One of the sharpest reversals in any dataset on this site: monthly encounters at the U.S. southwest border fell from about 302,000 in December 2023 to roughly 7,800 in July 2025, a drop of about 97%, and the lowest monthly figures in decades. It is a genuine, dramatic change, and the current administration points to it as its clearest success. But read honestly, no single president owns the whole curve: the fall began before this administration took office, deepened under a Biden-era rule, and reached its floor after the January 2025 border actions. Whether you read fewer crossings as a plain win or as a narrowing of asylum access is the part the data doesn't decide.
Total monthly encounters at the southwest land border (Border Patrol plus port-of-entry), every month from December 2022 to August 2026.
1 Mexican enforcement steps up (early 2024) · 2 Biden asylum proclamation (Jun 2024) · 3 Trump II border actions, CBP One ends (Jan 2025)
Three forces, not one
The curve has three descents, and each has a different author. First, Border Patrol arrests fell by roughly half between the December 2023 peak and spring 2024, before any U.S. policy change: driven mainly by the Mexican government intercepting and busing migrants south after December 2023 talks. Second, President Biden's June 2024 proclamation suspended most asylum between ports of entry when crossings ran high, pushing the numbers lower still through late 2024. Third, the January 2025 executive actions, an asylum shutdown and the end of the CBP One appointment app, drove the final collapse from tens of thousands a month to under ten thousand by June 2025. The total has not stayed quite that low: it has since run between about 9,600 and 13,500 a month, and was above ten thousand in every month from March through August 2026, still more than 95% below the December 2023 peak. Partisan tellings pick whichever segment flatters them; the honest version keeps all three.
Read the metric carefully, and mind what “fewer crossings” does and doesn't mean. These are encounters (Border Patrol apprehensions between ports plus inadmissibles at ports), which count enforcement events, not distinct people, one person turned back repeatedly can be several encounters. Part of the 2025 drop is mechanical: ending CBP One zeroed out the port-of-entry appointments that had run tens of thousands a month, so the total fell even faster than unauthorized crossings alone. The “encounters” series only exists from March 2020; older years use a different “apprehensions” measure and must not be spliced onto this line. Recent months (2026) are as-reported and subject to routine CBP revision. And the value judgment is genuinely contested: the same fall that supporters call border security, critics call the effective end of asylum access: this chart measures the number, not the verdict.