Border Crossings Have Gone Down To a Trickle In Trump's First Month: 'A Huge Changing Point'

President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border just hours after he took office back in January. Now, almost a month into his second term, border patrol agents and shelter workers report the border is the quietest it has been in recent memory.

In his first appearance at the White House's Oval Office after being sworn in as the 47th president, Trump signed a series of executive orders, many of which were aimed at kicking off the immigration crackdown efforts he promised throughout the campaign trail.

"Because of the gravity and emergency of this present danger and imminent threat, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border," the executive order said.

The executive order followed a historic decrease in border crossings throughout the Biden administration. But now it seems those numbers are decreasing further, according to a new report by The New York Times.

In South Texas, shelters that held dozens of migrants just before Trump took office are now down to just a few families. A shelter in McAllen said figures fell to about nine by the end of January, from 97 on Jan. 20. In San Antonio, a shelter run by Catholic Charities plans to shut its doors entirely because of a lack of new arrivals.

Border Patrol agents are also feeling the dramatic shift in border activity. For instance, in Tucson, Ariz., which was once the busiest section of the entire border, apprehensions and other encounters with immigrants have fallen to about 450 per week from 1,200 per week in late January, officials said.

"That's the lowest I've seen it in, I can't even tell you how long," said Sean McGoffin, the chief Border Patrol agent in Tucson. "The certainty of arrest and return is a huge changing point."

Border officials in the state also said migrants had largely stopped surrendering en masse with the hopes of claiming asylum or being released in the country. Instead, they said, a majority of those crossing illegally now try to avoid detection by threading through canyons and up mountain paths.

That is why, some agents' morale is up as they search for smugglers or criminals, rather than processing hundreds of asylum seekers.

"It feels good to be an agent now," Teresa Fast, a border patrol agent in Nogales, Ariz., told the NYT. "To go out there and put bad people away. That's what we signed up to do."

It remains unclear if these numbers are directly related to Trump's policies, or whether they will continue to decrease. However, the trend should not come as a surprise. For one, border crossings often dip seasonally into January. At the same time, those numbers also fell during the first months of Trump's first term, before rising in 2018 and 2019, according to The New York Times.