CBP reports zero parole releases for eighth month and historic low border encounters in December 2025

In this context, “zero parole releases” means that, for that month, U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) reports that none of the people it apprehended between ports of entry (on the southwest border) were released into the U.S. on immigration parole from USBP custody. Instead of being paroled and allowed to live in the U.S. while their case proceeds, everyone counted in that metric was either detained, quickly removed/returned, or transferred to another agency. Under U.S. law, parole is a discretionary, temporary permission to enter and remain in the country without being formally “admitted,” used case‑by‑case for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit; during the Biden years it was widely used to release large numbers of border crossers, which is what these Trump‑era press releases are contrasting with.

CBP uses “encounter” as a catch‑all event count for times the agency stops or processes a non‑U.S. national at the border or a port of entry. Formally, CBP defines nationwide encounters as the sum of:

• U.S. Border Patrol Title 8 apprehensions – people caught between ports of entry who are not lawfully in the U.S.; and
• Office of Field Operations (OFO) Title 8 inadmissibles – people who present at ports of entry (land, air, or sea) but are found inadmissible or seek humanitarian protection; plus
• Title 42 expulsions during March 21, 2020–May 11, 2023.

Each apprehension or inadmissibility decision is one encounter, so a person caught multiple times is counted multiple times.

The release uses several different “Biden administration” baselines, which are only partly spelled out:

• “92% below the peak of the Biden administration’s 370,883” – This compares December 2025’s 30,698 nationwide encounters to the highest single month of encounters during Biden’s term, a peak of about 370–371k nationwide encounters in December 2023 (CBP data and subsequent DHS/House summaries both show December 2023 as the record high).
• “Monthly average of the Biden administration” / “daily average under the Biden administration” – Other DHS communications say these averages are calculated over calendar years 2021–2024 (Biden’s years in office before Trump’s 2025 term), i.e., they average monthly (and then daily) encounters across that period and compare current numbers to that average.
• “First quarter average under the Biden administration” – DHS does not define this precisely in the January 2026 release. By analogy to the monthly‑average language above, it almost certainly refers to the average number of first‑quarter (October–December) southwest Border Patrol apprehensions over Biden‑era fiscal years (FY2022–FY2025), but this is inferred rather than explicitly documented.

So: the headline percentages are referencing either the single‑month peak (December 2023) or averages over Biden’s years (2021–2024); the exact formula for the “first quarter average” is not fully spelled out publicly.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the large border‑management agency within the Department of Homeland Security; U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) is one operational component inside CBP.

• CBP oversees the country’s borders overall: staffing ports of entry (airports, seaports, land crossings), inspecting travelers and cargo, collecting duties, enforcing trade laws, and interdicting drugs and contraband.
• U.S. Border Patrol is CBP’s uniformed law‑enforcement arm responsible specifically for securing the areas between ports of entry on land borders (and in some coastal/riverine areas). Border Patrol agents apprehend people who cross unlawfully between official crossings and interdict smuggled goods in those areas, then transfer people or cases into the broader immigration/trade enforcement system CBP and DHS run.

In CBP reporting, drug seizure totals are based on the measured physical weight of the seized substance by drug type, not adjusted for purity or potency.

• The Drug Seizure Statistics and Nationwide Drug Seizures pages describe data in terms of pounds/kilograms seized by drug category (fentanyl, methamphetamine, etc.), drawn from CBP’s live seizure systems.
• A separate Drugs Dosage, Value and Weight dashboard then uses those weights to estimate number of doses and street value for fentanyl and heroin, but the base metric is still the seized weight.
• U.S. sentencing and enforcement practice generally treats “weight” for reporting and many legal thresholds as the entire mixture or substance containing the drug, not a purity‑adjusted equivalent.

So when the release says, for example, “865 pounds of fentanyl,” it refers to the total weight of material classified as fentanyl seized, not to an adjusted amount based on chemical potency.

Researchers can get the underlying monthly and raw data cited in the release from CBP’s public statistics pages and data portal:

• Stats and Summaries hub – main entry point for CBP operational stats, including encounters, custody, drugs, and trade.
• Nationwide Encounters – provides interactive charts and links to downloadable datasets for apprehensions and inadmissibles nationwide.
• Southwest Land Border Encounters – provides CSV datasets (by fiscal year) for southwest border encounters, including USBP apprehensions and OFO inadmissibles.
• Nationwide Drug Seizures and Drug Seizure Statistics – provide dashboards and CSV files for drug seizures by type and location.

These pages link to the CBP Public Data Portal, where the CSV datasets underlying the dashboards (including FY23–FY26 files) can be downloaded.

The “presidential tariff actions” in the release refer to a series of tariff measures ordered by President Trump (in his 2025 term) under statutes like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. These actions impose additional duties on broad categories of imports (for example, a general “reciprocal” or worldwide tariff rate and various country‑ or product‑specific surcharges) and instruct CBP to implement and enforce them.

In practice, these actions change CBP’s work by:

• Requiring CBP to collect new or higher duties and to use special tariff codes (e.g., new HTSUS 9903 codes) when processing customs entries.
• Prompting CBP to issue detailed implementation guidance to importers and brokers via Cargo Systems Messaging Service (CSMS), spelling out which goods, origins, and timeframes are covered.
• Shifting enforcement priorities toward trade‑remedy and revenue enforcement—for example, more audits and targeting of misclassification, transshipment, or undervaluation schemes aimed at avoiding the new tariffs.

So the “42 presidential tariff actions” counted in the release are the cumulative set of these Trump‑era proclamations and executive orders on tariffs, and CBP’s role is to operationalize them in its import processing, collections, and trade‑fraud enforcement.