January recorded the third month with the fewest arrests of illegal immigrants in the Joe Biden era.
The southern border finally gives the president a break at the beginning of an election year.
United States authorities assure that arrests fell by half during January compared to the historical record registered in December.
The announcement of last month's figures coincided with the start of the impeachment trial in the House of Representatives of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who has immigration management among his responsibilities.
The Border Patrol made 124,220 immigrant arrests during January.
It is a decrease of 50% from the 249,735 that were made in the last month of 2023. December is the month with the highest number of irregular crossings since records have been kept.
The border has become the issue that most worries Republican voters ahead of the presidential elections in November.
Some conservative politicians have turned border counties, such as Eagle Pass, into an area to confront the Biden administration.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott led a caravan of local leaders to support his tough measures to reduce the migratory flow.
Despite the fight that Abbott maintains with Washington, Texas was not the hottest spot on the border.
This was again located in Tucson, Arizona, where 50,565 arrests were made, 37% fewer than those carried out in December.
The second busiest point was the crossing between San Diego and Tijuana.
In Eagle Pass, however, the number of arrests made by federal agents fell 76% compared to December.
16,712 people were detained there, the lowest number in two years.
Something similar happened at the other end of Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, where the lowest number of crossings was documented since July 2020.
This respite may be brief for Biden.
The Government of Panama, one of the allies in Washington's effort to reduce the number of migrants making the journey north, has informed the Democratic Administration that 36,000 people traveled through the dangerous Darien jungle, a point that connects the parts North and South of the American continent.
This is 46% more than those who made the crossing during December.
The Darién is a busy point for citizens of Venezuela, Haiti, Ecuador, Colombia and China, a country whose migratory flow has increased considerably in recent months.
Venezuelans, on the other hand, have decreased.
Last month 4,422 were arrested.
In December, however, almost 47,000 people had been arrested.
Part of the key behind January's decline lies in the efforts of the Mexican government.
Mexican agents have tightened surveillance at major airports and on trains and buses in states near the borders with Guatemala and Belize.
At the end of December, the Mexican Foreign Ministry announced an agreement with Caracas to repatriate Venezuelans.
The first test flights were made on December 29 and 30.
By the first days of January, the planes had returned 330 Venezuelans to their nation.
Mexican authorities have increased the number of flights that take off from airports in the north of the country to cities in the south.
At least 22 trips were made in the last days of December, reducing the number of foreigners waiting for an opportunity near the border to cross.
Most of these routes left Piedras Negras, the city in Coahuila that borders Eagle Pass.
Several of these measures were implemented after Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, paid a visit to Mexican authorities in December.
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