How many illegal border crossings occur from Canada to the US each year?

Executive Summary — Short, Clear, and Source-Rooted

The best available U.S. government tallies show encounters at the Canada–U.S. land border reached roughly 189,000 in fiscal year 2023 and approached 200,000 in the next reporting cycle, but those counts are “encounters,” not unique illegal crossings, and therefore overstate the number of distinct unauthorized entries. Major sector-level surges—most notably the Swanton Sector—explain much of the rise, and reporting differences, fiscal-year labels, and definitional issues mean a single annual “illegal crossings” figure cannot be read directly from headline encounter totals ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

1. Why the Numbers Look Big: Government Encounters vs. Unique Crossings

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports large totals labeled “encounters” at the northern land border; federal summaries show about 189,402 land encounters in FY2023 and reporting for FY2024 indicates encounters near 200,000, a sharp increase from earlier years. Those encounter counts capture people stopped or processed by CBP between and at ports of entry, and can include multiple interactions with the same individual, repeated apprehensions, and administrative classifications such as “gotaways” or referrals. Because government releases use encounters as a workload metric rather than a headcount of distinct unauthorized entries, the encounter total cannot be equated to an annual count of unique illegal crossings without additional de-duplication and context ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Where the Increase Was Concentrated and What That Means

The surge is concentrated geographically: the Swanton Sector along the Quebec–New York/Vermont border accounted for the majority of recent northern-border migrant encounters, with CBP reporting 15,612 encounters in the Swanton Sector between October 2023 and July 2024 and nearly 19,500 total encounters for that October–July window across the northern border. Sector-level spikes reflect local enforcement, terrain, and migratory routing, meaning national encounter totals can be driven by a few hotspots. The implication is that policy or processing changes in a single sector can materially shift the headline northern-border encounter totals even if cross-border movement elsewhere is static ^{[3] [2]}.

3. Data Limits: What Official Sources Do and Don’t Tell You

Official statistics from CBP and related reporting provide clear fiscal-year encounter totals and sector breakdowns, but they do not provide an authoritative annual tally of distinct illegal crossings from Canada into the U.S. because the datasets lack deduplication and sometimes conflate attempted entries, successful crossings, and administrative encounters. Independent analyses and media summaries frequently use these encounter totals as proxies, which inflates public perception if readers assume one encounter equals one unique, completed illegal crossing. Analysts must also consider subject-matter distinctions—for example, Canadian refugee-claim statistics and U.S. northern-border encounter counts measure related but different phenomena ^{[4] [5]}.

4. Alternate Data Points and What They Add to the Picture

Canadian administrative sources and multilateral analyses add context by documenting refugee claims and irregular entries into Canada, but they do not capture returns or onward movements into the U.S. Similarly, congressional reports and advocacy groups sometimes present single-year encounter spikes to advocate for policy changes; those presentations are accurate on raw encounters but can imply a larger scale of unique cross-border movement than the underlying metrics support. Cross-referencing CBP encounter totals with sector reports and Canadian institutional data helps build a nuanced view: the northern border’s workload rose substantially in 2023–2024, but the metric remains an imperfect proxy for unique illegal crossings ^{[5] [1]}.

5. What Responsible Reporting and Policy Discussion Should Do Next

Responsible analysis should treat CBP encounter counts as a signal of enforcement and migration pressure, not as a precise headcount of distinct illegal crossings. Policymakers and journalists should demand and publish deduplicated person-level counts, breakdowns of apprehensions vs. gotaways, and clear fiscal-year labeling, and they should report sector-level dynamics—like the Swanton surge—so readers understand drivers. Until agencies publish standardized unique-person metrics for the northern land border, the best evidence-based statement is that encounters rose into the high tens of thousands or low hundreds of thousands in 2023–2024, but the number of distinct illegal crossings is smaller and unknown from publicly released encounter totals ^{[4] [3] [1]}.