Apprehensions along the southwestern border plummeted in January: CBP
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(WASHINGTON) — The number of apprehensions along the southwestern U.S. border plummeted by a third during January, according to statistics obtained by ABC News on Tuesday.
There were 61,465 apprehensions along the southwest border in January, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, down from 96,048 in December 2024.
The numbers fell even more after President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, according to the data.
In the three weeks before the inauguration, there was a daily average of more than 2,000 apprehensions, which fell to a daily average of 786 migrant apprehensions after the inauguration.
There were 176,195 migrant apprehensions along the southwest border in January 2024.
From Jan. 21 through Jan. 31, the number of U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border dropped 85% from the same period in 2024, according to data obtained by ABC News. In the 11 days after Jan. 20, migrants apprehended at ports of entry declined by 93%.
Trump signed executive orders shortly after taking office that declared a national emergency at the border and authorized active duty military and National Guard troops to support CPB’s law enforcement activities. The government has been using military planes to return migrants to their home countries. In addition, the administration has said it is targeting gang members and violent offenders in its crackdown. It also rescinded a policy that barred law enforcement activities at schools and churches and at courthouses.
“The men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection are aggressively implementing the President’s Executive Orders to secure our borders. These actions have already resulted in dramatic improvements in border security,” said Pete Flores, acting CBP commissioner. “The reduction in illegal aliens attempting to make entry into the U.S., compounded by a significant increase in repatriations, means that more officers and agents are now able to conduct the enforcement duties that make our border more secure and our country safer.”
CBP and military troops have “dramatically increased” patrolling the southern border, according to CBP.
Numbers of monthly border apprehensions fell below 100,000 for the first time in years in November 2024, according to CBP data.
Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne division walk across the tarmac at Green Ramp to deploy to Poland, Feb. 14, 2022, at Fort Bragg, Fayetteville, N.C./ Photo Credit: Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Transgender service members represented by LGBTQ advocacy groups on Tuesday filed suit against the White House executive order that bans transgender people from serving in the military.
The order signed late Monday rescinded Biden administration policies that permitted transgender service members to serve openly according to their gender identity. The order said the “assertion” that one might identify as transgender would be a “falsehood … not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
Space Force Col. Bree Fram, a transgender woman who came out and transitioned while serving, told ABC News that banning transgender individuals from serving would bring a “collective harm to our national securit
Transgender troops “are meeting or exceeding the high standards the military has set for performance, and they’re doing so here at home, around the world, and in every service, every specialty that the military has to offer,” Fram said, who was speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the Pentagon.
According to the suit filed Tuesday by plaintiffs represented by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the order directs Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “to reverse the current accession and retention standards for military service and to adopt instead a policy that transgender status is incompatible with ‘high standards'” that the executive order lays out.
Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal who represented plaintiffs who sued and temporarily blocked a similar order in 2017 in the first Trump administration, called the new order “cruel” and said it “compromises the safety of our country.”
She told ABC News the order “will force transgender service members to look over their shoulder” and “stamp them with [a] badge of inferiority.”
Buchert said her firm and the Human Rights Campaign also intend to file suit.
“We have been here before…as we promised then, so do we now: we will sue,” Buchert said.
Buchert said transgender troops will now “worry about…whether they’re going to have to end their illustrious military careers by being drummed out of the military.”
“Trans military folks have been serving now for 10 years, openly and proudly and deploying to austere environments and meeting every service-based standard that their peers can meet,” said Buchert, who is a veteran.
The executive order, paired with another that demands the dissolution of diversity, equity, and inclusion “bureaucracy” in the Defense Department, came on Hegseth’s first day of work at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon said in a statement to ABC News that it “will fully execute and implement all directives outlined” in all executive orders from the president.
The executive order does not make reference to transgender individuals. It directs the Pentagon to update guidelines around medical standards for individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a precursor to transition care that affirms one’s gender.
According to a Defense official, 4,240 military personnel who are currently serving are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Over a 10-year period since 2014, only a slightly higher total number of service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria — 5,773.
Over that period, roughly 3,200 received gender-affirming hormone therapy, the official said, and about 1,000 received gender-affirming surgery.
The cost for both — as well as psychotherapy and other treatments over the last decade — was $52 million, or over $5 million per year.
Trump as a candidate said he would take aim at “transgender insanity” as president. The order says the military must root out “ideologies harmful to unit cohesion.”
The logic around cohesion is familiar, Buchert said.
“We’ve seen this as a country on many occasions. We’re still correcting improper discharges for people that were, you know, drummed out of the military based on discriminatory motives in the past,” she said.
Cassie Byard, a Navy veteran who served with a service member who was transgender, said she “never saw any adverse effect on readiness or cohesion.”
Fram believes openness about her identity has made her unit more cohesive.
“My being authentic is actually reflected back to me and builds the strong bonds of teamwork that we need at the military to succeed, because we need everyone to be able to bring their best self to work,” she said.
While the order brings a “period of uncertainty” as the Pentagon weighs updates to medical guidelines over a two-month window to implement it, Fram said “my job right now, and the job of every transgender service member, is simply to do our duty. It’s to lace up our boots and get to work and accomplish the mission that we’ve been given.”
“We swore an oath to uphold the duties that we’ve been given, [to] support the Constitution,” she added. “And we’re going to continue to do so, unless told otherwise.”
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
U.S. President Donald Trump and White House Senior Advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sit in a Tesla Model S on the South Lawn of the White House on March 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s controversial showcase of Tesla cars in front of the White House has set off alarms around Washington over what some see as an infomercial for the billionaire’s car company on high-profile government property.
Ethics experts ABC News spoke with are raising concerns that the Tuesday event could blur or even cross the lines of what’s considered proper conduct by elected officials.
“It could be reasonably assumed by some that the White House and the president’s endorsement is up for sale,” William F. Hall, an adjunct professor of political science at Webster University, said Wednesday.
The event happened hours after Trump posted he was going to buy a Tesla following the company’s mass protests and a major decline in stock value and sales across the world. When reporters asked Trump about the optics of the event, he didn’t deny that he was doing it to help Musk’s bottom line.
“I think he’s been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people. And I just want people to know that he can’t be penalized for being a patriot. And he’s a great patriot, and he’s also done an incredible job with Tesla,” he told reporters, adding that Musk hadn’t asked him for anything. Musk later thanked Trump on X.
Hall, who previously served in the Justice Department as a field director during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, said it is not uncommon for presidents to lend support to American companies but that it’s usually done outside of the White House at other locations such as at a factory or an office space.
“As the elected leader of our nation, I think it would not be at all difficult for the average American who might have viewed that to reasonably interpret that he was endorsing this product,” he said.
Delaney Marsco, Director of Ethics for the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit legal group, told ABC News that ethics laws primarily focus on executive employees serving under the president but not on the president himself.
She said that was because lawmakers who wrote those rules did not anticipate any president disregarding longstanding standards of what’s expected and acceptable.
“One of the things we have relied on in ethics norms are the norms about what is right. President Trump doesn’t abide by those norms,” she said.
Marsco added that Musk’s vaguely-defined role as a presidential adviser, as well as his being the CEO of tech companies that do business with the government, also raised serious concerns given Tuesday’s event. She noted she expected that Musk’s behavior wasn’t being questioned just on the political front.
“I’m sure shareholders are concerned about this line being blurred, and it’s equally confusing for the public,” she said.
Tesla’s stock dived over the last couple of weeks but saw a slight increase after Trump checked out Musk’s vehicles at the White House. Hall noted that Tesla and Musk have been on the receiving end of protests due to his actions and words since he got more involved with Trump.
The president claimed he was going to write a check for one of the cars full price and provide it for the White House staff, however, it was not clear as of Wednesday evening if that actually happened.
The ethics experts warned that the move may set an unprecedented standard for future presidents, one that diminishes the objectivity of the executive branch.
“The federal government isn’t in the business of endorsing products to buy. The federal government is supposed to be making policy decisions that better the lives of the American public not making endorsements of the president’s friends or the president’s donors,” Marso said.
Marsco added that there is nothing stopping Trump or future presidents from making these unethical decisions, however, those ethics laws governing the executive branch can be strengthened by lawmakers, especially if there is outcry from the public.
“When you start talking about ethics some people don’t understand the ethic laws and what they entail … but the public isn’t stupid,” she said. “They know what a conflict of interest is and what the government is supposed to do for them. The public knows this is not the right use of the office of a president, to endorse a product that is a friend and a major political donor.”`
(WASHINGTON) — Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign, two leading LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday challenging the Trump administration over the president’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
The lawsuit, which was obtained by ABC News, was filed in the U.S. District Court-Western District of Washington on behalf of six active duty transgender service members, a transgender person seeking to enlist in the military, as well as Seattle human rights organization Gender Justice League.
“By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said. “They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek declaratory, and preliminary and permanent injunctive, relief.”
U.S. Navy Commander Emily “Hawking” Shilling, who according to the lawsuit has been serving in the military for 19 years, criticized the ban in a statement, saying that the measure is “not about readiness or cohesion, and it is certainly not about merit.”
“It is about exclusion and betrayal, purposely targeting those of us who volunteered to serve, simply for having the courage and integrity to live our truth,” Shilling said.
The lawsuit comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 28, rescinding Biden administration policies that permitted transgender service members to serve openly in the military based on their gender identity.
The order directed the Department of Defense to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender service members and stated that “expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The order further argued that receiving gender-affirming medical care is one of the conditions that is physically and mentally “incompatible with active duty.”
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order continued.
“The assertion that transgender service members like myself are inherently untrustworthy or lack honor is an insult to all who have dedicated their lives to defending this country,” Shilling said in the statement.
Trump issued a similar order during his first term in office that was challenged in the courts and now HRC and Lambda Legal have joined other leading advocacy groups in challenging the order in the courts.
GLAD Law and The National Center for Lesbian Rights also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of six transgender service members on Jan. 28.
ABC News has reached out to the Trump administration but a request for comment was not immediately returned.
