President Donald Trump’s administration is approaching its first year in office with unprecedented achievements in border security and immigration enforcement.
The White House calls it a historic reversal of illegal immigration that had surged during the Biden years.
Border encounters hit another record low in November, with Border Patrol agents apprehending about 7,350 illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico boundary, according to The Washington Times.
The Trump administration has achieved seven consecutive months with zero “catch and release” cases from the southwestern border.
Across all borders and ports, Customs and Border Protection reported just 30,367 encounters with illegal aliens in November, a massive change from the Biden years when CBP averaged more than 230,000 encounters each month.
The Biden administration averaged more than 5,100 apprehensions a day across its four years – not including illegal immigrants who weren’t caught. During its worst month in December 2023, agents averaged more than 8,000 apprehensions a day.
“Once again, we have a record low number of encounters at the border and the seventh straight month of zero releases,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. “Month after month, we are delivering results that were once thought impossible: the most secure border in history and unmatched enforcement successes.”
November was the tenth straight month of agents catching fewer than 10,000 border crossers. CBP called that “a level of deterrence unmatched in modern border history.”
In September, the Trump administration announced a major milestone: over 2 million illegal aliens have left the United States in less than 250 days, including an estimated 1.6 million who voluntarily self-deported and more than 400,000 deportations, according to a DHS press release.
“The numbers don’t lie: 2 million illegal aliens have been removed or self-deported in just 250 days— proving that President Trump’s policies and Secretary Noem’s leadership are working and making American communities safe,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said at the time. “Ramped-up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day and is sending a clear message to anyone else in this country illegally: Self-deport or we will arrest and deport you.”
Border czar Tom Homan told Axios in October that the administration expects to deport 600,000 illegal immigrants this year.
“If you’re in the United States illegally, you’re not off the table,” Homan told Axios. “If we find you, we’re going to arrest you.”
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations has been arresting roughly 1,100 people per day in recent weeks, and it’s increasing. The Trump administration raised its internal daily target from about 1,000 arrests a day to 3,000 in May 2025.
“This is just the beginning. President Trump and Secretary Noem have jump-started an agency that was vilified and barred from doing its job for the last four years,” McLaughlin told Axios. “The Trump Administration is delivering on the President’s promise to the American people by carrying out the largest mass deportation operation of criminal illegal aliens in American history.”
Included in that number is more than 600 suspected terrorists who have been removed from the United States since Trump took office, according to multiple administration statements.
The Trump administration has designated eight Latin American drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, including Tren de Aragua, MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the United Cartels, the Gulf Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, and the Michoacán Family.
Border wall construction has resumed under the Trump administration after Biden froze funding when he took office. CBP awarded its first border wall contract of Trump’s second term in March to Granite Construction Co. for approximately $70 million to construct about seven miles of new border wall in Hidalgo County, Texas. The contract uses CBP’s Fiscal Year 2021 funds to “close critical openings in the border wall that were left incomplete due to cancelled contracts during the Biden Administration,” according to a CBP press release.
In June, CBP announced a contract to Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. for approximately $309 million to build about 27 miles of new border wall in Santa Cruz County, Arizona. DHS issued waivers in June to bypass environmental laws, expediting approximately 36 miles of new border wall in Arizona and New Mexico.
“Since January 20, 2025, CBP has initiated more than 80 miles of new permanent border barrier projects — now in various stages of planning and construction — across the San Diego, Yuma, Tucson, El Paso, and Rio Grande Valley Sectors,” CBP Spokesperson John B. Mennell said.
In October, CBP announced 10 new construction contracts totaling approximately $4.5 billion awarded in September. These contracts represented the first to be funded by President Trump’s One Big Beautiful spending bill passed by Congress in July, which includes $46.5 billion to complete construction of the wall on the United States-Mexico border.
CBP referred to the Border Wall as a “Smart Wall,” describing it as “a border security system that combines steel barriers, waterborne barriers, patrol roads, lights, cameras, and advanced detection technology to give Border Patrol agents the best tools in the world to stop illegal traffic.”
Meanwhile, ICE has received nearly $75 billion through 2029 from the One Big Beautiful Bill, including about $45 billion set aside specifically to increase capacity at immigration detention centers and nearly $30 billion toward enforcement and removal operations.
Finally, illegal crossings at the Darien Gap in Panama have dropped to almost nothing and the number of unaccompanied children arriving at the border has also hit a record low under President Trump, according to the White House.
“Additionally, illegal aliens are hearing our message to leave now or face the consequence,” McLaughlin said in October. “Migrants are now even turning back before they reach our borders— migration through Panama’s Darién Gap is down 99.99%.