Border Crossings Reach Historic Low After Policy Shifts in U.S. and Mexico: Fewer Than 1,400 Migrants

U.S. Border Patrol encounters with migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico fell to their lowest level in more than 50 years in fiscal year 2025, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of federal data, underscoring a sharp reversal from the record migration levels of recent years.

Border Patrol recorded 237,538 encounters during the 2025 fiscal year, which ran from October 2024 through September 2025. That compares with more than 1.5 million encounters in fiscal 2024, over 2 million in fiscal 2023 and a peak of more than 2.2 million in fiscal 2022.

Researchers behind the study said the 2025 figure was the lowest annual total since 1970. The agency noted that "encounters" refer to events rather than individuals and can include repeat crossings.

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The decline follows a series of policy changes in both the United States and Mexico. In April 2024, then-President Joe Biden and then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced an agreement to intensify enforcement, with Mexican authorities increasing efforts to curb northbound migration. The Biden administration later imposed additional asylum restrictions in June and September 2024.

After returning to office in January 2025, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southwestern border, directed the U.S. military to assist with border security and shut down a Biden-era mobile application that had allowed migrants to seek asylum appointments. The administration has also increased arrests and deportations from the U.S. interior, a move officials say is intended to deter new arrivals.

Monthly data show the decline accelerated after Trump's inauguration. Since February 2025, the first full month of his second term, Border Patrol has recorded fewer than 10,000 encounters per month at the southern border, the lowest levels in more than 25 years of available monthly data and below the early-pandemic low of April 2020.

The drop in crossings has coincided with new enforcement infrastructure. Along the Rio Grande, the Trump administration has begun installing floating buoy barriers as part of a planned 500-mile project known as "Operation River Wall," led by the U.S. Coast Guard. In the Rio Grande Valley Sector, encounters fell to 1,371 in December 2025, down from more than 10,000 a year earlier and nearly 30,000 in December 2023.

Research by the Migration Policy Institute in November showed that the profile of migrants encountered at the border also shifted, leaning toward single Mexican adults and unaccompanied Central American minors. In fact, single adults accounted for nearly 80% of unauthorized crossings, while family-unit encounters dropped from 27% to 12%.

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