As President Trump Extends Emergency at Border, Here’s Why Arrests of Migrants Are Dropping

While President Donald Trump extends his declaration of a national emergency to use Defense Department money to build the southern border wall, illegal immigration in January dropped by almost three-quarters from the peak of the border crisis last May.

Enforcement actions also decreased by 10% in January compared with December, according to numbers released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

The enforcement actions included 29,200 arrests and 7,479 “inadmissibility decisions”—meaning migrants’ asylum claims were adjudicated and they were sent back to their home country.

In a message to Congress on Thursday—almost a year since the president declared a national emergency at the border—Trump said he would extend that declaration beyond February.

“The ongoing border security and humanitarian crisis at the southern border of the United States continues to threaten our national security, including the security of the American people,” Trump said in the message to Congress, adding:

The executive branch has taken steps to address the crisis, but further action is needed to address the humanitarian crisis and to control unlawful migration and the flow of narcotics and criminals across the southern border. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency …

Trump was scheduled to speak Friday at the White House to a gathering of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing the nation’s Border Patrol agents.

Much of the decline in immigration numbers has to do with the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, said Lora Ries, senior research fellow for homeland security with The Heritage Foundation.

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