Internal records reviewed by local reporters show a dramatic decline in so‑called “known gotaways,” migrants seen or detected crossing between ports of entry who were not apprehended, from the peaks of 2023 to a tiny fraction of those levels in recent months. If the tallies are accurate, known gotaways have fallen from the thousands per day at the 2023 high to numbers now measured in the low dozens, a shift that would reshape how agents prioritize enforcement and tracking. The change looks striking on paper, but the figures rest on agency estimates and operational definitions that matter a lot for how the numbers are read.
The development was flagged in a Houston‑area report from News Radio 1200 WOAI, which cites reporting by Bob Price at Breitbart and internal CBP tallies that it says show a roughly 97 percent drop since the 2023 peak. Breitbart’s coverage documented massive monthly gotaway estimates at that peak, including tens of thousands in December 2022 and early 2023, and WOAI relays that current daily counts are often below 50, down from the roughly one to two thousand averages reported during the height of the crisis.
What CBP has said publicly
Customs and Border Protection has acknowledged big declines in recent reporting. Its October 2024 monthly update noted that the agency’s estimated number of migrant gotaways decreased about 60 percent from FY2023 to FY2024, and a later CBP operations release highlighted record‑low monthly encounter totals and zero parole releases in mid‑2025. Those CBP releases reflect agency counts of encounters and operational trends but do not produce a single, authoritative nationwide “gotaways” figure that captures every undetected crossing.
What the metric actually measures
“Known gotaways” are by definition partial and probabilistic. They include people cameras or sensors detected or agents saw but who were not taken into custody, and they do not capture every person who enters undetected. Independent fact‑checkers note that gotaway tallies are useful for tracking trends but are not a definitive census of border crossers, since methodology, device coverage and repeat attempts can all affect the numbers reported by CBP. That means a large percentage drop can reflect real operational change, improved interdiction or shifts in how and where crossings are detected.
Why analysts urge caution about the headline
Researchers and policy analysts point to multiple drivers that could explain falling gotaway counts, including tightened enforcement and new directives, changes to the CBP One scheduling system and asylum processing, stepped‑up Mexican cooperation, and broader regional migration patterns. A recent analysis by the Cato Institute and other reviewers observed that much of the decline in several enforcement metrics began before new 2025 policies took full effect, underscoring how layered explanations, not a single policy move, are often behind rapid changes in the data.
Local context matters too. Reporting that traced the early 2023 spike singled out sectors such as El Paso and Eagle Pass as hotspots where large groups tied up Border Patrol resources and allowed others to slip through. If the nationwide gotaway rate has truly dropped to the low double digits per day, border sectors that once saw high evasion rates say it will change how agents allocate surveillance, processing and removal resources.
Bottom line, multiple public CBP releases and independent analyses confirm that the number of detected evasion events has fallen sharply since 2023, but experts and fact‑checkers caution that “known gotaways” are an estimate rather than a complete count. Observers are watching for updated CBP datasets and FOIA releases that can clarify the scale and causes of the drop and what it means for enforcement and for communities near the border.
