What Trump’s record border numbers are hiding

Southwest Border Patrol apprehensions in January 2026 were 79% lower than in the same month a year earlier, while total encounters at and between ports of entry along that border fell 84%. By April, Border Patrol was averaging 298 apprehensions per day.

Those are substantial changes. They are also enforcement outputs rather than complete measures of border security or of the harms a policy may have prevented. Apprehensions count the people officers encountered. They do not count successful entries, explain why fewer people attempted the journey, or establish what followed from the decline.