This week, as contractors submitted proposals for the border wall that President Trump famously promised throughout his campaign, DHS came out with new statistics on apprehensions at the southern border — a number that tends to go up and down with the number of illegal border crossers.
Looking at the new data, one almost has to wonder whether we will need a wall in the first place.
The number for March was just 12,193 — less than half the total for any March in the prior five years, and far, far below any month during that time period.
In February and March combined — the first two full months of Trump’s presidency — only about 31,000 illegal entrants were apprehended, according to the Border Patrol. That combined total is less than any of the four preceding months individually.
In Fiscal 2016 (which ran from October 2015 through September 2016), there were 409,000 apprehensions. Were crossings to continue at their February-March pace for a full year, there would be only about 190,000 apprehensions. Were they to go a full year at March’s levels, there would be just 146,000.
Also in decline: The number of people who were turned away from points of authorized entry. That number was 4,407 in March and 4,808 in February — down by between 75 and 50 percent of any of the preceding four months.
CBP included the chart below, which combines border apprehensions and inadmissables:
The way the Border Patrol put it, “Since the Administration’s implementation of Executive Orders to enforce immigration laws, the drop in apprehensions shows a marked change in trends.” That’s quite an understatement.
In practical terms, not much has changed. Trump is now targeting the exact same criminal population for deportation as Obama had prioritized before him, not attempting in any serious fashion to deport everybody. And obviously the wall hasn’t been built yet (assuming it ever will be), nor have the thousands of new border patrolmen been hired, who will presumably be included in future appropriations from Congress.
All that’s actually changed seems to be the less permissive public attitude of the government toward illegal immigration. And frankly, it’s amazing what a difference that seems to have made in simply deterring people from doing it.
