Illegal border crossings have collapsed to historic lows under President Trump’s policies, with Border Patrol recording 16 straight months of zero releases into the U.S. interior.
Unofficial Customs and Border Protection figures reviewed by Breitbart Texas show roughly 8,900 illegal aliens arrested in September after crossing the southwest border between ports of entry. That brought recently closed-out fiscal year 2026 apprehensions to just under 137,000, a staggering drop from the Biden-era peak.
Fiscal year 2023 saw Border Patrol apprehend 2,475,669 illegal aliens along the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry. The new totals reflect a 94.47 percent decline and 2,338,969 fewer illegal crossings. Official CBP reports put fiscal year 2024 at 2,135,005 and fiscal year 2025 at 443,671, underscoring how sharply the numbers fell once the second Trump administration’s enforcement approach took hold.
Department of Homeland Security officials announced in September that Border Patrol released no illegal aliens into the interior. That zero-release streak now stretches more than 16 months. Catch and release is no longer the operating model. Detention and consequences are.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin framed the results in plain terms after the September announcement.
In a statement carried in the Breitbart Texas report, Mullin said:
"Sixteen straight months of zero releases at the border proves that President Trump’s policies are working. Catch and release is over, consequences are back, and illegal crossings have fallen to historic lows. This is what a secure border looks like."
CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott reinforced the same point in an interview with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle earlier this month. Scott said the agency is preparing to report a full year with no releases from the border.
"It’s not out officially yet, but we’re going to report soon: a full year with no releases from the border,"
Scott told Boyle. The policy shift is not abstract. Agents detain illegal crossers instead of processing them into American communities. That single change removes the incentive structure that once pulled hundreds of thousands of migrants north each month.
While Democrats in Congress keep pushing measures to hobble immigration enforcement, including efforts where over 100 liberal Democrats demand Schumer and Jeffries back abolishing ICE, the operational results at the border tell a different story. Enforcement is producing measurable order.
The collapse is not limited to overall crossings. Unaccompanied alien children numbers cratered as well. CBP data show 137,235 UACs apprehended in fiscal year 2023. Fiscal year 2026 registered slightly more than 7,600.
Scott described the new handling of those cases. Minors are no longer released to illegal alien parents already in the United States or funneled toward labor traffickers. They go to the Department of Health and Human Services.
"Instead, they are being sent to the Department of Health and Human Services, where most are being processed for deportation back home,"
Scott said. That is a direct reversal of the prior practice that left thousands of children inside the country with little follow-through. Detaining crossers and moving unaccompanied minors toward swift return is now the baseline approach.
The same officials who delivered these results face constant political attacks from the left. Recent clashes over enforcement have included cases where DHS chief Mullin says Mamdani’s words incite hostility after a Bronx ICE shooting, yet the border metrics keep moving in one direction: down.
Scott also explained why the drop hits Mexican cartels where it hurts. Human smuggling volume has fallen hard. Cartels previously treated mass migrant flows as operational cover.
"People miss this sometimes: The cartels need the illegal [migrants]. It’s a little extra money, but really they need them to overwhelm law enforcement at the border so they can bring the higher-threat commodities, whether it be narcotics, whether it be people that pay more money to avoid being fingerprinted, terrorists, criminals. But they need clutter to drive their costs down. Now they don’t have it... they’re not getting the [migrant customer] recruits they had before."
Without the crowds, agents face less chaos. Higher-threat traffic loses its camouflage. Narcotics, special-interest aliens, and criminals who once paid premiums to avoid fingerprinting no longer move as easily behind a wall of asylum claims and catch-and-release processing.
That operational reality stands in contrast to legislative proposals that would starve enforcement of resources. One recent example: Ilhan Omar introduced a bill to strip ICE of nearly $140 billion and redirect it away from the agencies doing the work. The border numbers show what happens when those agencies are allowed to enforce the law instead.
Put the years side by side. Fiscal year 2023: 2,475,669 between-ports apprehensions. Fiscal year 2024: 2,135,005. Fiscal year 2025: 443,671, the first full fiscal year of Trump’s second term and the first dramatic policy break. Fiscal year 2026: just under 137,000.
September alone, at about 8,900 arrests, would have been a slow week during the prior surge. Now it is a monthly total. DHS tied the zero-release announcement to that same September window. Mullin’s “sixteen straight months” claim and Scott’s forthcoming full-year report line up with the same enforcement timeline.
Political pressure on DHS leadership continues from other directions as well. Mullin has also been outspoken on separate immigration controversies, including when the DHS Secretary said Ilhan Omar married her brother and warned deportation was possible. The common thread is simple: this administration treats immigration law as real law.
Breitbart Texas reviewed the unofficial Border Patrol reports that produced the September and fiscal year 2026 figures. Official CBP reports supplied the fiscal year 2024 and 2025 benchmarks and the earlier UAC counts. The trajectory is consistent across both sets of numbers. Crossings between ports of entry have fallen to levels unseen in the crisis years. Releases into the interior have stopped for more than a year and a half.
Secure borders are not a talking point when the agents stop releasing illegal crossers and the monthly arrest totals fall by an order of magnitude. They are a policy choice, and the choice is delivering results the prior administration never produced.
