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How does the zero border crossings in May 2025 compare to the same period in 2023?
Executive summary
May 2025 showed a dramatic drop in reported migrant activity at the U.S.–Mexico southwest border, including official claims of zero migrants released into the interior that month and a reported 93% decline in encounters versus May 2024. A direct apples‑to‑apples comparison to May 2023 is limited because the available sources do not consistently report the same metrics for both months, though May 2023 encounters totaled 204,561 per CBP’s May 2023 update [1] [2].
1. Clear claims on the table — “zero releases” and steep year‑over‑year drops
The strongest, repeated claim across the analyses is that no migrants were released into the United States in May 2025, a point emphasized by Customs and Border Protection reporting and media summaries [2]. Analysts also report a 93% decline in southwest border encounters relative to May 2024, and specific tallies such as 8,725 illegal crossings in May 2025 are cited in public commentary [3] [4]. These claims focus on two distinct metrics — releases into the interior and recorded encounters — and present May 2025 as an unusually low month for migrant activity at the border [2] [3].
2. The 2023 baseline — what we do know and what we don’t
CBP’s May 2023 monthly operational update documents 204,561 total encounters along the southwest border for that month, providing a clear numeric baseline for May 2023 [1]. However, the sources assembled here do not provide a directly comparable count of releases into the interior for May 2023 or a consistent encounter metric for May 2025 that matches the 2023 definition, so any direct percentage comparison between May 2025 and May 2023 is constrained by incomplete metric alignment [1] [3]. This means the headline “zero border crossings in May 2025” cannot be proven or disproven solely by cross‑referencing these documents without reconciling which exact counts are being compared.
3. Why numbers diverge — definitions, policies, and enforcement matter
The sources highlight an important methodological issue: “crossings,” “encounters,” and “releases” are distinct operational categories. CBP encounters count interdictions/apprehensions and are not identical to the number of migrants subsequently released into the U.S. interior; policy changes and Mexican enforcement actions can reduce releases even if crossings continue at some level [4] [5]. Analysts note that May 2025 declines were driven by a mixture of U.S. policy shifts starting in early 2024 and stepped‑up Mexican enforcement, which together altered both migrant flows and agency processing outcomes, complicating straight chronological comparisons to May 2023 [5].
4. Fiscal‑year perspective and historic context sharpen the picture
Beyond month‑to‑month noise, fiscal‑year totals provide context: analyses report that fiscal year 2025 saw the fewest apprehensions in over 50 years, with roughly 238,000 migrants arrested — the lowest since around 1970 — signaling a broader downward trend across 2025 not confined to a single month [6]. That larger decline supports the interpretation that May 2025 was part of an extended reduction in apprehensions and encounters. Still, reconciling monthly figures like May 2023’s 204,561 encounters with May 2025’s reported counts requires precise metric matching; otherwise the comparison risks conflating policy results with statistical artifacts [6] [1].
5. What can and cannot be concluded from the available evidence
From these documents one can confidently conclude that May 2025 represented a substantially lower month for reported border activity and that officials touted zero releases into the interior and dramatic declines from May 2024 levels [2] [3]. One cannot, however, produce a rigorous percentage reduction between May 2025 and May 2023 using the provided sources because the datasets do not provide the same metric for both months [1] [3]. Any headline asserting a precise comparison between “zero border crossings in May 2025” and “May 2023” exceeds what the assembled evidence supports without additional, harmonized data.
6. Bottom line — low activity is well documented; exact May‑to‑May arithmetic is not
The assembled evidence documents near‑historic lows across 2025 and official claims about zero releases in May 2025 and large declines from May 2024; it also supplies a May 2023 encounters figure of 204,561 as a useful reference point [2] [1] [6]. To make an exact, defensible comparison between May 2025 and May 2023 requires a single source that reports the same metric for both months (for example, encounters counted with the same methodology or releases counted for both months). That reconciled data is not present in the materials provided here, so careful reporting must distinguish between what is documented (large declines and zero releases in May 2025) and what remains unproven (a precise percent change versus May 2023) [4] [1].