(The Epoch Times)—There was a historic drop in the apprehension of illegal immigrants at America’s southwest border last month, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as the Trump administration continues to step up immigration enforcement.
“In March 2025, USBP apprehended 7,181 illegal aliens crossing the southwest border between ports of entry,” the agency said in an April 14 statement, referring to U.S. Border Patrol (USBP).
“This constitutes a 14 percent decrease from February 2025 when USBP apprehended 8,346 aliens, and a 95 percent decrease from March 2024 when USBP apprehended 137,473 aliens.”
Pete Flores, acting Commissioner of CBP, said the border patrol’s southwest border apprehensions “for the entire month of March 2025 were lower than the first two days of March 2024.”
Nationwide, border patrol saw 264 apprehensions per day in March. That’s lower than February’s daily numbers, which were at 330, the “lowest nationwide average apprehensions in CBP history” at the time, according to the CBP.
President Donald Trump referenced the achievement in an April 15 Truth Social post, writing in all-caps, “Border crossings hit all-time record low in March!”
Last month’s average of nationwide daily apprehensions was 94 percent lower than the 4,488 apprehensions per day registered in March of last year, under the Biden administration.
Earlier this month, Flores said that “under the leadership of President Trump and [Homeland] Secretary Noem, the administration has taken bold, decisive action to restore control at the border. Border Patrol agents are empowered like never before to shut down unlawful entry and protect American lives.”
“The message is clear: the border is closed to illegal crossings, and for those still willing to test our resolve, know this—you will be prosecuted, and you will be deported.”
In March, the agency launched the CBP Home mobile app, allowing illegal immigrants to notify the government of their intent to leave the United States.
The app has been updated with an added functionality enabling illegal immigrants to notify authorities that they have exited the country.
“These features are vital to comply with Executive Order 14159, ‘Protecting the American People Against Invasion,’ ensuring an orderly process for aliens to communicate their departure plans,” according to CBP.
Under the Biden administration, the agency’s CBP One app allowed illegal immigrants outside the United States to schedule appointments at U.S. ports of entry. Trump ended the app on his first day in office.
Tackling Illegal Immigrants
The Trump administration is tightening the monitoring of those in the United States unlawfully.
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked illegal immigrants to register with the federal government, after a court victory allowed the policy to be implemented.
Illegal immigrants who have been in the country for over 30 days were required to register by April 11, including being fingerprinted. Those entering the United States after April 11 have 30 days from their arrival to register.
Failure to register is an offense potentially punishable by imprisonment, fines, or both.
The rule does not apply to certain people, such as those who have applied for or have already obtained permanent residency, individuals with a valid work authorization, and those subjected to deportation proceedings.
“President Trump and I have a clear message for those in our country illegally: leave now. If you leave now, you may have the opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream,” Noem said in an April 11 statement.
“The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws—we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce. We must know who is in our country for the safety and security of our homeland and all Americans.”
The White House recently revealed that it has taken action against illegal immigrants flagged as security risks who were paroled into the United States.
Immigration parole allows an illegal immigrant to temporarily live in the United States and potentially work without being subject to deportation.
Over 6,300 individuals who were paroled in or after 2023 and who have criminal records or were listed in the FBI’s terrorist screening database had their parole terminated as of April 11, the White House said.
Meanwhile, the CBP is pushing ahead with the border wall construction project. In mid-March, the agency awarded the first border wall contract under Trump’s second term.
This month, Noem issued a DHS waiver of environmental laws to expedite construction of approximately 2.5 miles of new wall in California.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
