The number of arrests by border agents of migrants who crossed the southern border illegally in July is expected to fall under 60,000, according to three people with knowledge of the data, a precipitous drop from the record numbers of crossings that plagued the Biden administration just months ago.
The July arrest numbers are set to represent the lowest monthly apprehensions under the Biden administration. The previous low came in January 2021, the month President Biden assumed office, when around 75,000 migrant apprehensions were made at the border.
The plunge in arrests — border agents made around 250,000 in December alone — comes after the Biden administration imposed sweeping restrictions on asylum at the southern border in June for migrants who cross illegally in an effort to deter them from making the journey to the United States. The changes suspended longtime guarantees that gave anyone who stepped onto U.S. soil the right to seek a safe haven, allowing border officials to more quickly return migrants to their home countries or Mexico.
The drop could provide a powerful counternarrative to what has been one of the Biden administration’s largest political weaknesses at a critical time before the November election. Republicans have excoriated Mr. Biden over his handling of the surge of border crossings, and are attacking Vice President Kamala Harris over her role as well now that she is the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The numbers, which were shared by the people on the condition of anonymity because they were preliminary and not yet released publicly, remain above those for most of President Donald J. Trump’s term. But they have fallen much more in line with border crossings during his presidency: There were nine months during the Trump administration in which arrest numbers exceeded July’s, according to Adam Isacson, a migration expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Republicans and immigration opponents argue that the numbers are not comparable. They say the Biden administration is simply letting migrants enter the country through other means, like a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app that allows a certain number of migrants a day to schedule entering the country at a port of entry. Altogether, they say, entries still exceed the totals at almost any point in the Trump administration.
