Border migrant arrests plummet 82 per cent under Donald Trump
The number of migrants caught illegally crossing the US southern border has dropped by 82 per cent since Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
In February, 8,347 people were arrested trying to illegally cross the border, according to US border patrol statistics, putting the new administration on track for the lowest year of migrant crossings in decades.
The numbers represent a staggering decline in arrests at the Mexico border since December, the final full month of the Biden administration, when the border patrol apprehended 47,330 migrants.
That was the lowest daily average for any month during Mr Biden's presidency, but it was still five times as many as February - the first full month since Mr Trump returned to the White House.
If the current trend holds for the remainder of the year, migrant arrests in the US could fall to their lowest level since the mid-1960s, according to the New York Times.
The number of people trying to reach the United States by crossing the Darien Gap - a treacherous land bridge between South America and Central America that is run by gangs - also dropped to 408 in February.
This is down 99 per cent from 37,000 in the same month last year, according to Panama's immigration institute.
Hard-line tactics
The drop off in migrant crossings suggests that the president's hard-line tactics to curb immigration are paying dividends.
Under the Biden administration, the US struggled to get a handle on illegal immigration, with hundreds of thousands of people crossing into the country every month.
The number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border reached a record high in December 2023, when more than 225,000 people were apprehended in a single month.
Within hours of returning to the Oval Office in January, Mr Trump declared an emergency at the US-Mexico border as one of the first in a flurry of executive orders designed to cut off immigration.
He has since implemented a series of tough measures, including halting asylum claims, deploying thousands of troops to the border and ramping up highly publicised deportation flights, designed to deter migrants from making the journey in the first place.
He has also strong-armed Latin American countries into accepting removals and doing more to limit migration at source by threatening economic sanctions.
In a further boost, the president struck a deal with Mexico last month for the country to deploy 10,000 of its own troops to patrol its side of the border.
The administration has claimed that migrant crossings on some individual days have fallen by as much as 94 per cent.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, told New Nation on Saturday: 'Just recently, we saw less than 200 encounters in a day. That's remarkable.
'Now our agents can get back to doing their jobs and enforcing the law instead of processing.'
Addressing the impact of heightened border security on Mexican cartels, she said that gang members recognise 'we're not letting people just walk across the border any more'.
Ms Noem said: 'We are building a wall, we are securing our borders, and we're not going to let this illegal activity continue.'
The South Dakota governor, who was confirmed by the Senate in January to lead the department, has pledged to secure the US border and support deportation efforts.
Ms Noem, 53, oversees the US agency overseeing border enforcement and migrant deportations, which also leads federal efforts on cybersecurity, terrorism and emergency management.
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