Vance heads to southern border as Trump touts sharp drop in crossings: ‘They heard my words’

Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday is heading to the southern border, a day after President Donald Trump touted a sharp drop in border crossings amid a ramping up of border security and interior arrests of illegal immigrants.

Vance is touring the border in Eagle Pass, Texas, and will be joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Eagle Pass was one of the hot spots for border crossings at the height of the historic Biden-era border crisis.

Trump had centered his 2024 campaign on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration, and he deployed a slew of measures early on. On Day One, he signed executive orders to declare a national emergency at the border and deploy the military. He also ordered the resumption of border wall construction and the end of Biden parole policies.

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The Pentagon quickly deployed troops and opened up Guantánamo Bay to flights of migrants. The Department of Homeland Security has taken limits off of interior enforcement and expanded the use of expedited removal, while the State Department secured additional cooperation with countries to return migrants.

The administration has launched a massive interior enforcement operation, where daily arrests have regularly hit 1,000+ a day, although officials have indicated they want to see numbers go even higher.

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The administration has pointed to figures showing sharp increases in interior arrests compared to the Biden era and a sharp drop in encounters at the border.

In February, there were just 8,326 southern border encounters, down from 189,913 in February 2024. The administration has so far removed more than 55,000 illegal immigrants from the U.S.

Trump touted those numbers in a speech to Congress on Tuesday night.

“Within hours of taking the oath of office, I declared a national emergency on our southern border and I deployed the U.S. military and Border Patrol to repel the invasion of our country. And what a job they’ve done. As a result, illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded, ever,” he said.

“They heard my words, and they chose not to come.”

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He also mocked the claim by Democrats and the Biden administration that legislation was needed to fix the crisis.

“But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Border Patrol source told Fox News that there were just 271 total encounters for the entire southern border on Tuesday, and just 14 in the Del Rio Sector where Vance is visiting.

Fox News’ Brooke Taylor and The Associated Press contributed to this report.