Border Apprehensions Head for the Lowest Since 1967 as the $46.5 Billion Wall Build Runs at 7 Miles a Week

Border Patrol made 8,870 apprehensions at the southwest border in August 2026. For fiscal 2026 through August the total was 89,760, putting the year on pace for about 98,000. That would be the lowest since fiscal 1967. In fiscal 2022 and 2023, apprehensions passed 2 million a year.

The Homeland Security Department says it has gone 16 straight months without releasing anyone apprehended by Border Patrol into the US.

The wall

The money for the wall came from the July 2025 tax and spending law, which appropriated $46.5 billion for border barriers, available until September 2029. By August 2026, according to figures reported by TIME, $33.6 billion was under contract.

Since January 2025, 59 miles of new primary wall have been built, plus 42 miles of secondary wall and 22 miles of barrier in rivers, and 38 miles of older primary wall replaced. About 700 miles of primary wall now stand along the roughly 1,950-mile border. Another 287 miles are under construction and 280 more under contract. The pace is about seven miles a week.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott has said the primary wall will be finished by the end of 2027 and the secondary by July 2028. In August a federal judge declined to halt a 62-mile segment near Tucson that environmental groups had challenged.

What’s driving the numbers

Several policies overlap. Asylum access at the border has been sharply limited since January 2025. Thousands of troops, more than 10,000 by some reports, support Border Patrol under a joint task force. Mexico has stepped up enforcement on its side. And the large increase in detention and removal capacity, funded by the same 2025 law, raises the cost of crossing. We covered that in our post on ICE funding.

Crossings had already fallen in 2024 after the previous administration’s asylum restrictions and Mexican enforcement, so the decline began before the wall money arrived.

The budget question

The wall is now one of the largest construction programmes the federal government runs. $46.5 billion is more than the annual budget of most cabinet departments. GAO has reviewed earlier wall construction and found cost estimates and environmental planning weak, and that the barrier needs maintenance and surveillance to be effective. With most of the money under contract and the deadline in 2029, the question for Congress is less whether to build than what it costs to maintain, and whether the remaining money goes to the most crossed sections.

Low crossings also change the immigration debate in Washington. Enforcement has moved from the border to the interior: removals of people already living in the US, the end of temporary protections and the court fights over them. That’s where the political and legal action now is, and where the 2025 law’s money is spent.