Unauthorized migration at the U.S.–Mexico border has fallen to its lowest level in more than half a century, while the makeup of those arriving has shifted sharply toward single Mexican adults and unaccompanied Central American minors, according to new figures from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).
Roughly 444,000 migrant encounters were recorded in fiscal year 2025, down from 2.1 million the previous year, marking a return to demographic patterns last seen more than a decade ago. During FY 2025, single adults accounted for nearly 80% of unauthorized crossings, while family-unit encounters dropped from 27% to 12%.
The share of Mexican nationals rose from 45% to 69% over the same period, while the share from other regions declined.
The shift coincides with the Trump administration's expanded border controls, additional asylum limits, and its stated goal of mass deportations. The administration has also increasingly relied on repatriation agreements with neighboring countries, allowing faster turnbacks.
As border encounters declined, federal enforcement moved inward, according to Migration Policy Institute, which estimates that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted about 340,000 deportations in FY 2025, a 25% increase from the prior year. But for the first time since at least FY 2014, ICE deported more people from the U.S. interior than were apprehended crossing the border illegally.
The administration reported more than 400,000 deportations in its first 250 days, projecting nearly 600,000 deportations by its one-year mark—short of FY 2024 levels and well below the stated target of 1 million annually.
The daily number of people held in ICE custody rose to about 60,000 by the end of FY 2025. At the same time, the share of detainees with criminal convictions declined from 65% in October 2024 to 35% in September 2025, while immigration-only violators increased from 6% to 35%.
Release from custody, in the meantime, has become uncommon. By September, 90% of detainees were deported directly from detention, compared with 63% the prior year. Average detention times varied—63 days for those arrested by Border Patrol, compared with 44 for those arrested by ICE.
The report concludes that the infusion of $45 billion from Congress to build new immigrant detention centers and $30 billion to expand enforcement and deportation operations provided under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act "will transform ICE and further enhance cooperation with state and local law enforcement over the coming years," but also presents obstacles in accessing data:
"Instead of releasing detailed tables on immigration enforcement each month, as done under prior administrations, the Trump administration has relied on issuing a constellation of individual statistics in press releases, tweets, and media interviews, which have conflated sources at times. This has made it difficult to verify the administration's success against its policy objectives as well as the impacts on federal agencies, immigrants, and U.S. communities alike."
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