A senior Border Patrol official in Texas said the organization was “absolutely” preparing for an increased volume of immigrants attempting to enter illegally and that crossings had already begun to increase in recent days, likely people who have been waiting in northern Mexico.

“Unfortunately, we are reactive. Can only be proactive to a certain extent. So we rely a lot on our intel and relationships with foreign governments,” the official said.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, said President Joe Biden’s being a “lame duck” until Jan. 19, 2025, may give the Mexican cartels that smuggle immigrants greater freedom and leave them feeling “empowered,” at least in theory, to do as much as possible before Trump comes to town and cracks down.

“There’s a potential for us to see an onslaught at the border of people trying to get in under the wire. And we know that there are caravans approaching,” Vaughan said.

Trump has promised, as he did in 2016 and 2020, to shore up the border. This time around, Trump has vowed to stop fentanyl from flowing into the country, deploying troops to the U.S. Mexico-border, and warned of a mass deportation.

Immigrants outside the country likely view Jan. 20, 2025, as a deadline to get into the country before or face Trump’s tougher border security afterward.

Department of Homeland Security officials met in the days leading up to this week’s election to discuss how to respond to a potential surge of immigrants at the southern border, according to NBC News.

DHS agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection would not comment on its planning process for the transition and managing immigration over the next two and a half months, but a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the law would be enforced.

“While border encounters remain at historic lows, CBP remains vigilant to constantly shifting migration patterns,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “Migrants should not believe the lies of smugglers. The fact remains: the United States continues to enforce immigration law. Individuals who enter the U.S. unlawfully between ports of entry will continue to be quickly removed.”

Historic immigration trends during winter and transitions

Historically, the number of illegal immigrants apprehended between ports of entry has dropped during the winter months, including in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 when former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump were elected, according to government data.

Immigration levels dropped to 45-year lows under Trump and were low during the pandemic in 2020 due to travel restrictions globally.

In the second half of 2020, Trump lost the election to President Joe Biden, and pent-up demand to migrate from hurting economies in Latin America prompted an increase in migration.

The U.S. saw an influx of illegal immigrants between Biden’s election and his being sworn into office, as well as immediately afterward, according to CBP statistics.

“It started to go up even before Biden took office because of anticipation of what was going to happen,” said Vaughan.

Transitioning from Biden to Trump

Arrests of immigrants who have illegally entered the United States from Mexico between the ports of entry over the past year have dropped from 250,000 last December to under 60,000 in September after the Biden-Harris administration began to detain and remove immigrants, as well as coaxed the Mexican government to do more to deter immigrants.

Biden signed an executive order in June that directed CBP to expeditiously remove immigrants at the border, making the asylum process more difficult to initiate.

The border crisis that lagged through 3 1/2 years of the Biden-Harris administration has declined also as a result of the White House’s creating other “lawful pathways” for immigrants to fly into the country or be paroled in after passing an interview at a port of entry.

But regardless of what the U.S. can or will do to deter illegal immigration, it must have help from Mexico — substantial help, according to Eric Ruark, research director at NumbersUSA, a nonpartisan immigration organization in Washington that advocates reducing immigration levels.

“A lot of it depends on the Mexican president … whether the government of Mexico feels that it’s in their best interest not to see a huge surge before Trump takes office, or whether they’re going to take a more, I guess, confrontational approach with the Trump administration on this,” said Ruark in a phone call. “They certainly do have some leverage when it comes to it. They could make demands that in order for us to better control the flow, we need trade concessions or something like that.”

Vaughan warned that because the journey for immigrants in Mexico and Central America can take weeks to make it to the border, it is less likely than the immigration the U.S. has seen since 2021 of people migrating from the Eastern Hemisphere will ramp up between now and January, simply because it may not be enough time to do so.

“If you’re sitting in your home in Ecuador now or West Africa or India, I think that the reaction will be to stay put because it takes months to get through the smuggling system to be able to make it here and in time before Trump shuts the border,” said Vaughan.

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The number of immigrants who are traveling through the Darien jungle, a small part of land that connects South and Central America, is roughly at one-third of the number who were traveling through it a year ago at this time, according to CBP.

CBP added that DHS officials hold regular meetings to discuss border security operations, including contingency and preparation plans.