SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — New numbers released by the Department of Homeland Security show a rapidly changing landscape at the Southern Border, with apprehensions hitting historic lows. However, one local immigration attorney warns they don't tell the full story.
ABC 10News was there when protests erupted in Los Angeles earlier this month.
They started on June 6th in response to an operation by federal immigration agencies to remove what they call "the worst of the worst criminal aliens" in the city.
“It's made them want to move faster and get their immigration priorities done quicker," said Sadam Nasseri.
Nasseri speaks from experience as a San Diego immigration attorney at Nasseri Legal.
Now, the trend is being touted by the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS said, from June 1st-22nd, there were 5,414 apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border. That's the lowest number ever recorded.
In May, there were 9,577 apprehensions. That's a month-to-month decrease of 43.5%.
The decrease is significantly larger when making comparisons to the Biden administration. From February 1st to June 22nd of this year, DHS said apprehensions totaled 37,518. That's down 93.7% from one year ago, when DHS said nearly 600,000 apprehensions were made during the same time.
It's a similar trend when looking at gotaways, referring to those who are observed crossing illegally but are not apprehended. Since the beginning of June, DHS tracked 986 gotaways, compared to 2,123 in May.
“Secretary Noem is delivering on President Trump’s promise to secure the border by removing murders, pedophiles, and drug traffickers from Los Angeles,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “In less than a month since we started LA enforcement operations, apprehensions and gotaways at the Southern Border halved. The world is hearing our message: If you come here illegally, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you. We will not be deterred by the rioters and politicians in our mission to secure America and its border. Migrants are turning back because they know the reality is they will ultimately leave in handcuffs.”
Nasseri said, “The trade-off is, yeah, there's less people coming in at the border. The arrests happening in the United States, placing people in proceedings, those numbers have gone up, whereas before they were enforcing more of the border cases and putting those in court and not dealing with people here.”
According to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse, or TRAC (affiliated with Syracuse University), Immigration and Customs Enforcement held 56,397 immigrants in detention as of June 15. That's the most since the non-profit, non-partisan research organization began tracking those numbers in May 2019.
However, TRAC suggests those held are not "the worst of the worst," as this administration claims to target.
TRAC said 71.7% have never been convicted of a crime, and that number goes even higher when you include those with minor offenses, like traffic violations.
“The truth is this — the vast majority of people that they're going to pick up are not going to be people who have criminal history, but you are going to see a lot of people picked up who have immigration history," Nasseri said. "One thing that that statistic does not show is how many of those people have been previously apprehended by ICE.”
Of note, apprehensions at the Southern Border were already on the decline at the end of the previous administration, going from a record high of 249,741 in December 2023, according to the Pew Research Center, to a Biden-era low of 46,610, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Still, that's significantly more than the latest numbers from DHS.
If the goal was to instill fear, Nasseri said it's working.
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