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Fact check: How many illegal immigrants came into the U.S. during the Biden administration?
Executive Summary
The data provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) public datasets show millions of “encounters” at the Southwest border during the Biden administration, but translating those encounters into a single, definitive count of “illegal immigrants who came into the U.S.” is not possible from the supplied materials alone. Different datasets count different things—apprehensions, inadmissibles, expulsions, transfers, and do not consistently include “gotaways,” repeated encounters, or interior status changes—so headline figures must be read with context and guarded interpretation [1] [2] [3].
1. What claim do the sources advance and where the big numbers come from
Multiple items in the packet present large aggregate encounter figures that are often cited as totals for people who attempted to cross the border. CBP’s Southwest Land Border encounter tables list around 1.89 million encounters for Oct 2023–Sep 2024 and roughly 294,911 for Oct 2024–Jul 2025 in the extracts provided; other nationwide encounter summaries and public-data exports offer additional counts and breakdowns [1] [2] [4]. A secondary compiled figure cited in the supplied analyses—“more than 7.2 million” U.S. Border Patrol confirmed crossings from Jan 2021–Jan 2024—appears in a descriptive summary of Biden-era policy totals, but that number’s underlying methodology and inclusion rules differ from raw CBP encounter tallies [3].
2. Why raw “encounters” are not the same as “people who came in”
CBP encounter datasets combine multiple operational dispositions—Title 8 apprehensions, Office of Field Operations inadmissibles, and Title 42 expulsions—each representing distinct processes and administrative outcomes [2]. Encounters can include repeat apprehensions of the same individual, family unit counts versus individual counts, and administrative outcomes that do not equate to permanent entry into the U.S. The custody and transfer statistics show procedural detail about transfers and releases but do not reconcile duplicates or “gotaway” events, leaving a clear gap between encounter tallies and determinations of who ultimately entered the country [5].
3. Important omissions: “gotaways,” interior status, and double‑counting
CBP explicitly warns that encounter data often exclude “gotaways”—people who eluded agents—and that encounters may double‑count people who are apprehended more than once or processed under multiple authorities [1] [6]. The provided custody and transfer figures illustrate processing flows but do not capture later interior adjudications, paroles, or removals that determine immigration status. That means any single public-facing number from these datasets will either undercount total crossings (if gotaways are excluded) or overcount unique individuals (if repeat encounters are not deduplicated) [5] [7].
4. Reconciling the 7.2 million figure and CBP public counts
The Wikipedia-derived summary in the packet states “more than 7.2 million” confirmed Border Patrol encounters from Jan 2021–Jan 2024; that aligns directionally with cumulative encounter totals across multiple CBP releases but is not a primary CBP product in the materials provided [3]. CBP public data portal exports and sector-by-sector encounter tables in the packet can add up to multi‑million totals, but those official tables require careful aggregation methodology—specifically deduplication and clarity about inclusion of Title 42 and inadmissibles—before being used to claim the number of people who “came into” the United States [6] [4].
5. How political narratives use these numbers and where agendas appear
Different stakeholders emphasize particular metrics to support policy positions: enforcement advocates highlight high aggregate encounter counts as evidence of uncontrolled inflows, while immigrant‑rights groups stress exclusions like “gotaways” and the humanitarian reasons for migration to argue the numbers understate demand for legal pathways. The materials include a Congressional Research Service policy overview and media analyses that frame administration actions, illustrating how selection of a dataset and framing can advance distinct narratives [8] [9]. Readers should assume both institutional and media sources have incentives to highlight figures that bolster policy claims.
6. Bottom line for the question: what can be stated confidently and what remains unsettled
Confidently: CBP public data and related compilations document multi‑million encounters at the southwestern border during the Biden administration period; credible summaries point to several million confirmed U.S. Border Patrol encounters between 2021 and 2024 [1] [3]. Unsettled: No single figure in the supplied dataset definitively equals “the number of illegal immigrants who came into the U.S.” because of exclusions (gotaways), overlapping administrative categories, and potential double‑counting; turning encounters into unique persons admitted or remaining in the country requires additional deduplication and status-tracking not present here [2] [5] [6]. Policymakers and journalists should therefore cite the underlying dataset, define inclusion rules, and acknowledge these measurement limits when reporting totals.