In the first year of the second term of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, migrant deaths at the border with Mexico plummeted by approximately 71.8% compared to the previous year, according to the Missing Migrants Project (MMP) of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
According to available information, recorded deaths along the United States-Mexico border dropped drastically from 561 in 2024 to 160 in 2025.
“But this does not necessarily indicate that migration has become safer,” Andrea García Borja, an MMP officer, tells *EL UNIVERSAL*. “A large part of the decline is due to funding constraints for carrying out this work, reduced data availability, limited access to official information, and the increased use of remote routes that are more difficult to monitor.”
For instance, unlike in previous years, the Berlin-based organization has not yet received official data regarding migrant deaths from U.S. and Mexican authorities.
She notes that once authorities report their findings, the actual death toll is likely to be higher.
The data currently available—and provided to this newspaper—yields the lowest death toll at the border since the project’s first report was issued in 2014. Throughout the project’s history, the lowest recorded count was in that inaugural year—429 deaths—while the highest was in 2021, with 800 fatalities.
