The number of people who were apprehended at the U.S./Mexico border this past June is down by more than half compared to June of last year. Per the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, while numbers were slightly increased in June compared to May (with June actually having the largest number of people caught since February), there were 53 percent fewer people caught trying to cross the border overall compared to this time last year.
In June, a total of 16,089 individuals were apprehended between ports of entry on our Southwest Border, compared with 14,533 in May and 11,126 in April. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, USBP apprehended 408,870 individuals along our Southwest Border, compared to 331,333 in FY15, and 479,371 in FY14.
Since President Donald Trump was sworn in this past January and made border security one of the main focuses of his campaign for president, the number of people caught attempting to cross the southern border has gone down dramatically. In December of 2016, 43,249 people were apprehended, compared to June's 16,089. The majority of people caught are adults, and there has been similarly stark drops in the number of unaccompanied minors and families who have been caught at the southern border since Trump's inauguration.
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Starting in mid-2014, there was a rapid surge in the number of unaccompanied minors who crossed the southern border in an effort to exploit potential changes to American immigration law that would permit them to stay in the country. A similar increase occurred just prior to Trump's inauguration.
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