Last July, announcing the June 2025 border figures, the White House border czar wrote that President Trump had "created the most secure border in the history of the nation and the data proves it. We have never seen numbers this low. Never" [1]. The numbers that month were real and they were low: roughly 6,000 southwest Border Patrol apprehensions, the fewest in the modern monthly series [1].
The problem is the word never. The comparable federal record - monthly Border Patrol apprehensions - only begins in fiscal year 2000. Before that, Customs and Border Protection reported the data annually, not month by month [2]. A claim about the lowest month "in the history of the nation" reaches back past the point where the monthly history exists. On the annualized data that does go further, the pace of the last year is the lowest since the mid-1960s - remarkable, and not the same thing as the lowest ever recorded [3].
The larger issue is what has happened since. The record-low months did not hold. Crossings rose in the winter and kept rising into spring: about 6,074 apprehensions in January 2026, 6,603 in February, and 9,998 in May - the highest month of the entire term, up 64 percent from January [3][4].
Data
| June 2025 | 6,070 apprehensions |
|---|---|
| January 2026 | 6,074 apprehensions |
| May 2026 | 9,998 apprehensions |
None of this erases the decline. By every measure that exists, crossings are historically low: the fewest in the 26-year monthly record, the lowest fiscal-year total since 1970, an annual pace not seen since the 1960s. The correction is narrow and specific. "The lowest in the history of the nation" claims a record the data cannot confirm, and "never seen numbers this low" is being repeated as the number climbs back up. Low is a fact. Lowest ever, and still falling, is a slogan the spring data has already overtaken.
