AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The U.S.-Mexico border is quieter now than it's been in years. Migrant apprehensions fell last month to historic lows, and the Trump administration has been quick to claim the credit. But that's only part of the story, as NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: If you visited downtown El Paso in the last few years, the blocks around Sacred Heart Catholic Church were often crowded with recently arrived migrants hoping for shelter and a meal on their way to a new life in the U.S. Now it looks very different.
DYLAN CORBETT: What you don't see is the large presence of migrants that we've had in years past.
ROSE: Dylan Corbett is the founder and director of the Hope Border Institute, a nonprofit humanitarian group in El Paso, which sits just across the Rio Grande from the Mexican City of Juarez. This has long been a gateway for migrants from the South. Corbett says the number of crossings has been falling since last summer, but now the Trump administration has made it all but impossible to get asylum.
CORBETT: They've really sealed the border. Bona fide asylum seekers who are in need of protection right now - there really is no process. They've ended asylum as we've known it.
ROSE: It's the same from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean. Migrant shelters that were straining to keep up with record arrivals a few years ago are closing their doors with no one to serve. Border encounters fell again in February to fewer than 8,500 nationwide, according to the White House, the lowest monthly total since modern recordkeeping began 25 years ago. At the same time, the number of troops deployed to the border has been climbing into the thousands.
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PETE HEGSETH: Border security is national security.
ROSE: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the border last week, along with Vice President JD Vance, in Eagle Pass, Texas, where daily crossings have dropped from a peak of about 1,500 a day to just 30 now. By the next morning, Vance had posted this video of the event on social media.
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VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: It turns out we didn't need new laws. We didn't need fancy legislation. We just needed a new president of the United States, and thank God, that's exactly what we have.
ROSE: Vance did not mention that the number of migrants arriving at the border had already been falling for months before the election, as the Biden administration put limits on asylum and pushed the Mexican government to step up enforcement.
LAURIE CANTILLO: There's a lot of border theater going on, and it's very quiet around the border.
CORBETT: Laurie Cantillo is with Humane Borders, a volunteer organization in Arizona that provides water for migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert.
CANTILLO: We see about the same number of border patrol vehicles, many with agents pulled off to the side of the road and look pretty bored.
ROSE: This is not the first time border crossings have dropped when policies changed. It happened at the beginning of President Trump's first term as well. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera is a professor at George Mason University, who's been living in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego.
GUADALUPE CORREA-CABRERA: The fear and the uncertainty is causing these numbers going down very rapidly. People are waiting to see what is going to happen.
ROSE: But they won't wait forever, Correa-Cabrera says. And if history is any guide, the numbers will eventually go up again, as long as migrants believe there is opportunity and hope north of the border. Joel Rose, NPR 瓜神app. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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