How many border crossing in January 2026
Executive summary
A precise count of "border crossings in January 2026" is not stated in the provided reporting; the authoritative agencies that publish those tallies are U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for enforcement "encounters" and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) for port-level inbound crossings, but the specific January 2026 figure does not appear in the supplied excerpts [1] [2]. Available materials show where monthly totals are published and describe recent downward trends in irregular encounters through 2025, but they stop short of giving an explicit nationwide January 2026 number in these sources [3] [4].
1. What the question is actually asking and why it matters
The user seeks a single numeric answer — the number of border crossings during January 2026 — which could mean different things depending on source definitions: CBP "encounters" (apprehensions, inadmissibles, expulsions) recorded between ports of entry, or BTS inbound “crossings” at official land ports for cars, pedestrians, trucks and buses; these datasets measure different populations and are produced by different agencies, so any answer must specify which metric is meant [1] [2].
2. Where the official numbers live and how they differ
CBP publishes Southwest Land Border and Nationwide "encounters" that include U.S. Border Patrol Title 8 apprehensions, Office of Field Operations Title 8 inadmissibles, and Title 42 expulsions, and these encounter data are updated from live CBP systems and are subject to revision [1] [3]. The BTS Border Crossing/Entry Data records inbound vehicles, passengers and pedestrians by port of entry and is the source for counts of people and vehicles entering through official ports of entry — a separate, complementary dataset to CBP encounters [2] [5].
3. What the supplied reporting actually contains about recent trends
The supplied reporting documents a sharp decline in irregular migrant encounters through 2025 — for example, commentary and analysis note near-historic lows with monthly USBP interceptions falling to single-digit thousands in some months of 2025 compared with the December 2023 peak [4] [6]. News outlets tracking enforcement observe that crossings "have plummeted" in the period after 2023, and that CBP and ICE data show significant declines and enforcement upticks through 2025, though those articles do not provide the January 2026 monthly total in the snippets provided [7] [4].
4. Why a definitive January 2026 number cannot be supplied from these excerpts
None of the provided snippets includes an explicit figure for January 2026: the CBP pages are the authoritative home for monthly encounter totals but the specific January 2026 number is not included in the extracts here [1] [3], and the BTS material available in the reporting covers port-level releases up through October 2025 in the supplied snippets but not January 2026 [8] [2]. Therefore attempting to state a single numeric total for "January 2026 border crossings" based only on these sources would be speculative.
5. How to get the exact January 2026 figure and what to watch for when comparing numbers
To obtain the exact count, consult CBP’s Southwest Land Border Encounters or Nationwide Encounters dashboards and the BTS Border Crossing/Entry Data portal for port-level inbound crossings — CBP provides encounter tallies (apprehensions, inadmissibles, expulsions) and BTS provides inbound vehicle and pedestrian counts, and each dataset has different definitions and update/revision practices that must be considered when comparing them [1] [2] [3]. Analysts should also note that CBP data are "subject to change due to corrections, systems changes, [and] change in data definition" and that BTS releases are scheduled and may be revised [1] [8].
6. Bottom line
Based on the provided reporting, a specific numeric answer for "How many border crossings in January 2026" cannot be extracted; the correct next step is to query CBP’s encounters dashboards for monthly apprehension/encounter totals and BTS’s Border Crossing/Entry Data for port-level inbound crossings, and then be explicit about which metric is being cited because the two measure different events [1] [2] [3].