President Biden has finally managed to get the southern border back to the low levels of illegal immigration he inherited from President Obama, according to the latest data that shows fewer than 100,000 migrants nabbed at the U.S.-Mexico boundary in November.
It marks the first time Mr. Biden has seen that level since January 2021, and two-thirds of that month was still during the term of President Trump.
The Border Patrol recorded fewer than 47,000 arrests at the southern border, its best numbers since July 2020, back toward the early days of the pandemic and the border shutdown. It also saw the lowest number of migrant families and unaccompanied juveniles.
Even Mr. Biden’s generous catch-and-release “parole” programs have slowed down in recent months, based on the number of encounters with illegal immigrants at official border crossings and airports and seaports.
Homeland Security officials took credit for the improvements.
“Our enhanced enforcement efforts, combined with executive actions and coordination with Mexico and Central American countries in recent months, are having a sustained, meaningful impact,” said Troy Miller, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.
Agents also recorded nabbing just one terrorism suspect in November, which is also the lowest monthly figure of Mr. Biden’s tenure.
Since June, when Mr. Biden made his latest pivot toward a Trump-style get-tough approach, no month has topped three terrorism suspects. That’s a massive improvement over the middle of his tenure, when agents at the southern border would regularly detect more than a dozen such persons.
The soft landing for Mr. Biden comes too late to help him or Vice President Kamala Harris, but it does give Mr. Trump a head start on his promise to forge control of the southern boundary.
Some analysts have suggested migrants from further south who have been waiting in Mexico for a chance at the U.S. border are already turning back and heading for home or, in some cases, deciding to try to settle in Mexico.
They call it the “Trump effect.”
And preliminary data from The Washington Times database of border smuggling cases suggests migrants are being charged higher-than-usual rates to cross into the U.S.
Digging into the new numbers, CBP recorded a total of 94,190 encounters with unauthorized migrants at the southern border in November. Mr. Biden set an all-time worst record in December 2023 with nearly 302,000 migrant encounters at the southern border.
The northern border, which had been deteriorating in recent months, also showed signs of improvement, both for Border Patrol agents and CBP officers manning the border crossings.
And the airports and seaports, which had been absorbing tens of thousands of catch-and-release migrants a month, saw encounters drop to the kind of levels that used to be common during the first year of the Biden administration — before the heavy use of parole.
The good news does a little to temper the cumulative chaos.
Border Patrol agents have now recorded nearly 7.3 million arrests at the southern border dating back to February 2021, and officers at ports of entry tallied nearly 1.4 more encounters.
Add in northern border and air and seaports and CBP’s total since Mr. Biden took office is more than 10.7 million migrants.
Some were immediately ousted, but analysts say a majority of those were caught and released and, based on historical trends, nearly all are probably still at large in the U.S. today.
