Trump Reaches NEW Milestone – Zero Releases Shocks Border!

For 13 months straight, the southern border did something Washington insiders said was impossible: it stopped catching and releasing illegal crossers into the United States.

Story Snapshot

Trump officials say Border Patrol went 13 months without releasing a single illegal border crosser into the U.S. interior.
Apprehensions at the southwest border fell to levels not seen in more than 30 years, collapsing over 90 percent from Biden-era peaks.
The milestone rests on an aggressive “no release” strategy: detain, deport, or make people wait outside the country.
Critics argue the numbers ride on how “release” is defined and on shutting down asylum access, not just better enforcement.

How Trump’s Border Team Claimed To End Catch and Release

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not whisper this milestone; they blasted it. In June, the agencies announced that the United States had recorded 13 straight months of what they called “zero releases” of migrants at the southern border, crediting Trump’s tougher enforcement policies for the shift.^[2] Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin summed it up in one line: “Thirteen straight months of ZERO releases at the border. The days of catch and release are over.”^[1]

Catch and release, in plain terms, meant this: agents caught people crossing illegally, gave them papers, and let them go into the country while their cases dragged on for years. Trump’s team treated that as a magnet. Under the new rules, Border Patrol agents who apprehended illegal crossers either detained them, returned them to Mexico, or deported them to their home countries instead of cutting them loose with a court date.^[1] To millions of voters, that sounded like basic common sense finally beating bureaucratic inertia.

The Numbers Behind the “Most Secure Border in American History”

The “zero release” claim came with eye-popping numbers on crossings. Customs and Border Protection data for May showed just 9,998 apprehensions along the southwest border, a 94 percent drop compared with the monthly average under Biden and 96 percent below the peak of that crisis.^[2] Officials highlighted that agents were now catching in an entire day fewer people than they once saw in a single hour during December 2023’s surge.^[3] For the first time in more than three decades, total apprehensions fell into the single‑digit thousands per month.^[1]

The White House framed those numbers as proof that border security is not some mystical puzzle; it is about willpower and policy. Trump’s “Secure the Border” agenda pointed to redirected resources, faster removals, and closer work with state and local partners as reasons illegal crossings fell in 2025.^[9] The administration also boasted of more than 605,000 deportations and another 1.9 million illegal immigrants self‑deporting, claiming over 2.5 million had left the country since Trump returned to office.^[9] Supporters say that is what it looks like when a government finally defends its own laws.

What It Took To Drive Illegal Crossings That Low

Behind the clean “zero releases” slogan sat a very hard-edged strategy. The American Immigration Council describes a border that is now fully militarized, with migrants arriving at ports of entry turned away and blocked from even starting an asylum claim.^[7] Trump ended the CBP One app process and did not replace it, closing a key legal path that had allowed people to schedule appointments. The report states that, as of its writing, there is effectively no legal way to seek asylum at the southern border.^[7]

The same analysis details an executive order called “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion,” which shuts down asylum access and allows rapid deportation of almost anyone caught crossing.^[7] The administration also redeployed thousands of active-duty troops, declared long stretches of the border to be extensions of military bases, and gave military officers authority to arrest anyone crossing those zones for trespassing.^[7] From a conservative lens, this reflects the core idea that national security and sovereignty come before international activist pressure or vague “norms.” You cannot have a country if you do not control who enters it.

Debates Over Definitions, Asylum, and What Comes Next

Even people who accept the numbers agree on one key point: the definition of “release” matters. One report on the 13‑month milestone notes that Homeland Security did not offer independent verification or spell out its methodology for counting “zero releases.”^[2] That leaves open questions about how they classify returns to Mexico, transfers to other agencies, or people blocked from even reaching a Border Patrol agent. The headline is simple; the underlying flow of people is not.

𝐃𝐇𝐒: 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐇𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐙𝐄𝐑𝐎 𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐋 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐍 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐒 — 𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐌𝐏 𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐘 𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆

The Department of Homeland Security announced today that it has now gone 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧… pic.twitter.com/1XYlZKkwVM

— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) June 20, 2026

Independent migration experts also stress that today’s low encounter numbers did not appear out of thin air. The Migration Policy Institute notes that near‑historic lows under Trump build on trends that began under Biden, who had already worked with Mexico and other countries to manage migration and narrow asylum access.^[8] That continuity matters. It suggests that while Trump pushed the system much harder and further, he did not flip a switch in a vacuum. For citizens, the real question is not whether the border is tighter—it clearly is—but where to draw the line between firm enforcement and shutting the door on anyone who might have a legitimate claim.