How many migrant encounters did U.S. Customs and Border Protection record in fiscal year 2021 and 2022?

1. The headline numbers: FY2021 and FY2022

CBP data, as cited in reporting, show 1,956,519 migrant encounters in fiscal year 2021 and 2,002,604 encounters measured from October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022 for fiscal year 2022 ^{[1] [2]}. Mainstream outlets summarized those CBP totals as “more than 2 million” encounters in FY2022 and noted a marked increase from the prior year, which some reports described as “more than 1.7 million” for FY2021 depending on which subset or summary was emphasized ^{[6] [1]}.

2. What “encounters” means and why the same person can appear multiple times

CBP’s nationwide encounter metric explicitly aggregates Title 8 apprehensions, OFO inadmissibles and Title 42 expulsions, a methodology that began to include both Title 8 and Title 42 categories in March FY2020, meaning the totals are event-based and can include repeat crossings by the same individual ^{[3] [5] [2]}. Independent summaries and analysts warn that encounter counts do not equal unique people because migrants who are expelled or turned back sometimes attempt to cross again within the same fiscal year and are counted each time ^[7].

3. Data quality caveats and how CBP treats overlap

CBP and DHS warn that statistics are extracted from live systems, are subject to revision, and that final statistics are “locked” at fiscal year end, so month-to-month numbers can change as records mature or definitions are adjusted ^{[4] [8]}. The Department’s internal de-duplication of Office of Field Operations records indicates low overlap (less than 0.1 percent) for OFO encounters, but that does not eliminate repeat encounters recorded by Border Patrol in the field ^[8].

4. Why media summaries sometimes give different figures

Different outlets highlighted different CBP presentations or subsets of the data — for example, some coverage used rounded or preliminary summaries and described FY2021 as “more than 1.7 million” while other trackers or CBP’s own tables list the FY2021 total at about 1.956 million; FY2022 consistently crossed the 2 million threshold in multiple reports ^{[6] [1]}. This variation arises from which encounter categories, time cutoffs, or data extracts journalists relied upon and from the fact that CBP publishes several overlapping dashboards (nationwide, southwest border, ports of entry) with slightly different emphases ^{[3] [9]}.

5. The policy context that shapes the numbers

The inclusion of Title 42 expulsions — a public-health-era authority that allowed immediate expulsion without standard asylum processing — materially affected encounter totals and processing outcomes during this period; CBP’s encounter definition explicitly counts Title 42 events alongside Title 8 actions, and analysts note that expulsions under Title 42 often led to multiple attempts and re-encounters ^{[3] [5] [7]}. DHS reporting for FY2022 also emphasized rapid increases in Border Patrol encounters in early FY2022 compared with the prior year, reflecting operational surges and shifts in migration patterns ^[10].

6. Bottom line and limits of the record

The clearest, directly reported CBP totals in the available sources are 1,956,519 encounters in FY2021 and 2,002,604 encounters in FY2022, with the important caveat that these are encounter events — not a headcount of unique individuals — and that CBP’s categories and live-data revisions can produce differing summaries in media coverage ^{[1] [3] [7]}. Where data are not explicit in the cited sources, this report does not assert additional figures beyond those published or summarized in CBP or contemporaneous reporting ^[4].