93 Percent Down: San Diego Sheriff Says Trump Border Crackdown Is Working
Sheriff Kelly Martinez says border rescue calls have plunged 93 percent in San Diego County as Trump era enforcement restores order.
San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez says calls to rescue illegal immigrants near the border have fallen 93 percent since President Donald Trump returned to office. After years of chaos, overloaded deputies, and communities stuck dealing with the fallout, that is not a rounding error. That is what happens when a government decides the border is a border again.
According to The Epoch Times, Martinez said the drop has been especially obvious in the rugged mountain and wilderness areas east of San Diego, where sheriff's deputies had been pulled into dangerous rescue operations for migrants abandoned by smugglers. Those rescues were not harmless humanitarian errands. They tied up law enforcement, strained county resources, and put both deputies and migrants in serious danger.
Now the pace has changed. Fast.
And suddenly the political class that spent years telling you the border was "secure" wants credit for noticing the crisis is easing. Because of course they do.
What Sheriff Kelly Martinez reported
Martinez told The Epoch Times that rescue calls involving illegal immigrants along the border are down 93 percent since Trump took office. That is a dramatic local indicator, and it matters because rescue calls are one of those stats you cannot spin very easily. Deputies either get dispatched into canyons and mountains or they do not.
If the calls disappear, something real changed.
The sheriff's report also lines up with the broader picture from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In its January 2025 monthly update, CBP said southwest border apprehensions from Jan. 21 through Jan. 31 dropped 85 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. In its February 2025 update, CBP said Border Patrol apprehended 8,347 illegal aliens at the southwest border, down 71 percent from January and down 94 percent from February 2024.
That is not just a better week. That is a policy reversal with teeth.
Why rescue calls matter
A rescue-call collapse tells you several things at once:
Fewer people are attempting dangerous crossings in remote terrain
Smuggling routes are getting disrupted
Local deputies are spending less time doing emergency recoveries
Border communities are getting some breathing room back
That last one matters more than Washington usually admits. Border towns do not experience illegal immigration as an abstract cable-news debate. They live with the consequences in real time.
The difference enforcement makes
CBP's own language was unusually blunt. In the February 2025 update, Acting Commissioner Pete Flores said the agency had reached "historic lows in border apprehensions" while aggressively implementing the president's executive orders. The January update said the message was clear: illegal aliens are being arrested, detained, and rapidly removed.
Funny how consequences change behavior.
For years, Americans were told nothing could really be done. The border was too complicated. The bureaucracy was too tangled. The courts were too slow. The cartels were too sophisticated. The numbers were just part of modern life, apparently.
Then a new administration came in, changed the incentives, ended the old catch-and-release posture, increased patrols, and the numbers cratered.
So yes, it turns out policy matters.
What changed under Trump
Based on the sheriff's report and CBP's monthly updates, the administration's approach appears to have included:
Stronger enforcement of existing immigration law
More active patrols and operational pressure along the border
Faster detention and removal instead of release into the interior
Clear public messaging that illegal entry will not lead to easy release
You do not have to romanticize any of this to see the obvious. When illegal entry becomes harder, riskier, and less likely to pay off, fewer people make the trip. That is not cruelty. That is reality.
Border towns are finally seeing relief
The Epoch Times reported that communities along the southern border are showing signs of recovery after years of being overwhelmed. Again, this should not be controversial. If fewer illegal crossings are happening, fewer emergency calls, fewer shelter strains, fewer law-enforcement diversions, and fewer smuggler-linked problems follow.
Normal people call that progress.
And for residents who had to watch their roads, hospitals, nonprofits, and sheriff's departments stretched thin while national Democrats delivered lectures from a safe distance, progress probably feels pretty good.
The part the open-border crowd never likes to say out loud
Every major political argument eventually runs into math.
Here is the math:
CBP said southwest border apprehensions fell 85 percent in the last 11 days of January 2025 compared with the same period in 2024
CBP said February 2025 southwest border apprehensions were down 94 percent from February 2024
Sheriff Kelly Martinez said border rescue calls in San Diego County fell 93 percent since Trump took office
Those numbers are not identical, but they rhyme loudly.
They point the same direction. Enforcement works.
That does not mean every problem is solved. Cartels still exist. Smuggling networks adapt. Local communities will still bear costs from the years of disorder that came before. But the idea that America simply had to accept endless border chaos looks weaker by the day.
The bottom line
San Diego's sheriff just gave the country a local snapshot of what national enforcement data is already showing. When Washington stops signaling weakness and starts enforcing the law, the border gets quieter. Rescue calls fall. Towns recover. Law enforcement gets room to breathe.
Imagine that.
The people who said this could not be done were wrong. The people who said stronger enforcement would not matter were wrong. And the people who spent years treating border security like some embarrassing hobby of flyover conservatives might want to explain why local communities are suddenly feeling relief now.
Because if 93 percent fewer rescue calls is not evidence that the crackdown is working, what exactly would count?