Adam Isacson

Adam Isacson

Director for Defense Oversight

View Profile

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in this week’s Border Update format. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported a sharp drop in the number of migrants that its agents and officers encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in January 2025, a month during which the Biden administration managed the border for the first 19 1/2 days, and the Trump administration took over for the final 11 1/2 days.

CBP, which incorporates Border Patrol agents operating between ports of entry (official border crossings) and Field Operations officers operating at the ports of entry, took 61,465 people into custody last month. That was 36 percent fewer than in December 2024, 65 percent fewer than in January 2024, and the fewest in any month since September 2020.

Data table

Thirty-two percent of migrants encountered in January were citizens of Mexico, which is not unusual: since October 2023, Mexican people have made up 31 percent of all encountered migrants. Of the 16 nationalities that CBP reports that had more than 100 encounters, all decreased from December to January; the nationalities that dropped most steeply were Guatemala (-51%), Brazil (-51%), Honduras (-46%), Colombia (-45%), Nicaragua (-44%), and Haiti (-44%).

Migration had been falling steadily at the border for 13 months, since Mexico’s government launched a crackdown on northbound migration in January 2024, and since the Biden administration implemented a rule in June 2024 that ended asylum access between ports of entry in most cases. The further December-to-January drop is a result of the Trump administration acting on January 20 to close the border to all undocumented people and shut down asylum access.

Between the ports of entry in January, CBP’s Border Patrol component apprehended 29,116 people. That was 38 percent fewer than in December 2024, 77 percent fewer than in January 2024, and the fewest in any month since May 2020.

Data table

Border Patrol agents released 2,572 migrants from custody in January (9 percent of apprehensions). That was 63 percent fewer than in December 2024, 96 percent fewer than in January 2024, and the fewest interior releases since January 2021. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks told CBS News on February 20 that the agency has released only two migrants from custody since January 20, and those individuals “were released to assist with criminal prosecutions as witnesses.”

At the ports of entry, the Trump administration abruptly stopped honoring appointments that the Biden administration had been allowing asylum seekers to arrange using the CBP One smartphone app. As the new administration canceled CBP One’s use for appointments, CBP’s encounters at ports of entry between January 20-31 were 93 percent fewer than the preceding 11 days’ average. As a result, the number of migrants encountered for the entire month of January 2025 dropped sharply after holding steady since July 2023, when the CBP One program had begun functioning at 1,450 daily appointments.

Data Table

At the ports of entry in January, CBP’s Field Operations component encountered 32,349 people. Port-of-entry encounters exceeded Border Patrol apprehensions during the third straight month, and almost certainly for the third time ever. January’s port-of-entry encounters were 34 percent fewer than in December 2024, 38 percent fewer than in January 2024, and the fewest in any month since April 2023.

Sixty-one percent of migrants encountered in January were single adults, 34 percent were family unit members (parents and children), and 5 percent were unaccompanied children. That is similar to proportions measured overall since October 2023 (57 percent single adults, 37 percent family unit members, 5 percent unaccompanied children.)

Data table

Of the nine geographic sectors into which Border Patrol divides the border, San Diego, the westernmost sector in California, was the number one sector for migrant apprehensions with 6,397, or 22 percent of the total. San Diego has been the number-one sector for migrant apprehensions since June 2024, with the exception of December 2024, when agents apprehended more migrants in the easternmost sector, the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas.

Data table

While data since Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration are not yet fully available, we do know the following:

The drop in migration is a direct result of the impossibility of seeking asylum at the border under the Trump administration’s border policies, like summarily deporting all undocumented people and ending CBP One appointments, which several organizations are currently challenging in federal court.

“The right to seek asylum in the United States is non-existent at the U.S.-Mexico border,” read a February 20 Amnesty International brief based on fieldwork in Tijuana, which found that thousands are stranded and vulnerable in Mexico as a result.

Banks, the Border Patrol chief, agreed in a CBS News interview that asylum is no longer an option for those who cross between ports of entry. “You do not cross the border illegally and then make an asylum claim,” he told CBS reporter Camilo Montoya-Gálvez. “You can go to the port of entry,........

© WOLA