“In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States.”

Zero is false if it means crossings, by the government's own count: U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 6,073 people along the Southwest border in January 2026 alone, and has recorded fewer than 10,000 encounters a month at the southwestern border since February 2025, historic lows but not zero. What CBP does report as zero is releases: "For the ninth consecutive month, U.S. Border Patrol released zero illegal aliens into the United States." NPR's fact check of the February 2026 State of the Union flatly noted "it is not true that there have been zero crossings."

Crossings are genuinely at historic lows (a Pew Research Center analysis found Border Patrol encounters at their lowest level in more than 50 years) but low is not zero, and no enforcement regime in U.S. history has ever achieved zero. The accurate version of this statistic was available to Trump; he chose the impossible one.

The claim also erases the trend he inherited: crossings fell roughly 80% in Biden's final year after the June 2024 asylum restrictions, so the steep decline began before Trump took office and continued under him. Claiming literal perfection, "zero illegal aliens admitted," is the tell that the statistic is propaganda, not data.

"It is not true that there have been zero crossings; for example, there were 237,538 in 2025, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection." — NPR fact check of the State of the Union, February 24, 2026