Adam Isacson

Adam Isacson

Director for Defense Oversight

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Due to end-of-year staff vacation time, WOLA will not publish Border Updates for the next two weeks. Updates will resume on January 10, 2025.

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.

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November data showed migration levels at the border continuing to decline following Donald Trump’s election, to such an extent that, for the first time, port-of-entry arrivals exceeded Border Patrol apprehensions. Still, some reports from Texas point to an increase in mid-December as some people try to reach U.S. soil before Inauguration Day. Rumors sent some migrants to attempt to turn themselves in at a border wall gate in El Paso, where state forces repelled them violently. Caravans continue to form in southern Mexico, but none remain intact beyond Mexico’s southernmost states.

As Trump administration officials ramp up plans to deport undocumented migrants on a massive scale likely requiring the use of military aircraft, concern is sweeping throughout communities where many families are “blended”: citizens living with non-citizens. Fear is spreading in south Texas, while council members and law enforcement in San Diego disagree on cooperation.

Conservative media and Donald Trump complained bitterly about the Biden administration’s auctioning off of border wall parts left over when construction halted after Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. In fact, the selloff was mandated by the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.

November data

Border Patrol apprehended migrants 46,612 times at the U.S.-Mexico border in November, according to data that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published on December 19. That is the smallest monthly apprehensions number since July 2020, a few months into the pandemic during Donald Trump’s first presidency.

For the first time probably ever, the number of people who came to the border’s ports of entry, mostly with CBP One appointments (47,578, green in the chart below) exceeded Border Patrol apprehensions. If, as expected, Donald Trump does away with the CBP One appointment program for asylum seekers after his January 20 inauguration, we can expect Border Patrol apprehensions (blue in the chart) to revert to being a multiple of port-of-entry encounters again.

Combining Border Patrol apprehensions and ports of entry, 94,190 people ended up in CBP custody in November 2024, the fewest since January 2021. This total is 61 percent fewer than in November 2023, which was one of the border’s busiest months ever.

Data table

Of nationalities CBP reported with over 100 migrants in a month, all declined from November to........

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