Border Encounters, Apprehensions Hit Record Low in July: Homeland Security

Trump has ‘obliterated’ the border crisis, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said.

Human smugglers drive ATVs on the Mexican side of the United States border wall near Jacumba, Calif., on Oct. 31, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said preliminary data from July 2025 show that for the third time this year, the agency set record lows for nationwide encounters and single-day border apprehensions.

There were 24,630 nationwide encounters with illegal immigrants in July, the lowest on record, down 2.4 percent from June and nearly 90 percent lower than the monthly average under the previous administration, the agency said on Aug. 1.

Border Patrol apprehensions hit 6,177 individuals in July, breaking June’s all-time low.

Daily apprehensions averaged just 148 per day. Last July, during the Biden administration, the average apprehension rate was 152 individuals every two hours.

“History made, again. The numbers don’t lie—this is the most secure the border has ever been,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. “President Trump didn’t just manage the crisis—he obliterated it. No more excuses. No more releases. We’ve put the cartels on defense and taken our border back.”

On July 20, the country recorded its lowest single-day apprehension numbers in history, with 88 at the Southwest border and 116 nationwide.

Along the southwest border, authorities reported 4,598 apprehensions for the entire month of July, which is lower than the daily average under the Biden administration, DHS said.

The Trump administration’s stringent measures against the influx of illegal immigrants have come under criticism from some immigration organizations.

Last month, advocacy group American Immigration Council released a report alleging that the administration’s immigration policy “strikes at the foundation of American democracy,” according to a July 23 statement from the group.

It said the Trump administration has effectively ended asylum at the southern border, demolished the refugee program, boosted funding for immigrant detention, and jammed legal immigration pathways via processing freezes, large fee increases, and opaque barriers.

“This isn’t just a hardline immigration agenda,” said Nayna Gupta, the organization’s policy director. “It’s a wholesale effort to use immigrants and the U.S. immigration system to attack core tenets of our democracy and exercise unchecked executive power to realign the American government around exclusion and fear.”

Last month, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced legislation designed to “expand a pathway to lawful permanent residency” for millions of noncitizens who have been living in the United States for a long time.

Accusing the Trump administration of “cruel scapegoating of hardworking immigrants and fearmongering of California communities,” Padilla said in a July 25 statement from his office that “there’s a better path forward.”

According to data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), nationwide encounters of illegal immigrants between February and June, the first five full months of the Trump presidency, stood at 141,550 individuals, down from nearly 1.2 million in the same period last year.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (C) rides a four-wheeler during a tour along the Nogales border wall at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz., on March 15, 2025. Alex Brandon/AFP via Getty Images

Falling Crime Rates

In a July 28 statement, the agency said violent crime in American cities has declined as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removes the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal immigrants from the country.

DHS cited a July 2025 report from the think tank Council for Criminal Justice, which revealed that homicide rates across 30 cities declined by 17 percent in the first half of 2025 from the same period last year.

Aggravated assaults fell by 10 percent, gun assaults by 21 percent, robbery by 20 percent, sexual assaults by 10 percent, and carjackings by 24 percent, the report said.

“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, our law enforcement is working at lightning speed to remove violent criminal illegal aliens from the U.S. Every single day we are arresting gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and violent predators,” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.

“70 percent of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens who have been convicted or charged with a crime. These arrests and deportations of criminal illegal aliens are having real impact on public safety.”

On July 29, Noem announced a series of nationwide ads promoting the CBP Home App that encourages illegal immigrants to self-deport from the United States back to their home nations.

“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now, and self deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Noem said. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”