Did Biden let 20 million illegal immigrants into the country?
Executive summary
The short answer is no: the claim that President Biden "let 20 million illegal immigrants into the country" is not supported by available government data and independent analyses; official records show millions of border "encounters" since January 2021 but large gaps remain between encounters, unique people admitted, and those who remain in the country [1] [2]. Multiple reputable analyses and government lifecycle tables show roughly 6–10+ million encounters at the border during the Biden years, while partisan and advocacy reports project very different totals for the resident unauthorized population—none establish a verifiable 20 million additions directly attributable to Biden policy [2] [1] [3].
1. What the “20 million” claim is really alleging
When commentators say "20 million illegal immigrants entered under Biden," they mix several concepts—total border encounters, cumulative crossings (including repeat apprehensions), and net increases in the unauthorized resident population—and often treat encounters as unique new arrivals, a conflation that inflates the figure [2] [1]. Prominent Republican figures and some media pieces have cited very large numbers without clarifying methodology; fact-checkers and multiple data sources stress that "encounters" include repeated apprehensions and port-of-entry asylum appointments that are not straightforward measures of unique people settling in the U.S. [4] [2] [5].
2. What the official data actually show about encounters, removals and releases
Department of Homeland Security lifecycle reports and Border Patrol statistics document more than 10 million encounters since January 2021, with about 8 million at the southwest land border in many accounts, and large numbers of administrative returns and removals—roughly 1.1 million removals/returns reported through early 2024—alongside hundreds of thousands released or paroled [1] [6] [2]. FactCheck and Migration Policy emphasize that the government recorded millions of encounters but also that many were processed and removed, while other administrative tools (Title 42 expulsions, parole programs, CBP One appointments) complicate counting [2] [6].
3. Encounters are not the same as net new residents — repeat crossings and processing matter
Border "encounters" count instances of apprehension or interaction and therefore double- or triple-count people who attempt to cross multiple times; experts and outlets repeatedly warn against treating encounters as unique entrants [2] [7]. The Census- and survey-based estimates of the unauthorized resident population (which account for departures, deaths, naturalizations and previous undocumented presence) tell a different story than raw encounter tallies and are the relevant metric for asking how many people "entered and stayed" [7] [3].
4. Competing estimates from think tanks and congressional offices — large disagreement, partisan framing
Conservative think tanks and House Republican reports have produced higher estimates—The Heritage Foundation and some congressional Republican staff reports claimed millions of new unauthorized residents (e.g., 6.7 million or various "at least 3.3 million" figures), but those analyses use different methods, assumptions about net residency, and sometimes conflate short-term parole or encounters with permanent residence [3] [8] [9]. Independent outlets and analysts like Cato and mainstream fact-checkers caution that these projections vary widely and that partisan reports often have explicit policy aims that shape methodological choices [10] [2].
5. The verdict: evidence does not support a precise 20-million claim; the reality is complex
Evidence shows an unprecedented scale of border interactions and a substantial rise in the unauthorized population during Biden’s term, but it does not validate a clean, sourced figure of 20 million unique illegal entrants attributable to Biden policies; authoritative sources record roughly 10+ million encounters and divergent estimates of net newcomers ranging from a few million up to figures offered by partisan studies, none of which definitively prove 20 million unique additions [1] [2] [3]. Methodological limits—repeat encounters, incomplete lifecycle processing, parole and asylum backlogs, and differing definitions of "entered" versus "resided"—mean any single definitive tally is not available in public reporting, and claims of exactly 20 million should be treated as exaggerated unless accompanied by transparent methodology [2] [7].