December monthly border encounters decrease to lowest daily average since July 2020: DHS

Daily encounters in December along the southwest border were the lowest average since July 2020, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The number of total migrants encountered along the border was 96,000, officials told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

"This is a consistent trend we have seen since the president's proclamation went into effect last summer," he said.

Last summer, President Joe Biden announced a series of executive actions that established a rule that will turn away migrants who are claiming asylum between ports of entry after there have been seven consecutive days of more than 2,500 encounters along the southern border.

The daily average was also lower than in every month of 2019, according to Mayorkas.

Mayorkas told reporters that the Biden Administration is leaving the border in a better place than where they found it.

"Our administration strategy has been tough, humane, legal and effective," Mayorkas said. "The border is more secure, more safe and more orderly than it was in the prior administration, and the progress we have made can be continued. Ultimately, however, the only enduring solution is for Congress to legislatively reform a system that is so fundamentally broken."

Monthly encounters along the southwest border previously reached new record highs during the Biden Administration, prompting Republicans to criticize the administration's policies.

Mayorkas also touted the number of deportations carried out, which was the highest since 2014.

"We have listened to our workforce and invested significantly in helping them do their jobs again within the financial constraints in which we operate," Mayorkas said. "We secured the first significant increase of border patrol agents in more than a decade. This with the help of Congress, increasing the number of agents and officers on the southwest border to over 24,000 also adding 1000s of additional support personnel and searching 1000s of law enforcement and other personnel from across the department."

A senior Department of Homeland Security official said it was hard to suggest that the administration should have done something sooner because, among other things, they were still implementing Title 42, which made it challenging to implement policy.

The incoming Trump Administration has said it might reimplement Title 42 as a way to expel migrants quickly.