Border Patrol agents arrested 98,701 illegal immigrants at the southern border in fiscal 2026, President Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year back in office, compared with 2.2 million in former President Joe Biden’s first full year, according to internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data obtained by The Washington Examiner. The drop started before Trump took office. Within days of his election in November 2024, arrests at the border fell, a shift some dubbed the “Trump effect.” The Examiner reported that the fiscal 2026 total is more than 95% lower than fiscal 2022 and the lowest annual figure in at least 59 years. The data is set to be released publicly in the coming weeks.
Agents averaged 8,225 arrests a month in fiscal 2026. Four years ago, they averaged 183,000 a month, more in a single month than in the past 12 months combined. The 98,701 figure is the lowest since 1967, when Border Patrol made 94,778 arrests nationwide. Under Biden, a border crisis brought millions of people to the U.S., with roughly 5 million released into the country from the border and hundreds of thousands more using parole programs to fly in from abroad. Upon taking office, the Biden administration stopped turning away unaccompanied child migrants, attempted to halt Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations for 100 days and suspended border wall construction.
