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What were CBP’s official encounter totals by fiscal year for 2021 through 2024 and how are encounters counted?
Executive Summary
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s official nationwide encounter totals for fiscal years 2021–2024 are: 1,956,519 (FY2021), 2,766,582 (FY2022), 3,201,144 (FY2023), and 2,901,142 (FY2024); these figures combine U.S. Border Patrol Title 8 apprehensions, Office of Field Operations Title 8 inadmissibles, and Title 42 expulsions and reflect CBP’s published FY2024 enforcement statistics [1]. Encounters are counted as discrete interactions in which CBP gains physical control or temporary detainment of a person who is not lawfully in the United States; the same individual can generate multiple encounters, particularly under expulsion authorities, and CBP’s nationwide totals add Southwest, Northern, and Other regions [1] [2].
1. Numbers that tell a curve: the documented rise and partial retreat
CBP’s published data shows a sharp upward trajectory from FY2021 through FY2023 and a decline in FY2024, with a near-doubling from about 1.96 million in FY2021 to over 3.2 million in FY2023, then a reduction to roughly 2.9 million in FY2024 [1]. This pattern appears across the combined components CBP reports—U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions, Office of Field Operations inadmissibles, and Title 42 expulsions—which CBP began integrating consistently into encounter totals after March 2020. The rise through FY2023 reflects operational conditions and policy actions at the border; the FY2024 decline does not imply elimination of repeat interactions or “gotaways,” which CBP also reports in other datasets [3] [1]. The aggregate totals mask significant variation by component and region, so national totals must be read alongside more granular breakdowns.
2. What “encounter” actually means: counting people versus counting interactions
CBP defines an encounter as an instance where the agency has physical control or temporary detainment of a person not lawfully present—a unit of operational contact rather than a guaranteed count of unique individuals [1]. That definition means multiple encounters can involve the same person, especially when expulsions under Title 42 or repeated apprehensions occur. Data dictionaries and CBP’s Nationwide Encounters methodology clarify that the nationwide total equals the sum of Northern Land Border, Southwest Land Border, and Other regions, and that statistics are compiled from systems such as EID and Unified Secondary [2] [4]. Users of the statistics should therefore avoid equating encounter totals with unique migrants without additional de-duplication data.
3. Sources and transparency: where these numbers come from and their limits
CBP’s FY2024 Enforcement Statistics spreadsheet provides the four-year totals and documents that figures include both Title 8 and Title 42 actions starting March 2020 [1]. The agency’s Nationwide Encounters datasets and data dictionary make raw monthly and regional data available for download and note that counts are subject to corrections and system changes [2] [4]. Congressional and independent summaries corroborate broad trends—large increases in early 2020s and high rates of expulsions in certain years—while emphasizing that monthly and component-level series are necessary for context [5]. The public data are sufficiently detailed to reconstruct annual totals, but interpretation requires attention to definitional and system-change notes CBP provides.
4. Points often omitted or misunderstood in public discussion
Public discourse frequently treats encounter totals as unique-person counts and omits CBP’s reporting of “gotaways” and the share of encounters at ports of entry versus the Southwest border, which meaningfully influence the operational picture [3]. CBP reported that nearly half of nationwide FY2024 encounters occurred at ports of entry—up from 15 percent in FY2021—highlighting a shift in where contacts occur; CBP also reported roughly 2 million known gotaways since FY2021 [3]. These details matter because they change the policy implications of headline totals: more port-of-entry encounters signal different enforcement and resource dynamics than rising land-border interdictions. Analysts should pair headline totals with component and location breakdowns to avoid misleading conclusions.
5. Competing framings and policy agendas visible in the data
Different stakeholders emphasize different slices of the statistics to support policy positions: enforcement-focused actors highlight overall encounter volume and criminality indicators within encounters, while advocates for migrants stress repeat encounters, family and unaccompanied child counts, and the limits of encounter totals as counts of unique people [1] [3]. CBP’s own presentations show detailed demographic breakdowns—single adults, family unit individuals, unaccompanied children—that can be used to argue contrasting policy priorities depending on which metrics are foregrounded [3]. Readers should treat the raw totals as agency operational metrics and examine component, location, and repeat-encounter context before deriving policy prescriptions.