The quiet border: what official encounter counts show while the immigration fight moves indoors

The immigration war moved indoors

Look at where this month's immigration stories actually happened. The State Department announced it has revoked more than 250,000 visas since January, up from about 175,000 in August, citing overstays, fraud, crime and national-security flags (Streamline Feed). The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether immigrants living in the United States can be jailed without a bond hearing while they fight deportation (Fortune). The family of Renee Good, shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis in January, filed federal suits naming the officer, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem (NBC News). And a second federal judge blocked the $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas (Reuters). Consulates, courtrooms, city streets: the border itself is almost never in the frame.

That is a striking reversal from two years ago, when monthly encounter totals at the southwest border were the single most cited number in American immigration politics. The border made the emergency; the emergency made the politics. So it is worth asking, with the fight now fought over visa files and detention beds: what do the official border counts actually show now? For the two nationalities that defined the 2023–24 surge — Venezuelans and Mexicans — the published CBP data give an unusually precise answer, and it is more lopsided than most of this month's coverage implies.

What the counts measure

The numbers below come from CBP's official border-encounters bulk files (release cbp-encounters-2026-07), monthly from October 2019 through July 2026, for the four southwest border states: Texas, Arizona, California and New Mexico. For each of two citizenships — Venezuela and Mexico — and two demographics — family-unit members (FMUA) and single adults — we summed the Title 8 series (Border Patrol apprehensions plus port-of-entry inadmissibles) across the four states. Where CBP publishes the same month in overlapping snapshot files, the latest file is used; the snapshots agreed everywhere they overlapped. CBP omits zero-count rows, so an absent state-month is treated as zero within sums. Two honest limits: Title 42 expulsions, which ended in May 2023, are excluded, so 2020-to-early-2023 totals are understated; and recent months are preliminary and revisable. This is a description of published counts — two nationalities, four states — not a national total, and nothing here argues cause.

The Venezuelan surge that ended

Start with the surge's signature nationality. Venezuelan citizens encountered under Title 8 across the four border states peaked at 65,860 in a single month — September 2023 — after climbing almost vertically for two years. The last month the combined total reached even 1,000 was January 2025 (11,510). Since then the line has effectively flatlined: 893 Venezuelans in total from January through July 2026, with May, June and July averaging 133 encounters a month. That is 0.2 percent of the peak month, and about 7 percent of the same three months a year earlier. Venezuelans did not slow down; they disappeared from the count.

The annual view is just as blunt. Calendar-year totals ran 104,677 (2021), 147,819 (2022), 335,590 (2023), 177,222 (2024), 13,331 (2025) and 893 through July of 2026. The bar that towered over every immigration fight of 2023–24 has been replaced by a sliver one-three-hundredth its size.

The collapse shows up in every border state, and its geography moved before it vanished. Texas — the epicenter — went from 25,444 Venezuelan family-unit members in September 2023 to 10 in July 2026. Arizona peaked earlier, 4,629 in December 2021, and recorded 5 this July. California and New Mexico, interestingly, peaked late — 2,204 and 95 in December 2024, when the San Diego corridor had become the main route — and stood at 0 and 1 this July. When a flow that once filled 25,000 rows in a Texas month is counted in single digits, the border story about that nationality is over, whatever the cable panels are still arguing about.

Venezuelans at the southwest border: the surge and the afterlife

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month	ven_fmua	ven_sa	ven_total	mex_fmua	mex_sa	mex_total
2019-10	454	265	719	3851	18138	21989
2019-11	397	185	582	4324	16634	20958
2019-12	511	180	691	4091	14739	18830
2020-01	173	66	239	3323	17179	20502
2020-02	149	52	201	2809	17825	20634
2020-03	113	50	163	1280	14258	15538
2020-04	5	2	7	25	768	793
2020-05	2	6	8	64	1436	1500
2020-06	9	4	13	86	1933	2019
2020-07	14	11	25	72	2306	2378
2020-08	17	13	30	98	2838	2936
2020-09	12	20	32	119	3243	3362
2020-10	66	31	97	103	2978	3081
2020-11	74	70	144	88	2969	3057
2020-12	104	75	179	119	2865	2984
2021-01	126	117	243	230	2841	3071
2021-02	426	407	833	373	2316	2689
2021-03	1169	1320	2489	830	2586	3416
2021-04	2571	3057	5628	1091	2908	3999
2021-05	3185	4034	7219	1864	3371	5235
2021-06	3306	4048	7354	2610	3338	5948
2021-07	2888	3118	6006	3388	3489	6877
2021-08	2868	3348	6216	3222	3108	6330
2021-09	5182	5499	10681	752	2962	3714
2021-10	6153	7089	13242	313	3045	3358
2021-11	9235	10932	20167	587	3832	4419
2021-12	11506	13093	24599	614	3567	4181
2022-01	9187	13367	22554	501	3960	4461
2022-02	1117	1907	3024	472	4514	4986
2022-03	1314	2704	4018	592	6739	7331
2022-04	1334	2731	4065	1471	7525	8996
2022-05	1618	3414	5032	2507	7391	9898
2022-06	3559	9513	13072	2060	6831	8891
2022-07	5333	12126	17459	2916	6560	9476
2022-08	7054	18098	25152	3693	6847	10540
2022-09	8751	24768	33519	3511	7273	10784
2022-10	5540	9751	15291	5306	5779	11085
2022-11	987	1021	2008	6516	6031	12547
2022-12	1658	967	2625	8145	11510	19655
2023-01	2897	3997	6894	7139	12582	19721
2023-02	1140	3113	4253	4681	7204	11885
2023-03	2184	3483	5667	7138	7139	14277
2023-04	12956	12017	24973	6195	6153	12348
2023-05	8427	18452	26879	10970	24515	35485
2023-06	9497	10650	20147	16373	30958	47331
2023-07	8948	9752	18700	21699	29822	51521
2023-08	15152	15842	30994	21048	31712	52760
2023-09	26379	39481	65860	22832	27906	50738
2023-10	17338	23040	40378	29655	30518	60173
2023-11	15446	18164	33610	31940	29608	61548
2023-12	22831	34404	57235	37285	28292	65577
2024-01	4126	7355	11481	26780	30349	57129
2024-02	3570	5092	8662	26591	33130	59721
2024-03	6845	9393	16238	26629	35898	62527
2024-04	7396	10718	18114	23084	33561	56645
2024-05	7158	9711	16869	27498	28969	56467
2024-06	5340	7026	12366	17791	22407	40198
2024-07	5292	7451	12743	11127	19771	30898
2024-08	6260	8769	15029	11696	23287	34983
2024-09	6367	8676	15043	10401	23171	33572
2024-10	6921	9273	16194	11135	22659	33794
2024-11	6734	8791	15525	9407	19623	29030
2024-12	8579	10379	18958	8067	15976	24043
2025-01	5193	6317	11510	4934	13645	18579
2025-02	40	82	122	416	6417	6833
2025-03	37	115	152	451	7374	7825
2025-04	35	129	164	602	8276	8878
2025-05	50	141	191	507	8468	8975
2025-06	33	105	138	506	6117	6623
2025-07	54	99	153	614	5086	5700
2025-08	27	160	187	759	6324	7083
2025-09	48	157	205	947	7262	8209
2025-10	52	146	198	719	7630	8349
2025-11	22	111	133	570	7214	7784
2025-12	26	152	178	565	6398	6963
2026-01	16	95	111	383	7015	7398
2026-02	8	96	104	327	6684	7011
2026-03	4	135	139	411	8488	8899
2026-04	15	125	140	425	9278	9703
2026-05	17	116	133	400	9159	9559
2026-06	12	112	124	330	8403	8733
2026-07	16	126	142	501	7985	8486

Two nationalities, two trajectories: annual totals

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year	venezuelans	mexicans
2021	104677	53237
2022	147819	118650
2023	335590	483364
2024	177222	519007
2025	13331	101801
2026 (Jan-Jul)	893	59789

Peak month versus July 2026, state by state

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state	peak_month	peak_value	jul2026
Texas	2023-09	25444	10
Arizona	2021-12	4629	5
California	2024-12	2204	0
New Mexico	2024-12	95	1

The Mexican exception

Mexicans are the counter-story, and the useful one. Mexican encounters peaked at 65,577 in December 2023 — nearly identical to the Venezuelan peak — and the totals have fallen hard since. But they have not vanished. May through July 2026 averaged 8,926 encounters a month, 13.6 percent of the peak, and July's count was 8,486. The composition, though, has completely changed. Mexican family-unit encounters, 37,285 at the December 2023 peak, averaged just 410 a month this spring — 1.1 percent of peak. What persists is the oldest pattern in the book: single Mexican adults, 7,985 in July 2026.

Two nuances keep this honest. First, the single-adult flow is not still falling — it is recovering off its 2025 lows. April 2026's 9,278 was the highest monthly count since January 2025, and the 2026 spring months ran well above the July 2025 trough of 5,086. Second, even this recovered level sits far below both the surge peak and the pre-pandemic baseline: 7,985 in July 2026 against 18,138 in October 2019, roughly 44 percent of the level from before COVID, before the 2023–24 crisis, and before this enforcement era. And the annual totals held up longer than the monthly line suggests: Mexican encounters in calendar 2024 — 519,007 — actually exceeded the 2023 figure of 483,364, before collapsing to 101,801 in 2025 and 59,789 in the first seven months of 2026, slightly below the same stretch of 2025. The surge nationalities' flow ended; the historically largest one shrank, plateaued, and ticked back up.

Mexicans at the southwest border: far below peak, but still flowing

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month	ven_fmua	ven_sa	ven_total	mex_fmua	mex_sa	mex_total
2019-10	454	265	719	3851	18138	21989
2019-11	397	185	582	4324	16634	20958
2019-12	511	180	691	4091	14739	18830
2020-01	173	66	239	3323	17179	20502
2020-02	149	52	201	2809	17825	20634
2020-03	113	50	163	1280	14258	15538
2020-04	5	2	7	25	768	793
2020-05	2	6	8	64	1436	1500
2020-06	9	4	13	86	1933	2019
2020-07	14	11	25	72	2306	2378
2020-08	17	13	30	98	2838	2936
2020-09	12	20	32	119	3243	3362
2020-10	66	31	97	103	2978	3081
2020-11	74	70	144	88	2969	3057
2020-12	104	75	179	119	2865	2984
2021-01	126	117	243	230	2841	3071
2021-02	426	407	833	373	2316	2689
2021-03	1169	1320	2489	830	2586	3416
2021-04	2571	3057	5628	1091	2908	3999
2021-05	3185	4034	7219	1864	3371	5235
2021-06	3306	4048	7354	2610	3338	5948
2021-07	2888	3118	6006	3388	3489	6877
2021-08	2868	3348	6216	3222	3108	6330
2021-09	5182	5499	10681	752	2962	3714
2021-10	6153	7089	13242	313	3045	3358
2021-11	9235	10932	20167	587	3832	4419
2021-12	11506	13093	24599	614	3567	4181
2022-01	9187	13367	22554	501	3960	4461
2022-02	1117	1907	3024	472	4514	4986
2022-03	1314	2704	4018	592	6739	7331
2022-04	1334	2731	4065	1471	7525	8996
2022-05	1618	3414	5032	2507	7391	9898
2022-06	3559	9513	13072	2060	6831	8891
2022-07	5333	12126	17459	2916	6560	9476
2022-08	7054	18098	25152	3693	6847	10540
2022-09	8751	24768	33519	3511	7273	10784
2022-10	5540	9751	15291	5306	5779	11085
2022-11	987	1021	2008	6516	6031	12547
2022-12	1658	967	2625	8145	11510	19655
2023-01	2897	3997	6894	7139	12582	19721
2023-02	1140	3113	4253	4681	7204	11885
2023-03	2184	3483	5667	7138	7139	14277
2023-04	12956	12017	24973	6195	6153	12348
2023-05	8427	18452	26879	10970	24515	35485
2023-06	9497	10650	20147	16373	30958	47331
2023-07	8948	9752	18700	21699	29822	51521
2023-08	15152	15842	30994	21048	31712	52760
2023-09	26379	39481	65860	22832	27906	50738
2023-10	17338	23040	40378	29655	30518	60173
2023-11	15446	18164	33610	31940	29608	61548
2023-12	22831	34404	57235	37285	28292	65577
2024-01	4126	7355	11481	26780	30349	57129
2024-02	3570	5092	8662	26591	33130	59721
2024-03	6845	9393	16238	26629	35898	62527
2024-04	7396	10718	18114	23084	33561	56645
2024-05	7158	9711	16869	27498	28969	56467
2024-06	5340	7026	12366	17791	22407	40198
2024-07	5292	7451	12743	11127	19771	30898
2024-08	6260	8769	15029	11696	23287	34983
2024-09	6367	8676	15043	10401	23171	33572
2024-10	6921	9273	16194	11135	22659	33794
2024-11	6734	8791	15525	9407	19623	29030
2024-12	8579	10379	18958	8067	15976	24043
2025-01	5193	6317	11510	4934	13645	18579
2025-02	40	82	122	416	6417	6833
2025-03	37	115	152	451	7374	7825
2025-04	35	129	164	602	8276	8878
2025-05	50	141	191	507	8468	8975
2025-06	33	105	138	506	6117	6623
2025-07	54	99	153	614	5086	5700
2025-08	27	160	187	759	6324	7083
2025-09	48	157	205	947	7262	8209
2025-10	52	146	198	719	7630	8349
2025-11	22	111	133	570	7214	7784
2025-12	26	152	178	565	6398	6963
2026-01	16	95	111	383	7015	7398
2026-02	8	96	104	327	6684	7011
2026-03	4	135	139	411	8488	8899
2026-04	15	125	140	425	9278	9703
2026-05	17	116	133	400	9159	9559
2026-06	12	112	124	330	8403	8733
2026-07	16	126	142	501	7985	8486

The scoreboard — and what these numbers cannot say

Put the four flows on one scoreboard, measuring each against its own peak. Venezuelan family units: 0.06 percent of peak. Venezuelan single adults: 0.3 percent. Mexican family units: 1.1 percent. Mexican single adults: 23.7 percent. Every line is far below its worst month; only one is still a live, sizable flow at all.

What these numbers cannot say matters as much. They cover two citizenships in four border states, not the whole border; they exclude Title 42 expulsions from the pre-2023 record; they count encounters, not unique people; they are not seasonally adjusted; and the newest months are preliminary. Nothing here identifies why any line moved — policy, conditions in origin countries, smuggling economics and enforcement all interact, and this descriptive panel cannot separate them. What it can say is narrower and, this month, more useful: the numbers that once supplied the emergency have thinned to near zero for the surge's signature nationality, and to a fraction of peak for the perennial one.

That is the context in which this month's enforcement stories should be read. A fight conducted through 250,000 visa revocations, mandatory-detention litigation, H-1B fee blocks and lawsuits over an ICE shooting in Minneapolis is not being driven by what is happening at the Texas line — the official counts there are rounding errors for the groups that used to make headlines. The border emergency that structured two years of American immigration politics has, on the government's own books, mostly stopped supplying itself. What remains is a smaller, older, steadier flow of Mexican single adults — and a political system still fighting the last emergency indoors.

The collapse scoreboard: how far each flow sits below its peak

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label	pct_of_peak	peak_month	peak_value	recent3_avg	jul2026
Venezuelan family units	0.06	2023-09	26379	15	16
Venezuelan single adults	0.3	2023-09	39481	118	126
Mexican family units	1.1	2023-12	37285	410.3	501
Mexican single adults	23.72	2024-03	35898	8515.7	7985