At a surprise White House press briefing on Tuesday, President Donald Trump declared that the United States has experienced "zero" illegal immigration over the past eight months, a sweeping claim that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem will likely take the blame for if proven wrong.
Standing before reporters in the West Wing, the president touted the administration's border enforcement achievements, saying that for eight consecutive months zero illegal immigrants have been released into the United States and that unauthorized border crossings have been effectively halted by "99.999%."
The administration's own briefing materials highlighted a series of border security "milestones," including zero illegal immigrant releases into the interior over an eight-month stretch and sharply reduced encounters at the southwest border with Mexico.
In a Department of Homeland Security release this week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported zero releases of illegal immigrants into the interior in its latest tracking period, which the administration interprets as evidence of effectively eliminating illegal entries. Customs and Border Protection also reported historically low encounter figures in recent months. December alone saw 30,698 total encounters nationwide, a number well below historic peaks.
While the administration's metrics show a steep decline in measured crossings and releases, immigration experts caution that CBP encounter data and release figures do not equate to a comprehensive accounting of whether any illegal entries have occurred. As immigrants who evade law enforcement cannot be accounted for, blame will likely be placed on Kristi Noem if Trump is proven wrong.
Noem, who oversees The Department of Homeland Security and other enforcement agencies, has been at the forefront of advancing the administration's immigration crackdown narrative. In recent statements, Noem also pointed to the eighth months of zero releases as evidence of the administration's success in securing the border.
CBP encounters include only the migrants who are detected, captured and processed, not individuals who enter without being detected or cases where migrants evade capture. Independent reporting and border analysis have long noted that undetected crossings can and do occur, even when apprehensions fall. No official government dataset can officially confirm that there have been zero illegal entries nationwide over an extended period of time.
There is no publicly available DHS or CBP statistic that directly measures total net illegal immigration. Instead, agencies track enforcement actions such as arrests, detentions, removals, and releases. The absence of releases into the interior, as highlighted by the Trump administration, is an enforcement outcome rather than a direct measure of every illegal entry.
