U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has driven illegal border crossings down to as low as under 200 per day on some days, with the administration closing in on a full year without releasing new entrants at the border.
Scott made the remarks during a policy event in Washington, D.C., speaking with Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle about the contrast between the current administration’s enforcement posture and the border policies of the Biden administration. The event also featured a discussion with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on border security, public safety, and American sovereignty, and was held in partnership with CGCN and the ALFA Institute.
Scott: ‘It’s Night and Day’
Asked by Boyle about the difference in raw numbers between the two administrations, Scott described the shift as fundamental rather than incremental.
“So to put it simply: it’s night and day,” Scott said, according to Breitbart’s account of the event. He credited the change to what he characterized as concrete action rather than rhetoric, pointing to coordination with Congress and the Senate to secure additional funding for border operations.
Scott said the Biden administration had left stretches of the border unmonitored for extended periods. “There were hundreds of miles of border where no agent, no technology, or anything went for weeks, months on end,” he said. He recalled that daily encounters during that period peaked at roughly 18,000, a figure he described as chaotic and unsustainable.
Those numbers, he argued, have largely disappeared — not through chance, but through policy. He cited agents and officers actively enforcing the law and the elimination of catch-and-release, which he said no previous administration had managed to end.
“It’s not out officially yet, but we’re going to report soon a full year with no releases from the border, from new entrants,” Scott announced during the event.
Cartels and the ‘Draw’ of Catch-and-Release
Scott framed the end of catch-and-release as a message with global reach. In his telling, removing the prospect of release removed the incentive that had drawn migrants toward the southern border in the first place.
“That sent a message worldwide that there’s no return on your investment,” he said. “Why are you going to go pay the cartels [and] put yourself in that danger?”
He also described the smuggling economy that had grown around mass migration. Cartels, Scott said, profit not just from the fees paid by migrants but from the chaos those migrants create. Large numbers of people crossing illegally force law enforcement to spread thin, which cartels then exploit to move higher-value contraband — narcotics, criminals, and people willing to pay premium prices to avoid fingerprinting — through the same corridors.
“They need clutter to drive their costs down,” Scott said. “Now they don’t have it.”
‘More Than We’ve Ever Known’
Scott was careful to hedge his confidence in the raw daily encounter figures themselves, noting that statistics can be manipulated or misread. What matters more, he argued, is the quality of the intelligence behind them.
“Today, we know more about what’s crossing our borders than we’ve ever known in the history of the United States,” he said. That situational awareness, he added, gives him confidence in the declining numbers of “gotaways” — people who enter illegally and are not apprehended — which he said have dropped into the low double-digits.
“Those numbers were guesses before,” Scott said. “Now, there’s a lot of science behind them.”
His comments come as the administration continues to point to border enforcement as a signature domestic achievement, with officials regularly citing the collapse in daily crossings as evidence that deterrence works. Scott’s remarks — that some days see fewer than 200 illegal entries — represent one of the more specific figures offered publicly by a senior enforcement official, though he emphasized that he tracks intelligence quality over headline numbers.
The event was held against the backdrop of an ongoing national debate over immigration enforcement, with the administration pressing Congress for sustained funding and opponents questioning the scope and methods of the crackdown. Scott’s appearance in Washington, alongside Secretary Mullin, signals the administration’s intent to keep border security at the center of its public messaging.
Breitbart News political reporter Katherine Hamilton contributed reporting from the event. The network said it would publish further coverage of the discussion.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/10/06/exclusive-cbp-commissioner-rodney-scott-crossing-borders/