Border Security Breeds Immigration Court Success
Backlog falls by 326,000 cases since January – which is likely more important to the credibility of our immigration system than even our increasingly secure border
By Andrew R. Arthur on July 29, 2025
Mark Twain remarked, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”, but regardless, you must have some metric to measure performance. And the latest statistics from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) – the DOJ component that oversees the immigration courts – reveal that the unprecedented level of security at the Southwest border is breeding success in those courts, where backlogs have fallen by more than 326,000 cases since January.
The Border Miracle
As I recently reported, Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal migrants at the Southwest border dropped to their lowest level in recorded history in June: 6,072, in total, a roughly 93-percent decline compared to June 2024, but more impressively 45.5 percent fewer than the previous record low, three months into President Trump’s first term in April 2017.
And it’s not just Border Patrol. In June, CBP officers at the agency’s Southwest border ports of entry recorded just 3,234 encounters, or 26.5 percent fewer than their prior low-water mark of 4,393 in March 2017.
Lest you get too optimistic, note that CBP encounters at the U.S.-Mexico line rebounded by the middle of the first Trump administration before Covid-19 shut down nearly all international travel. In May 2019, Southwest border agents apprehended nearly 133,000 illegal migrants and CBP officers stopped more than 11,000 inadmissible travelers at the ports there.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Border-Security-Breeds-Immigration-Court-Success
