The short answer is that Trump’s claim at the 2026 State of the Union — that the U.S. has “the strongest and most secure border in American history, by far” — is largely supported by the encounter data, but it comes with a significant asterisk. Monthly encounters tracked by Customs and Border Protection have plummeted to levels not seen since approximately 1970, with January 2026 recording just 34,626 total encounters nationwide and Southwest border apprehensions dropping 96% below the monthly average under the Biden administration. By the numbers alone, the border is quieter than it has been in over half a century.
But the full picture is more complicated than a victory lap suggests. Multiple independent fact-checkers, including NPR and AllSides, rated the claim as “partly true” or “mostly true” rather than a clean factual statement. The reason: a substantial portion of the decline actually began under Biden’s tightened asylum policies in mid-2024, months before Trump took office. And while illegal crossings have cratered, calling the border “the most secure ever” glosses over ongoing questions about enforcement capacity, visa overstays, and whether historically low numbers reflect deterrence or simply displacement. This article breaks down what the monthly data actually shows, where Trump’s framing holds up, and where it stretches the truth.
Table of Contents
- What Does the Monthly Encounter Data Actually Show About Trump’s “Most Secure Border” Claim?
- How Much of the Border Decline Started Under Biden Before Trump Took Office?
- What the “Zero Releases” Policy Means in Practice
- How Different Fact-Checkers Rated Trump’s Border Claim
- What Encounter Data Doesn’t Capture About Border Security
- The Policy Mix Driving the Numbers Down
- What Comes Next for Border Policy and Enforcement
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Does the Monthly Encounter Data Actually Show About Trump’s “Most Secure Border” Claim?
The numbers are stark and largely undeniable. October 2025, the start of fiscal year 2026, recorded 30,561 total encounters nationwide — the lowest start to any fiscal year ever tracked by CBP. The first quarter of FY2026 (October through December 2025) saw 91,603 total encounters, a 76% drop compared to the same period a year earlier under Biden, when encounters hit 392,196. By December 2025, total encounters stood at 30,698, which is 92% below the Biden-era monthly peak of 370,883. These are not cherry-picked comparisons — they represent consistent, months-long trends confirmed by CBP’s own publicly available statistics. The full fiscal year 2025 tells a similar story. Total crossings for FY2025 came in at 237,538, the lowest annual figure since approximately 1970.
For additional context, U.S. border patrol recorded zero releases for eight consecutive months as of January 2026, meaning every individual apprehended was either detained, removed, or returned rather than released into the interior with a court date. That operational shift alone represents a dramatic departure from the processing patterns seen during the 2022-2023 surge. By March 2026, Southwest border apprehensions had fallen to roughly 7,200 — a 95% drop compared to March 2024 — and total nationwide encounters hovered around 29,000. Pew Research Center, in a February 2, 2026 analysis, confirmed that migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border had reached their lowest level in more than 50 years. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem cited this same data when declaring the border “the most secure ever.” From a pure encounter-data standpoint, it is difficult to argue with the trend line. The question is whether encounter data alone tells the whole story.
How Much of the Border Decline Started Under Biden Before Trump Took Office?
This is where the narrative gets complicated, and where fact-checkers have been most pointed in their analysis. Just Security, a legal and policy analysis forum, noted that between December 2023 and December 2024, monthly apprehensions fell from approximately 250,000 to roughly 50,000. That means the majority of the initial decline — a roughly 80% drop — occurred while Biden was still in office. The catalyst was Biden’s June 2024 executive action restricting asylum access at the border, which immediately changed the calculus for many would-be crossers. trump administration policies then accelerated the decline further starting in January 2025.
The reinstatement of the Remain in Mexico program, increased deportation flights, and expanded detention capacity pushed monthly apprehensions from that roughly 50,000 range down to approximately 10,000 or fewer. So while Trump can credibly claim that numbers reached their lowest point under his watch, the trajectory was already sharply downward when he entered office. NPR’s fact-check of the State of the Union specifically flagged this distinction, noting that while the encounter numbers are “genuinely at historic lows,” other aspects of Trump’s framing — particularly his characterization of crossings under Biden as entirely “unvetted” — were misleading. However, if you are evaluating the claim strictly on the question of whether the border is currently at its most secure by encounter metrics, the answer holds regardless of who started the trend. A president inherits conditions and either continues or reverses them. Trump’s policies did not reverse the decline; they deepened it. The debate is really about credit allocation, which is a political question more than a statistical one.
What the “Zero Releases” Policy Means in Practice
One of the more concrete operational shifts behind the numbers is the zero-releases streak. As of January 2026, U.S. Border Patrol had recorded zero releases for eight consecutive months, according to DHS. In prior years, particularly during the 2022 and 2023 surges, Border Patrol routinely released tens of thousands of migrants per month into the U.S. interior with notices to appear in immigration court, a practice critics termed “catch and release.” The elimination of that practice represents a genuine change in how the border functions day to day.
In practical terms, this means that individuals apprehended at the border are being detained, processed for expedited removal, or returned to Mexico under the Remain in Mexico protocol. The operational effect is twofold: it removes one of the primary incentives for crossing (the expectation of release and years-long court backlogs), and it shifts the burden onto detention infrastructure and immigration courts. Whether this is sustainable long-term depends on detention capacity, legal challenges, and the willingness of Mexico to continue accepting returnees — none of which are guaranteed to hold indefinitely. For comparison, during the peak months of the Biden-era surge, Border Patrol was releasing upward of 100,000 individuals per month due to overcrowded facilities and processing constraints. The shift from six-figure monthly releases to zero is operationally unprecedented, regardless of one’s policy perspective on whether that approach is humane, legal, or strategically sound.
How Different Fact-Checkers Rated Trump’s Border Claim
The range of verdicts from independent fact-checkers offers a useful lens for understanding the nuances. AllSides, which rates claims across the political spectrum, called the border security claim “mostly true,” noting that Trump has overseen the lowest illegal immigration levels in over half a century. Their assessment largely took the data at face value while acknowledging that “most secure” is a subjective superlative that depends on how you define security. NPR’s fact-check landed at “partly true,” drawing a sharper line between the encounter data, which genuinely supports the claim, and the broader rhetoric around it, which they found misleading. Specifically, NPR noted that Trump’s characterization of the Biden era as one of entirely unvetted crossings was inaccurate — CBP under Biden still screened individuals and ran background checks, even during the surge periods.
CBS News took a similar approach, pointing out that while border crossings are at historic lows, it is factually wrong to suggest there have been “zero crossings.” There were still 237,538 encounters in FY2025 — a low number historically, but not zero. The tradeoff here is between precision and directional accuracy. If you interpret “most secure border ever” as meaning the lowest encounter numbers in modern history, the data backs Trump up. If you interpret it as a claim that the border is impenetrable or that no unauthorized crossings occur, it falls apart. Most fact-checkers landed somewhere in the middle, crediting the data while flagging the rhetorical overreach.
What Encounter Data Doesn’t Capture About Border Security
Encounter data measures known interactions between CBP and individuals crossing or attempting to cross the border. It does not measure what it cannot see. The category of “gotaways” — individuals detected by surveillance but not apprehended — has historically been significant, and CBP has released limited data on this metric under the current administration. If gotaway numbers have also dropped proportionally, that strengthens the “most secure” claim. If they have not, or if reporting methodology has changed, the picture is less clear.
There is also the question of visa overstays, which have consistently accounted for a substantial share of the unauthorized population in the United States. Encounter data at the border tells you nothing about the individual who enters legally on a tourist or student visa and simply never leaves. The Department of Homeland Security’s own reports have historically estimated that overstays account for roughly 40% or more of the total unauthorized population in any given year. A border that is “the most secure ever” by land crossing metrics may still be porous through other entry channels. Additionally, critics from both the left and right have raised questions about whether the low numbers reflect genuine deterrence or whether migration flows have simply been redirected — through more remote crossing points, through other countries, or into smuggling networks that are harder to detect. These are not objections that the data can easily answer, and they represent a genuine limitation of using encounter figures as the sole barometer of border security.
The Policy Mix Driving the Numbers Down
The decline in encounters is not attributable to a single policy. On the Trump side, the reinstatement of Remain in Mexico forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexican border cities rather than being processed into the U.S. interior. Expanded detention capacity meant more apprehended individuals were held rather than released. Increased deportation flights, particularly to Central American and Caribbean nations, raised the stakes for those considering the journey.
And diplomatic pressure on Mexico and Central American governments to increase enforcement on their end created additional barriers before migrants ever reached the U.S. border. On the Biden side, the June 2024 executive order restricting asylum access at the border — which temporarily suspended asylum processing when daily encounter numbers exceeded a certain threshold — had an immediate and measurable effect. Monthly encounters dropped sharply in the months following that order, well before the 2025 presidential transition. This layered policy approach, spanning two administrations with very different stated philosophies on immigration, complicates any simple narrative about who deserves credit.
What Comes Next for Border Policy and Enforcement
The question going forward is whether these historically low numbers are sustainable or whether they represent a temporary trough driven by aggressive enforcement, geopolitical conditions, and economic factors in sending countries. Immigration patterns are cyclical, and the push factors — poverty, violence, climate disruption, political instability — that drive migration from Central America, Venezuela, Haiti, and other regions have not disappeared. They have, at most, been temporarily outweighed by the pull-factor reduction created by stricter U.S. policies.
Legal challenges also loom. Several of the Trump administration’s enforcement mechanisms, including expanded expedited removal and certain aspects of the Remain in Mexico program, face ongoing court battles. A single adverse ruling could alter the operational framework that has produced these numbers. For now, the data is clear: border encounters are at historic lows. Whether that holds through FY2026 and beyond will depend on factors that extend well past any single president’s executive orders.
Conclusion
Trump’s claim that the border is “the most secure ever” is substantially supported by CBP encounter data, which shows crossings at their lowest levels in more than 50 years. Monthly encounters have fallen by 92 to 96 percent compared to Biden-era peaks, FY2025 recorded the fewest total crossings since approximately 1970, and Border Patrol achieved eight consecutive months of zero releases. These are not disputed figures — they come from the government’s own statistics and have been confirmed by Pew Research Center and multiple independent fact-checkers. The caveats are real but do not negate the core claim.
The decline began under Biden’s tightened asylum policies in mid-2024, meaning Trump inherited a sharply downward trend rather than creating one from scratch. Encounter data does not capture gotaways, visa overstays, or potential displacement of migration routes. And “most secure ever” is a superlative that implies perfection the data does not support — 237,538 crossings in FY2025 is historically low, but it is not zero. The most accurate summary: by the primary metric that both administrations use to measure border security, the border is performing better than it has in over half a century. The debate over how much credit belongs to whom, and whether the approach is sustainable or humane, is a separate and ongoing conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are border crossings really at their lowest level in 50 years?
Yes. Pew Research Center confirmed in February 2026 that migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border are at their lowest level in more than 50 years, and CBP’s own data shows FY2025 total crossings at levels not seen since approximately 1970.
Did the decline in border crossings start under Biden or Trump?
The decline began in mid-2024 under Biden, following his June 2024 executive action restricting asylum access. Monthly apprehensions fell from roughly 250,000 to about 50,000 while Biden was still in office. They then dropped further to approximately 10,000 or fewer per month under Trump’s additional enforcement measures.
What does “zero releases” mean at the border?
It means that U.S. Border Patrol did not release any apprehended individuals into the U.S. interior pending court dates. Instead, all individuals encountered were either detained, placed in expedited removal proceedings, or returned to Mexico. As of January 2026, this streak had lasted eight consecutive months.
Do encounter statistics count everyone who crosses the border illegally?
No. Encounter data only captures known interactions — individuals who are apprehended or who turn themselves in. It does not count “gotaways” (people detected but not caught) or those who cross completely undetected. It also does not account for visa overstays, which represent a significant portion of the unauthorized population.
How did fact-checkers rate Trump’s “most secure border” claim?
NPR rated it “partly true,” noting the data supports historic lows but finding other rhetorical claims misleading. AllSides rated it “mostly true.” CBS News confirmed historically low numbers but noted it is inaccurate to say there have been “zero crossings.” No major fact-checker called the underlying encounter data false.