Asylum policy changes enacted earlier in Biden’s term have been a particular point of contention for his critics, who have decried the entry of some making asylum claims.

Aside from reducing border activity, the changes “have also led to an increase in the percentage of migrants removed from the United States and a decrease in the number of people released pending their removal proceedings,” said the statement. Since the June changes, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “has doubled the percentage of noncitizens processed for expedited removal, and the number of individuals released by U.S. Border Patrol pending immigration court proceedings is down 67%.”

More specifically, the Department of Homeland Security deported 206,000 people between June 5 and late October, not including those turned back at airports or at the U.S.-Canada border. In all of fiscal year 2024, the statement said, the department deported more than 700,000 people, the largest annual number since 2010.

‘Safe, orderly and lawful’

Tuesday’s statement also provided updated figures on entry of immigrants with the CBP One telephone app, part of a Department of Homeland Security initiative that has drawn fire from Trump. The app allows those making asylum claims to start the process electronically, before crossing into the United States illegally, and aims to get a control on border activity.

The app launched under Biden in January 2023 and since then, 531,620 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans have been granted permission to legally enter the United States under its parameters to pursue their asylum claims. Since implementation of the “safe, orderly and lawful processes,” Customs and Border Protection said, encounters involving nationals from the four countries along the U.S.-Mexico border have fallen by 98%.

The new figures notwithstanding, Trump, who takes office next January, has promised the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history. In a post on X last September, he said he’d do away with the CBP One app, naming it “the Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals” after Vice President Kamala Harris, defeated by Trump in the presidential vote.