By Ira Mehlman
FAIR
Two years ago, FAIR went to the southern border at the height of the Biden border crisis to provide firsthand reporting of the situation that was largely being ignored by mainstream media outlets. What we saw were thousands of illegal migrants being allowed to enter the country as the Border Patrol actually opened gates in the border fence to let them through. Chaos prevailed on the streets of El Paso as these migrants awaited transportation to destinations all across the country.
By December 2023, Border Patrol encounters reached a quarter of a million, the highest levels ever recorded in a single month. Several days that month, over 11,000 migrants crossed illegally into the U.S.
Last week, FAIR returned to the border – this time in Arizona and California – to document the dramatic changes that have occurred in just the first six weeks of the Trump administration. During our time at the border, FAIR spoke with residents who ranch along the border, local law enforcement and government officials, and federal immigration enforcement officials. Each described the difference between now and then as “night and day,” and that the transformation occurred almost immediately with the change of administrations in Washington.
Rancher John Ladd, whose sprawling ranch abuts the border wall, told FAIR that under the Biden administration, a few hundred illegal aliens would cross the border onto his property on a typical day – all of them gotaways who disappeared into the country unvetted. Since President Trump took office, that number has dropped to no more than ten per day.
Preliminary data for border encounters in February 2025, the first full month of the Trump administration, indicate that total encounters of illegal aliens crossing between ports of entry numbered about 8,300, making it the single lowest number of encounters since the Border Patrol began tallying monthly figures in 2000. Comparing apples to apples, the encounter figures for February 2023 and 2024 were 130,000 and 140,000 respectively.
The people we met said that as promising as these first few weeks have been, it is still way too early to declare victory at the border. Cochise County sheriff’s officers, who manage the Southern Arizona Border Region Enforcement (SABRE) program that monitors illegal activity along the state’s border with Mexico, caution that the criminal cartels that have been reaping billions in profits from smuggling drugs and human beings into the U.S. are not likely to give up easily and could become increasingly violent in order to preserve their lucrative business model.
SABRE relies on more than a thousand well-camouflaged motion-detecting cameras to monitor the entire 372 miles of border that Arizona shares with Mexico. In this region of the border, Mexican cartels had been taking advantage of remote and hostile terrain to infiltrate narcotics and illegal aliens with criminal records or ties to terror groups. Arizona law enforcement has the authority to act when illegal border-crossers are spotted carrying drugs into the country but have to rely on Border Patrol to make arrests for illegal entry.
At the height of the border crisis, while Border Patrol resources were tied up processing thousands of illegal aliens a day entering asylum claims – most of them fraudulent – groups of potentially dangerous illegal aliens were able to slip away. Based on the volume of gotaways observed in Cochise County alone, the SABRE team believes that the number of illegal aliens who successfully entered the country without being encountered during the Biden years is significantly greater than the commonly reported figure of 2 million. With many fewer illegal aliens crossing the border and giving themselves up to Border Patrol, agents can now respond when the SABRE team observes migrants who have good reason to avoid contact with law enforcement.
In the coming weeks, FAIR will take the hours of video shot along the border and the interviews that were conducted into a documentary that details the dramatic changes at the border, which people will be able to view on our YouTube channel and other social media platforms.
