8-20-2024 9:51am

Homeland Security Confirms 36.7% Drop in Illegal Immigration at El Paso Sector Including New Mexico's Border

Chris Edwards Editor

The number of migrants encountered by Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valleys and the El Paso Sector in July continued to drop as part of a monthly trend on the South Texas border this year, according to new data by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The number of encounters in the El Paso sector that includes all of New Mexico is down 36.7%. The total encounters nationwide across the Southern border is down 13.8% from the previous year.

Across the entire Southwest border there has been a dramatic drops in migrants on the border since President Joe Biden in early June issued an executive order requiring all asylum-seeking migrants to apply for an appointment via the CBP One app. Meetings are held at ports of entry along the border, including:

Arizona: Nogales
Texas: Brownsville, Eagle Pass, Hidalgo, Laredo, and El Paso
California: Calexico and San Ysidro

DHS says monthly encounters on the Southwest border in July were the lowest since September 2020. U.S. Customs and Border Protection data showed migrant encounters declined in July, compared with June, in all nine Border Patrol sectors at the Southwest border, from Texas to California and year to date down in 7 of the 9 sector.

CBP reported 56,408 migrant encounters between ports of entry in July, down 57% from 132,642 the same month a year ago and down 32% from June.

In the RGV Sector, most of migrants crossing into South Texas are Mexican nationals — 27% — followed by Hondurans at 22%, the agency reports.

And nearly half who crossed into the RGV were single adults.

The agency reports there were 5,040 migrant encounters by Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grand Valley Sector in July; that’s down 16% from 5,981 in June, according to CBP data released Friday.

Encounters in the RGV Sector are down 58% from February when there were 11,951 encounters, the agency reports. That’s a big drop from previous years when the RGV led the nation in the number of undocumented migrants U.S. Border Patrol agents reported crossing the South Texas border.

Migrant crossings have declined every month for the past five months. The results mark a rare victory on one of the Biden administration's toughest political battlefronts, as Vice President Kamala Harris engages on her run for president.

"The numbers have indeed decreased and have decreased significantly," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told USA TODAY. "The reason for it is not singular. It is a number of different measures that we and others have taken."

USA Today reality checked these claims by visiting immigration shelters in El Paso and New Mexico to find many empty beds. Kari Lenander runs migrant shelters in west Texas and New Mexico where every green cot has regularly been filled for years.

Her shelter in El Paso is clean and bright. The white walls are decorated with rainbow colors and the flags of many countries. The medical clinic inside is equipped, staffed and waiting. A laundry room with industrial washers and dryers is silent. She switches on the lights to an empty classroom used for immigration orientations.

"It's eerie," she said, of the sudden decline in migration.

Every day, Lenander and other shelter directors receive a notification from Border Patrol's El Paso Sector letting them know how many people will be released and how many people need shelter. It used to be in the hundreds.

Nowadays, it's often single digits, she said. Nine migrants on a recent day, or seven.

The opposition partys talking points that illegal crossings are out of control and the highest level ever are false accusations based on real data available to verify for 2024. Statistics don't lie, empty beds in shelters don't lie but some politicians do. To lean more visit the stats:

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters