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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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The United States is closing five temporary immigrant processing facilities along the border with Mexico, after a severe drop in illegal crossings in recent months.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said Thursday that officers assigned to the centers in Texas and Arizona could now return to their previous roles patrolling the border.
Why It Matters
The temporary "soft-sided facilities" (SSFs) were a symbol of the surge in border crossings which began during the previous Trump administration and lasted through early 2024. Decommissioning five of these sites shows the huge fall in immigrants trying to make their way into the U.S. along the southwest border, particularly following President Donald Trump's election.
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What To Know
CBP said it will close its SSFs in Donna, North Eagle Pass, and Laredo in Texas, along with Yuma and Tucson in Arizona, while El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California will remain open for now.
The move comes after the agency confirmed Wednesday that just over 8,300 immigrants had been arrested between official ports of entry in February, a big decrease over the 140,641 during the same month in 2024.
Illegal crossings have been on a steady decline since June 2024, when former President Joe Biden introduced a stricter asylum ban, or cap, but the difference between January's 29,101 figure and February's was stark.
CBP, along with the wider Trump administration, has put the shift down to the president's current tough stance on border security.
When crossings surged at the end of Trump's last term in the White House and for much of Biden's, CBP was forced to create extra space to process the men, women, and children who had shown up along the near-2,000-mile stretch of border.
Migrants were interviewed by officers who would determine whether they had a potential asylum case, before either being released or moved elsewhere. The facilities saw thousands of individuals housed in pods, with photos showing mattresses tightly-packed on the ground with little privacy.
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The closures will allow CBP to save between $5 million and $30 million per month, depending on the facility. Those funds will be spent elsewhere on securing the border, the agency said.
Closing the temporary facilities comes in contrast with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) struggle to find extra capacity as it seeks to deliver on Trump's mass deportation promise.
What People Are Saying
Pete Flores, Acting CBP Commissioner, in a press release: "The men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection continue to aggressively implement the President's Executive Orders to secure our borders, and as a result of this leadership, we have achieved historic lows in border apprehensions. At the direction of the administration, we remain unwavering in our mission to prioritize American safety, secure the border, and enforce consequences for those who violate United States law."
What's Next
CBP said it has enough capacity to hold all current new arrivals in its existing, permanent facilities. It remains to be seen if the current low levels of illegal crossings will be maintained, as a similar drop was seen in 2017 before numbers climbed again.
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