Did Biden let millions cross the border
Executive summary
The short answer: no single presidential decision “let millions cross” the border, but during President Biden’s term U.S. agencies recorded more than 10 million border “encounters” and millions of people were released, removed, expelled, or paroled under policies implemented across administrations — a complex mix of enforcement, public-health expulsions, parole programs, and undetected crossings that fuels competing narratives [1] [2] [3]. Analysts disagree about causation: some Republican sources portray the totals as evidence that the Biden White House intentionally opened the border [4] [5], while policy researchers and libertarian analysts point to broader structural drivers and continued or increased enforcement in many metrics [6] [7].
1. What the headline numbers actually measure
Federal “encounters” count every interaction U.S. Customs and Border Protection has with a person trying to enter — including Title 8 apprehensions, inadmissibles at ports of entry, and Title 42 expulsions — so the raw total aggregates multiple outcomes rather than a tally of people permanently admitted to the United States [2]. Public reporting shows that since January 2021 there have been more than 10 million such encounters, roughly 8 million at the southwest land border, a figure that includes expulsions and repeat attempts and therefore cannot be equated directly with unique new residents “let in” [1].
2. Releases, removals, expulsions: what happened to people after encounter
Government and independent analyses show that encounters have produced a mix of results: millions were expelled under Title 42, hundreds of thousands were removed or returned, and millions were released into the U.S. pending immigration proceedings — FactCheck summarized that in processing millions of encounters roughly 2.5 million people were released while 2.8 million were removed or expelled in a recent multi-year window, illustrating the mixture of enforcement and releases in practice [3].
3. The “millions” claim and political framing
Republican committees and senators have highlighted high encounter totals and estimated “gotaways” to argue the administration “let” large numbers in, citing figures like 7.8 million recorded crossings plus alleged 1.5 million gotaways to characterize a crisis [4] [5]. Those sources aim to frame the totals as policy failure and emphasize mass parole programs (for example the CHNV parole numbers cited by the House committee) to suggest intentional admission policies [5]. Their presentations often conflate encounters, gotaways, and net population change in ways that critics say overstate what policy choices alone explain.
4. Alternative explanations and expert caveats
Immigration researchers and some policy analysts caution that timing of Title 42, global migration drivers (economic hardship, violence, social media and smuggling networks), U.S. labor demand and migration routes all helped push encounter totals up — and some evidence shows enforcement measures and deportations increased in several periods under Biden as well, complicating causal claims that Biden “let” people in [6] [7] [8]. Independent fact-checkers have likewise noted that encounter counts can be inflated by repeat crossings and seasonal patterns, so high encounter totals do not neatly map to a single policy decision or unique newcomers [3] [8].
5. The unknowns: gotaways and net population change
Estimating undetected crossings (“gotaways”) and net unauthorized population change remains uncertain; DHS gave periodic gotaway estimates for early years but has not published a single definitive new number for the entire Biden era, and independent estimates vary — meaning claims about exact totals “let in” are often extrapolations beyond what public data can firmly support [8] [2]. Likewise, encounter totals do not account for emigration, overstays, or legal pathways, so they are an incomplete measure of how many people currently live in the country without authorization [1].
6. Bottom line: nuance over slogan
The factual record shows millions of encounters, substantial releases, expulsions and removals, and policy tools like parole programs that admitted specific cohorts, but it does not support a simple, singular claim that President Biden “let millions cross the border” as a discrete, unilateral act; instead the phenomenon reflects a blend of enforcement policies, court rulings, pandemic-era expulsions, international push factors, and operational capacity constraints that produced large cumulative totals and political controversy [2] [3] [6]. Where partisan actors seek a tidy cause, the data point to a complicated, multiyear interaction of policies and migration dynamics that both parties have leveraged in public messaging [4] [5].