You’re mixing metrics and then calling the correction “pedantry.”

Your own cited stat (“<9,000/month”) is Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry. CBS is explicit about that, and even gives the recent months: July ~4,600; Aug ~6,300; Sept ~8,400 apprehensions. That’s a major reduction, but it’s not “zero,” and it’s not the same thing as “flow eliminated.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-crossings-immigration-u...

The 249,000 figure you’re comparing it to is typically cited as “encounters” (often BP apprehensions + OFO inadmissibles at ports). That’s a different series than “BP apprehensions between ports.” Apples-to-oranges comparisons are exactly how people accidentally talk themselves into certainty.

“Do you have a better way of estimating?” Not really, that’s the point. Encounters/apprehensions are the best consistently published measure, but they are not total successful entries, and “gotaways” are estimates with their own uncertainty. So the accurate claim is: recorded apprehensions are way down.

On “no headway”: if the unauthorized population fell from 2007 to 2019 (Pew shows that), that’s literally headway, even if it later reversed and is higher now. What you mean is “no net improvement vs 2007,” which is a different claim.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...

If you want to say “huge improvement at the border relative to the peak,” totally reasonable. But “flow largely eliminated” + “big dent in illegal-alien stock” is stronger than what these measurements can support.