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How many border encounters did Biden have in his presidential term compared to Trump’s first term?
Executive Summary
President Biden’s term has seen substantially higher border encounters than President Trump’s first term, with multiple sources reporting millions of encounters under Biden versus hundreds of thousands per year during Trump’s first term. Official CBP fiscal-year totals show encounters in the low millions in FY2023–FY2024 compared with totals largely below 1.2 million per year for most years of Trump’s first term [1] [2].
1. What claimants are saying — a clash of big numbers
Multiple analyses present the central claim that encounters rose sharply under Biden compared with Trump’s first term. One review cites 6.4 million encounters outside ports of entry in Biden’s term and states Biden’s yearly average is more than quadruple that of the Trump administration, framing the change as a large increase [2]. Another set of materials uses CBP enforcement tables to show FY2023 [3] [4] [5] and FY2024 [6] [7] [8] encounters under Biden, contrasted with Trump’s first-term yearly totals such as 526,901 (FY2017) and 1,148,024 (FY2019), demonstrating a clear numerical escalation in recent years [1]. Both lines of reporting advance the same headline: encounters are higher in Biden years.
2. Official CBP fiscal-year accounting — the government’s snapshot
CBP’s fiscal-year tallies are the most concrete baseline for comparison. The CBP-derived summary lists about 3.2 million encounters in FY2023 and about 2.9 million in FY2024, whereas Trump’s first-term annual encounter totals included 526,901 in FY2017, 683,178 in FY2018, 1,148,024 in FY2019 and 646,822 in FY2020. Those figures show substantially higher annual counts during Biden’s presidency relative to most of Trump’s first term, with 2023 and 2024 each outpacing any single year in the earlier term and shifting the multi-year totals into the millions [1]. This official data underpins claims of a major increase.
3. Expulsions, Title 42 and the deportation angle — different tallies, different stories
Analyses emphasize that how encounters are handled—apprehension, Title 42 expulsions, or deportation—shapes perceptions. One source notes nearly 400,000 detained and expelled under Title 42 in Trump’s term, while Biden-era Title 42 expulsions exceeded 2 million between January 2021 and May 2023, highlighting divergent operational outcomes even as both administrations used expulsions [9]. Separately, migration-policy–type reporting points to 1.1 million deportations since FY2021 through February 2024 and nearly 4.4 million repatriations overall, suggesting that enforcement and removals under Biden have also been substantial and sometimes comparable to prior administrations in aggregate removals [10]. These different metrics—encounters versus expulsions or removals—produce different but complementary narratives.
4. Year-by-year trends and inflection points — when numbers spiked
Analysts identify specific surges early in Biden’s term and peaks in later years. One overview states over 1.5 million arrivals and 1,000,000+ expulsions/deportations by the end of 2021, capturing a rapid early increase at the start of Biden’s presidency [11]. Another dataset aggregates broader multi-year counts—an estimate of 11 million unauthorized migrants encountered between October 2019 and June 2024, with 1.44 million in 2024 alone—underscoring variability and episodic spikes [12]. CBP monthly updates also record sharp month-to-month declines or rises tied to policy changes, meaning annual totals mask substantial intra-year volatility [13]. These trend notes show the increase was not uniform but featured distinct surge periods.
5. What the numbers don’t resolve — definitions, double-counting and policy context
Comparisons are complicated by definitions and counting methods: CBP distinguishes between southwest land encounters, Title 8 apprehensions and Title 42 expulsions, and some summaries count encounters outside official ports separately from total enforcement actions. Several analyses caution that aggregating expulsions, apprehensions, and removals can conflate distinct actions; annual totals may include multiple encounters by the same individuals or reflect repeated attempts, and enforcement policy (e.g., Title 42 use) materially affects counts [14] [9]. The result is that raw encounter totals are useful for scale but inadequate to judge policy efficacy, recidivism, or humanitarian outcomes without further disaggregation.
6. The bottom line — a fact-based, contextual comparison
On the central question—how many border encounters in Biden’s presidential term compared to Trump’s first term—the available analyses converge: Biden’s term recorded multiple millions of encounters (with FY2023 and FY2024 each near or above 2.9 million), while Trump’s first term annual totals were commonly below 1.2 million and sometimes under 700,000, producing a multi-year difference measured in the millions and an annual average substantially higher under Biden [1] [2]. That numeric conclusion stands across official CBP tables and third-party summaries, but it must be read alongside caveats about different enforcement tools, counting methods, and policy drivers that influence both the numbers and their interpretation [9] [14].