The El Paso sector of the southwest border has become the busiest in the country as overall encounters at the border continue to freefall.

The El Paso sector, which extends from Hudspeth County, Texas, to the New Mexico-Arizona state line, became the busiest sector on the southwest border in February, with the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data showing it recorded 2,110 encounters last month.

Overall, CBP data shows 8,347 encounters at the southwest border in February, a stunning 94.1% drop from the same month last year, when 124,215 encounters were recorded.

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While the El Paso sector took the crown for the busiest, the just over 2,000 encounters for the area still represented a significant year-over-year drop from the numbers recorded during February of last year, when the sector had 23,919 encounters. The February numbers in El Paso also represented a drop from last month, with the sector recording 4,870 encounters in January 2025.

El Paso replaced the San Diego sector as the busiest on the southwest border in February, with San Diego recording just 1,650 encounters last month, a decline of 94.8% from the year before. The numbers for San Diego were also a dramatic drop from those recorded just last month, when the sector recorded 6,390 encounters.

A makeshift shelter that once housed migrants sits empty in the San Diego sector in March 2025. (Michael Lee: Fox News Digital)

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CBP has nine sectors on the southwest border from the coast of California extending east to Texas and the Gulf of America. Multiple sectors along the border recorded under 200 total encounters in February, including the El Centro sector in the Imperial Valley of California and the Big Bend sector of West Texas.

The El Paso sector of the border is the busiest in terms of encounters with illegal migrants. (Fox News Digital)

The El Centro sector recorded the fewest encounters in February, with CBP data showing just 102, a 91.6% reduction from the same time last year. The Big Ben sector wasn’t far behind, recording just 165 encounters in February, marking a 71% drop from the same month last year.

The head of Oklahoma’s public school system is backing President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the federal Department of Education, saying that Trump will “go down in history as the president that saved education.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a dramatic “reduction in force” of the federal Department of Education and detailed plans to reduce the size of the agency by over 50% from around 4,133 to around 2,183 employees.

Trump has previously said he wants to “close up the Department of Education” entirely and “move education back to the states.”

As Democrats and media outlets sound the alarm that Trump’s changes mean doom for education in America, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is saying that Trump’s move is exactly what students, parents and the entire country need right now.

“This is a historic moment,” he said. “I think President Trump is going to go down in history as the president that saved education and the future of the country.”

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Walters said that rather than helping to implement effective education systems, the Department of Education had long been co-opted by radical teachers’ unions like the American Federation of Teachers, which he said has been pushing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and other leftist ideologies in states, including Oklahoma.

“The disruption of education was the federalization of education and the unionization of education. That’s what got us away from the concept of schools that valued the community, value the family, value the individual,” he said. “You have thousands of bureaucrats that are up there that are pushing a left-wing agenda, the most radical agenda the country has ever seen. They’re teaching kids to hate the country. They’re teaching kids to hate their faith.”

“You can talk to teachers about the types of trainings the feds were requiring them to go to,” he continued. “These were not helping them drive student achievement in their classroom. It was to push a left-wing agenda on kids.”

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The Trump administration announced a dramatic “reduction in force” of the federal Department of Education and detailed plans to reduce the size of the agency by over 50%. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

After taking office in January 2023, Walters said he had to immediately deal with the Biden Department of Education using federal funding as leverage to push concepts like DEI and gender ideology in classrooms.

“I was very sharp in my responses of why are we talking about transgenderism in an Algebra One class? Like there’s no connection between the two, but it shows you how far they were willing to go with their woke ideology, with the strategy to undermine American society, undermine the family unit,” he said.

The result, Walters said, has shown in students’ test scores.  

“All the test scores have shown that they’ve all gotten worse since this disruption occurred,” he explained. “Nearly every society factor has gotten worse. You look at teenage suicide. You look at teenage drug use. You look at the disintegration of the family unit. All of these things coincided in part with the creation of the federal Department of Education and the rise of the teachers’ unions.”  

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Walters said that “all the test scores have shown that they’ve all gotten worse since this disruption occurred.” (iStock | Getty Images)

Walters anticipates that cutting the Education Department will free up huge sums of funds that, instead of paying bureaucrats’ salaries, will instead go straight to students’ education and teachers.

He pointed to cuts he made to the Oklahoma Education Department in which he reduced the state’s bureaucracy by 150 employees, which he claimed saved millions, creating opportunities for tutoring programs and offering more competitive salaries to hire top-talent teachers.  

“You’re going to see that, times a thousand with the federal Department of Education,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty, assured parents that “your children’s education will not be affected by any of these things.”

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Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty, assured parents that “your children’s education will not be affected by any of these things.” (Fox News Digital )

“Don’t believe the union talking point, fearmongering lies,” Justice said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “Abolishing the Department of Education or dismantling it, cutting back on half the staff, only means more power to the parents, which is why the unions are concerned.”

“Since the creation of the Department of Education, student achievement has only declined,” she said. “We’ve got a real crisis on our hands. I think the fact that the majority of American children are not learning to read is one of the biggest national security threats that we face as a nation.”

“If you’re watching mainstream media or the fake news, as President Trump likes to say, you’re hearing those union fearmongering talking points. They’re saying, ‘Oh, this is going to hurt teachers. This is going to hurt services.’ Nothing could be further from the truth,” she went on. “Every state has a department of education, and I think every state and every state leader should really be looking at this as an opportunity to be able to show what their vision is for education, and then to execute on that vision and really make sure that kids in their states are learning,” said Justice.

Nearly two dozen Democrat attorneys general are currently suing the Trump administration to stop the cuts to the Department of Education. 

Speaking with Fox News, Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said it is “outrageous” that the Trump administration is “set on gutting the Department of Education.” She claimed that this move amounts to “neglecting our students, and our parents, our communities and… the future of this country.” 

Police in New Mexico said a 13-year-old boy has been charged with murder, took an 11-year-old into custody and are searching for a 15-year-old boy in connection with the deadly hit-and-run of a bicyclist that was recorded on video from inside a stolen car and circulated on social media.

Albuquerque police said the 13-year-old and 15-year-old have both been charged with an open count of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, leaving the scene of an accident involving great bodily harm or death and unlawful possession of a handgun by a person.

Authorities believe the 13-year-old was the driver of the car that killed 63-year-old physicist Scott Dwight Habermehl, who was fatally struck at around 4:40 a.m. on May 29, 2024, as he was biking to his job at Sandia National Laboratories. 

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The 15-year-old and an 11-year-old boy, who is too young to be charged with murder, are believed to have been passengers in car, police said. 

“The boys videotaped the crash from inside the car as the driver swerved from the southbound lane on Moon St. onto a dedicated bike lane and struck Habermehl,” a Monday police statement said. The kids in the car saw the flashing light on the bicycle and audio of the recording indicated they planned to hit the bicyclist.”

Video of the crash was recorded from inside the car and circulated on social media. Detectives received a tip about the video being posted to social media. A middle school principal also reported to Albuquerque Public Schools police that a student reported the same video of the crash.

In the recording, a voice believed to be the 13-year-old driver is heard saying that he was about to hit the bicyclist before accelerating the car, authorities said. He is then heard saying, “Just bump him, brash,” police said. 

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Scott Dwight Habermehl, 63, was killed in 2024 when he was struck by a stolen vehicle being driven by a teen boy while he was bicycling to work, police said. 

“Like bump him?” the driver asks. 

“Yeah, just bump him. Go like…15…20,” another passenger said. 

“There were loud sounds, including metal flexing, as the momentum of the crash carried Habermehl and his bicycle on top, and off, the passenger side of the vehicle,” police said. 

The 11-year-old, who was allegedly waving a handgun at the time of the crime, will be put in the custody of the state’s Children, Youth & Families Department and evaluated. A little over a week after the fatal crash, police had arrested him on an unrelated felony warrant, according to law enforcement.

Detectives are working with prosecutors and state social workers “to determine what charges he may face and whether he can be held on those charges,” according to the police statement.

The case echoes a similar hit-and-run in Las Vegas that killed a retired police chief who was bicycling as the teen suspects laughed.