Eye-Popping February CBP Numbers Show How the Border Has Changed under Trump
Detention is the ultimate deterrent, and unlike Biden’s ‘catch and release’, everybody’s being detained
By Andrew R. Arthur on March 20, 2025
CBP has released its Southwest border encounter and apprehension statistics for February, and they reveal how much the world has changed — or more precisely how much it has returned to normalcy following four years of upheaval and disruption under the Biden administration. That said, even by historical standards the numbers are somewhat eye-popping, showing that the “Trump effect” is real, and if anything, more “effective” as Biden’s “catch and release” policies are ended and detention is again the norm.
The “Trump Effect”. My colleague Todd Bensman, the Center, and I all discussed the impact that then-candidate Trump’s immigration rhetoric on the 2016 campaign trail had on illegal immigration at the Southwest border at the outset of the current president’s first administration, back in early 2017.
Border Patrol apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico line dropped from more than 47,000 in November 2016 (Obama’s second-to-last full month) and to just over 12,000 in March 2017 before cratering at 11,127 the next month.
Monthly apprehension totals ticked up from there, slowly and then gradually, eventually nearing 133,000 in May 2019 just before Trump implemented a number of policies (notably the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico”) that drove the migrant flow down yet again.
https://cis.org/Arthur/EyePopping-February-CBP-Numbers-Show-How-Border-Has-Changed-under-Trump
