As we near the end of the calendar year, DHS plainly has immigration-enforcement victories to trumpet. CBP is as close to “operational control” of the Southwest border as it’s ever been, and less than two months into FY 2026, ICE has removed from its custody nearly 56,400 aliens this fiscal year. Still, there is a danger of the department losing the narrative – which would be a problem for the administration, because Trump’s opponents in the media, NGOs, and elected office are all-too willing to fill in the blanks to tell their own story.
Border Patrol Apprehensions at the Southwest Border
Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border apprehended just fewer than 8,000 illegal migrants in October, 4.8 percent fewer than in September (8,386) but more importantly a nearly 86-percent decline compared to October 2024 (56,515).
All told, since February (Trump’s first full month in his second term), agents apprehended just short of 58,000 illegal entrants, or an average of 6,443 apprehensions per month.
Compare that to Border Patrol’s monthly average of 127,500 apprehensions in FY 2024 – a “good” year by Biden administration standards and one driven by its use of extra-legal gimmicks to slug tens of thousands of would-be illegal entrants through the ports monthly using the CBP One app and the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela Parole Program (CHNV Parole).
The monthly average in FY 2023 was nearly 170,500 Southwest border apprehensions, and if you wonder why illegal immigration turned out to be a millstone around the neck of president and his vice president, ultimate 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, look no further than those figures.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 (SFA) requires the DHS secretary to “take all actions . . . necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States”, and section 2(b) of that act defines the term “operational control” as “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by. . . unlawful aliens”.
Border Patrol agents have essentially halted illegal entries and haven’t released a single illegal migrant apprehended at the Southwest border since April – the very definition of “operational control”.
More critically, however, nearly 70 percent of the illegal entrants apprehended in October (5,518) were Mexican nationals, who can be quickly processed and returned in a matter of hours in nearly every case.
Traditionally (prior to FY 2014), most illegal entries at the Southwest border involved Mexican migrants, and the fact that they have returned to this historical demographic pattern indicates CBP has found the “sweet spot” in its deterrence scheme, as I have explained in the past.
Which is likely why few in the media even mention the border anymore.
ICE Interior Arrests and Removals
Instead, all the focus is now on immigration enforcement by ICE and its federal partners in the interior.
Large-scale enforcement endeavors like “Operation Midway Blitz” (in Chicagoland) and “Operation Charlotte’s Web” (in central North Carolina) have drawn massive media attention and protests, with claims DHS is engaging in random sweeps and “racial profiling”.
Those claims have taken hold to such an extent that even those lawfully here are cautious about going out, with one acquaintance asking for my phone number so she has a lawyer to call in case she’s taken into ICE custody.
Did I mention she was born in Portland, Oregon?
In any event, I doubt most of the more pointed assertions about those operations are true, for a couple of reasons.
First, from my (three decades of) experience in immigration enforcement, both sweeps and profiling are wastes of departmental resources, and in most instances the latter is illegal.
When Trump returned to office, ICE had more than 7.6 million aliens on its non-detained docket, 1.445 million of whom were under final orders of removal. In other words, the agency has more than enough “targets” for arrest without having to show up at random home-improvement stores looking for more.
And in many cases, those aliens aren’t alone; instead, they are in the company of other aliens here illegally, resulting in the “collateral arrests” you may have heard “border czar” Tom Homan referencing.
The second, and less subjective, reason why I doubt DHS is engaged in large-scale sweeps comes from ICE’s own detention statistics.
At present, the agency has 52,510 aliens in its custody who were arrested by ICE officers and agents (an additional 12,625 detainees were apprehended by CBP at the borders and ports).
Of those 52,510 ICE detainees, 16,057 have criminal convictions and an additional 15,259 have pending criminal charges – 31,316 all told, meaning roughly 60 percent of all the aliens arrested in the interior and currently in ICE detention have criminal records.
Of the remaining 21,194 detainees (identified as “other immigration violators”), a significant number are almost definitely under final removal orders and awaiting deportation.
How do I know that? Because the latest ICE data reveals that the agency has already removed 56,392 aliens who had been in ICE custody since October 1.
At that pace, DHS is on track for at least 600,000 deportations this fiscal year, but more importantly that statistic reveals that the aliens the agency is detaining either already had removal orders or had criminal records so serious that they didn’t qualify for any relief.
Simply put, results like that don’t come from random sweeps of people milling about in parking lots.
Time for DHS to Put Its Policies into Context
Perhaps you’ve heard the old proverb about tackling large-scale projects: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
DHS came into the Trump II administration faced with a heaping helping of pachyderm pâté: a border that had to be fixed, and fast; and an illegal alien population the Center conservatively estimated at 15.4 million and climbing.
As the foregoing indicates, the border is fixed (for now) and the total foreign-born population has fallen by about 2 million, most of them aliens who had been here unlawfully, since Trump returned.
DHS media meanwhile has been forced into a massive game of “whack a mole”, constantly whipsawed as it corrects questionable press accounts and responds to outlandish claims, all the while attempting to get its own narrative into the public sphere.
Even the most laudable and meritorious policy will fail if it lacks popular support, and at the moment, there’s a long line of “reporters”, advocates, and politicos taking whacks at what DHS is doing on the ground in cities across the country to undermine the administration’s immigration-enforcement regime.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and if DHS wants its immigration policies to succeed, now’s likely the time to double-down on its messaging, highlighting its successes, explaining its tactics, elucidating its goals and the means it’s using to achieve them. Take it from a DC veteran: if you don’t tell your own story, your opponents will do it for you.