Board officials report quiet patrols
Crossings down since Trump's crackdown
By: Lauren Villargan
USA today
SUNLAND PARK, New Mexico - Border Patrol agent Claudio Herrera steered his green-and-white Suburban up a rocky hillside, to an outcropping where migrant smugglers once lurked.
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It was 6:15 AM. on a weekday in mid-May [2025] - a peak hour in what should have been peak seasons for illegal migration in southern New Mexico.
..... But there was no sing of smugglers or migrants at th U.S.-Mexico border that morning - only two U.S. solders in a pick-up watching a downslope into Mexico littered with water bottles and cloths, the debris of a massive wave of migration that has all but dried up.
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"We weer averaging 2,700 individuals a day," Herrera told USA today, recalling the height of apprehensions in 2023. "Right now, just to give you a comparison, we're averaging between 60 and 70 individuals."
..... President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal migration is evident everywhere at the U.S.-Mexico border, especially in Br oder Patrol's now quite el Paso sector, which stretches 264 miles from West Texas through New Mexico. It used to be one of the busiest sections.
.... Two years ago, at the hour, Herrera's radio would have crackled with Intel as agents tracked migrants through the desert around Sunland Park, New Mexico, just outside El Paso, Texas.
..... Group were scaling the 30-foot steel border fence with rope ladders, or crawling through gaps sawed into the old steel mesh fencing, hundred of people a day in a 20-mile stretch starting at the rugged mountainside of Mt. Cristo Rey.
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But Trump's mix of policies - deploying the military to the border, retirement asylum, publicizing deportation - have held migration at bay.
..... There are now 6,800 soldiers working alongside 17,000 border Patrol agents at the southern border. In El Paso sector, the soldiers staff half a dozen Stryker vehicles, whose high-tech optics let them surveil the desert terrain for miles. Even the land itself now belongs to the military, after Trump declared nearly 110,000 acres of New Mexico borderland a "national defense area."
Sharp decline in border crossings
..... At 6:49 AM., a voice came through Herrea's radio - a possible migrant sighting at the base of the mountain. he jumped back into the driver's seat.
..... Seconds later, the voice identified the suspect as a local resident.
..... Agneta aren't processing asylum-seekers anymore, Herrera said, not since President Joe Biden restricted access to asylum at the border in June 2024.
..... That's when crossings at the border first began their sharp decline, a trend that accelerated after Trump took office. since then, illegal crossings have plunged to the lowest level since record-keeping began.
..... U.S. Border patrol reported roughly 8,400 migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in April, [2025] the latest month for which data is available. A year ago, agents were apprehending roughly that many people every two days, and encounters nearly hit 129,000 in April 2024.
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In the El Paso sector, where Herrera patrols, migrant encounters fell 92% in April [2025] to under 2,000 from more than 30,000 a year ago, he said.
..... "We used to see groups of, you know, 20, 30 individuals shut on the other side of the border," Herrera said.
All quiet on the southern front
..... Back then, he said, smugglers standing on high ground would "just watch whatever border Patrol was doing and where our vehicles were deployed, so they can push migrant illegally into the country."
..... Now, some agents are complaining of boredom, Herrera said jokingly - though the quite radio made his point.
..... He drove the borderline west, hugging the 30-foot fence where it begins at the base of the mountain. a black hen strutted in Mexico south of the steel bollards, in a neighborhood of Ciudad Juarez where some houses are built of plywood and palettes. An alter to the skeletal icon Santa Muerte faced north.
..... Looking west, the fence climbed a meas where soldiers in a Stryker vehicle survived the border. in good conditions, the vehicle's thermal optics can spot a mouse a mile away.
..... Since trump took office on January 20, [2025]
the military deployment at the southern border has cost some $525 million, according to The New York Times.
..... Soldiers had posted red-and-white warning signs roughly the size of a sheet of notebook paper, in English and Spanish, affixed to metal posts in the sand about 30 yards north of the border fence.
..... This Department of Defense property has been declared a restricts area," the signs read in tiny print.
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Migrants who cross illegally here can be charged with trespassing on what is now a military installation.
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On a stretch of borderline nearby, a rebar-and-rope ladder hung atop the 20-foot barrier, unbothered.
Too soon to know if it will hold
..... Smugglers and migrants often respond to significant policy shift by adopting a wait-and-see approach. Migrant traffic dropped early in the first Trump administration, too, though not as dramatically, before climbing again.
..... "It is definitely var, very early to know what's going to happen,' Herrerea said.
..... "But the fact is," he said, "we need to always have this perfect balance between infrastructure, technology and personnel to address the different challengers we have with illegal immigration and any other illegal activity happening at the border."
..... His radio buzzed again after 9 AM. There were signs that a group of eight migrants had enter illegally the night before, during a dust storm that swept through El Paso and southern New Mexico. thirteen hours later, they still hadn't been apprehended.