Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have slowed significantly as President Biden prepares to leave office and as President-elect Donald J. Trump, who promised to crack down on immigration, is days away from retaking power.
More than 46,000 people crossed the border illegally in November, the lowest number during the Biden administration. Though overall crossings ticked up slightly in December, the daily averages were the lowest since summer 2020, according to a senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak publicly.
January is on track to have even fewer monthly crossings, the official said, adding that government officials were also ramping up deportations after an executive order further restricted asylum this summer.
“The border is quieter than it has been in years,” said Adam Isacson, a border security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization. “The number of people entering Border Patrol custody is as low as the first months of the pandemic. And for the first time ever, more people are making appointments at official crossings — an orderly process — than are being captured in between.”
He suggested that the first half of the year, when Mr. Trump takes office, could have “historically low” border crossings, noting that Border Patrol apprehensions — instances in which people are taken into custody along the border — were the lowest in decades during the first months of the previous Trump administration.
“Migrants will delay their plans, if they can, to see what happens after an anti-immigration president takes power,” he said.
Mr. Trump, who campaigned on promises of securing the border, has kept immigration front and center. In recent days, though, he has waffled over whether to prioritize legislation on that issue or on tax cuts during his first days in office.
For Mr. Biden, the recent drop in illegal border crossings was a welcome but late-arriving change for an administration whose chief political vulnerabilities have included immigration.
In his administration’s early years, the president struggled to control the number of crossings at the southern border, and images of migrants crossing into the country spread widely, prompting sharp criticism.
Republicans assailed the Biden administration’s immigration policies as too lax, saying they were providing an opening for migrants to cross the border unlawfully.
Mr. Biden undid several Trump immigration policies but kept in place a pandemic-era program that allowed border agents to quickly turn back migrants for a period of time at the beginning of his presidency.
Still, faced with mounting frustration over the border, and an electorate that considered immigration a top concern, Mr. Biden in June issued an executive order banning asylum for migrants who crossed illegally into the country.
Since the order was put in place, those crossings have fallen off dramatically.
U.S. officials have noted that the administration has also expanded legal pathways to immigration: A government phone app now allows migrants to schedule an appointment to enter the country at a port of entry, and a program allows some foreign nationals to apply to live and work in the United States if they have a financial sponsor.
They have also pointed to increased enforcement by Mexican officials as contributing to the drop in migrant border crossings.
But Andrea R. Flores, a vice president for immigration policy at the advocacy group FWD.us and a former Biden administration official, warned against relying on such a policy with Mexico.
“The United States is at a crossroads with border security,” she said. “Numbers are low today, but any policy that continues to outsource border security to other countries is unsustainable.
“As long as the United States government fails to reform the asylum system, modernize border infrastructure and increase legal pathways away from the border,” she added, “President Trump will face the same challenges that President Biden did.”
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