President Joe Biden touted his success on the southern border Thursday night during a highly anticipated press conference, saying Border Patrol agents must deal with half the number of illegal aliens than they did under President Donald Trump. 

“Border encounters have gone down over 50%,” Biden said. “The current level is lower today than when Trump left office.”

In December 2020, the last full month of the Trump administration, agents encountered 73,994 illegal alien encounters at the southern border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Official CBP numbers for last month have yet to be released, but according to data obtained by CBS News, the Border Patrol encountered 84,000 illegal aliens at the southern border in June. 

Biden’s comments Thursday night come just over five weeks after the president signed an executive order giving himself the authority to close the border when the seven-day average of daily border crossings between ports of entry exceeds 2,500.

Biden’s order, which took effect immediately, directed that the border then would reopen only when crossings between ports of entry fall to a seven-day daily average of 1,500 or fewer. 

The 84,000 encounters with illegal aliens in June reported by CBS would be a significant decline from the 170,723 encounters recorded in May.

A Border Patrol source in California, however, said agents continue to struggle to keep up with the flow of aliens crossing the border illegally. 

The source told The Daily Signal that illegal aliens are being flown from San Diego to McAllen, Texas, for processing because Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector continued to grapple with high numbers of illegal crossings.

Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, was holding 5,790 illegal aliens in custody across the nation as of Wednesday, the source said.

The vast majority of those in custody, 86.1%, are single adults. CBP keeps them in custody for an average of 114 hours. These numbers represent a decline from a month ago when 11,092 illegal aliens were being held June 10 in CBP custody, 68.9% of them single adults. 

So far in fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1, Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 1.6 million illegal immigrants on the southern border. During fiscal year 2020, the last full year of the Trump administration, CBP encountered 400,651 aliens.