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Fact check: How many people entered the country using not the proper procedure in Biden admin?
1. Summary of the results
The analyses reveal that no source provides a definitive total number of people who entered the country using improper procedures during the Biden administration. However, several key data points emerge:
Daily encounter rates during Biden's tenure were substantial, with 20,086 daily encounters during Biden's last seven days in office and 1,800 "gotaways" per day in fiscal year 2023 [1]. At the peak of what one source characterizes as an "invasion," approximately 10,000 unvetted migrants were illegally crossing the southern border every day [2].
The most comprehensive figure available indicates 8.6 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border from January 2021 through October 2024 [3]. However, this represents "encounters" rather than successful entries using improper procedures, as encounters can include apprehensions and expulsions.
Enforcement statistics show that ICE arrested roughly 30,000 immigrants in a month and deported over 18,000 under current operations [4], while the Biden administration conducted 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of fiscal year 2021 [5].
2. Missing context/alternative viewpoints
The original question lacks crucial context about what constitutes "improper procedure" and fails to acknowledge the complexity of immigration statistics. Several important perspectives are missing:
Policy implementation context: The Biden administration established new humanitarian pathways and used parole for certain nationalities while also implementing measures to limit asylum eligibility and enhance consequences at the border for unlawful crossings [3] [6].
Comparative enforcement: The Biden administration is on track to carry out as many removals and returns as the Trump administration, focusing specifically on removing recent border arrivals [5]. This challenges narratives that enforcement was categorically weaker under Biden.
Definitional complexity: The distinction between encounters, apprehensions, successful entries, and various legal statuses creates significant ambiguity in immigration statistics that the original question doesn't address.
Political stakeholders who benefit from emphasizing high unauthorized entry numbers include Republican political foes who have criticized the administration, while immigration advocates have also criticized certain Biden policies from the opposite perspective [3].
3. Potential misinformation/bias in the original statement
The original question contains several problematic assumptions:
Oversimplification bias: The question assumes there's a single, clear number for "improper procedure" entries, when immigration statistics involve multiple categories, legal processes, and measurement methodologies that make such a figure impossible to determine precisely.
Temporal framing: The question focuses exclusively on the "Biden admin" without acknowledging that immigration patterns, enforcement policies, and statistical reporting methods evolved throughout the administration and were influenced by external factors.
Loaded terminology: The phrase "not the proper procedure" implies a binary legal/illegal distinction that doesn't reflect the complexity of asylum claims, humanitarian parole, and other legal immigration processes that the Biden administration utilized.
Missing enforcement context: The question ignores that the administration implemented stricter immigration enforcement and asylum procedures, particularly as of June 2024, making noncitizens who cross unlawfully generally not eligible for asylum [7].
The framing appears designed to elicit a large, alarming number without acknowledging the administrative and legal complexities involved in immigration enforcement and the various policy tools used to manage border security.