Trump’s ‘zero’ border boast misleads about what the figure counts

A release can allow someone apprehended at the border to await an immigration hearing outside detention. Counting those decisions is different from counting everyone entering the country. The release figure does not measure migrants who evade apprehension, establish that everyone caught has been deported, or describe any subsequent release after transfer to another agency. [3] [10]

Trump’s current wording is “admitted”, not “entered”. But he has previously made the broader claim. At the Republican midterm convention on 9 September 2026, he said there had been no illegal entries from the southern border for 15 months, according to FactCheck.org. [11]

That earlier no-entry claim was false. FactCheck.org cited figures published by the Border Patrol chief showing 2,123 detected but uncaught crossings in May 2025 and 986 in June. These crossings contradict a claim of zero entries, not a separate count of zero Border Patrol releases. [11]

The border Trump inherited

The administration’s 95% comparison uses Biden’s annual average, not the situation when he left office. That matters because the decline began before Trump returned to the White House.

CBP data compiled by Pew Research Center show southwest border encounters falling from about 2.2 million in fiscal 2022 to 1.53 million in fiscal 2024. On 20 January 2025, Reuters reported that tighter Biden policies and increased Mexican enforcement from June 2024 had already driven down the number of migrants caught crossing illegally. [5] [9]

Trump then imposed further restrictions. His administration closed the CBP One entry-appointment programme immediately after his inauguration and cancelled existing appointments. [9]

Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told FactCheck.org in April 2026 that restricting access to asylum at the border was a major driver of the further decline. She also pointed to a likely deterrent effect from interior enforcement and deportations. At the same time, she suggested migrants might return to trying to evade detection rather than approaching agents to seek asylum. [10]

The record therefore supports a contribution from Trump’s policies, but not a story in which the decline started only after he took office.

Nor is the preliminary 2026 southwest apprehension total an all-time low. A historical Border Patrol table records 96,641 apprehensions there in fiscal 1968, below the new 98,708 total. That comparison concerns enforcement counts, not how secure the border was in either year. Pew also cautions that some migrants are counted more than once and that the historical series changed in fiscal 2020 to combine apprehensions and expulsions. [4] [5]

A release count also says nothing about treatment in custody. An order dated 15 August 2025 in the Flores child-detention case cited figures putting the share of detained minors held by CBP for more than seven days at 60% in April 2025, compared with 7% in May 2024. Judge Dolly M. Gee also noted that average custody times for families had been falling by June 2025 and declined new relief on detention length while awaiting further information. [6]

Trump can point to far fewer recorded apprehensions and DHS’s reported end to direct Border Patrol releases. His post is misleading because it drops the limits of that release statistic and uses it to support a much broader historical verdict on border security.