CBP Commissioner Says Border Crossings Have Plunged, Touts End to Catch-and-Release

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said Tuesday that the federal government now has unprecedented visibility into illegal crossings at the southern border, crediting policy changes under the Trump administration for a steep drop in daily entries.

Scott made the remarks during a policy event in Washington, DC, in conversation with Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle. The event, held in partnership with CGCN and ALFA Institute, also included a discussion with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on border security, public safety and sovereignty.

Asked about the difference between border numbers under the Biden administration and the current administration, Scott said the contrast is stark.

“So to put it simply: it’s night and day,” Scott said. “So, due to the Trump administration’s — not just rhetoric — but actual actions, and then backing up the words, working with Congress and the Senate to get us additional funding, we literally took a border that was completely out of control during the Biden administration [and transformed it].”

Scott said that under the previous administration, there were stretches of the border spanning hundreds of miles that went weeks or months without any agent presence or technology monitoring them. He said daily crossings peaked at around 18,000 during that period.

“Those chaotic numbers, I think they peaked at like 18,000 a day during the Biden administration. That’s basically gone, and why is it gone? Good policy. Agents and officers actually out doing their jobs, enforcing the law, and we took away the draw that no administration had ever been able to take away before, and that’s catch and release.”

Scott announced that CBP will soon report a full year without releasing new entrants from the border into the country, a change he said has undercut the economics of human smuggling.

“That sent a message worldwide that there’s no return on your investment. Why are you going to go pay the cartels [and] put yourself in that danger? And the cartels — people miss this sometimes — the cartels need the illegal aliens. That’s a little extra money, but really, they need them to overwhelm law enforcement at the border so they can bring the higher-threat commodities, whether it be narcotics, whether it be people that pay more money to avoid being fingerprinted, terrorists, criminals, but they need clutter to drive their costs down. Now they don’t have it.”

Scott said daily illegal crossings have fallen to as low as under 200 on some days. He said he is less focused on the raw numbers than on the government’s improved ability to track what is happening at the border.

“Numbers can be skewed in any way, shape over time. I’m not focused as much on the numbers. Today, we know more about what’s crossing our borders than we’ve ever known in the history of the United States. That situational awareness validates those numbers, and we’re down into like double, low, low, low double-digits knowing the gotaways because we know what’s going on. Those numbers were guesses before. Now, there’s a lot of science behind them.”