The Border by the Numbers: What a Full Year of Government Data Shows
Fewer than 99,000 Border Patrol apprehensions at the southwest border in fiscal 2026, the lowest on record, and zero releases. We went through CBP's own tables, month by month.
By Clara Hughes
Every administration claims success on the border. So we skipped the speeches and went to the data: U.S. Customs and Border Protection's monthly encounter tables and the Department of Homeland Security's preliminary year-end report for fiscal year 2026, which ran from Oct. 1, 2025, through Sept. 30, 2026. Here is what the government's own numbers show. The headline 98,708 southwest border apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol in FY2026, per DHS and CBP. That's the lowest in agency history. 379,243 total nationwide CBP encounters, also the lowest in agency history. Zero Border Patrol releases for the entire fiscal year. DHS says September was the 17th straight month with zero releases. DHS compares that with "more than 1.8 million per year" in southwest border apprehensions under