How many illegals crossed the border during Biden?
Executive summary
Across the Biden presidency, U.S. government sources and analysts consistently report millions of “encounters” at the border — not unique people — with totals ranging from roughly 9 million to more than 11 million depending on the time frame and which category of contact is counted; this figure is inflated by repeat crossings and by administrative categories (apprehensions, expulsions, removals, gotaways) that are not the same as distinct migrants [1] [2] [3]. Reliable public reporting shows that several million were processed and many millions were expelled, removed or otherwise encountered, but available data do not support a precise count of unique individuals who “crossed” because the government reports encounters, not one-to-one person counts [4] [1].
1. What the headline numbers actually measure
Most public tallies are “encounters,” a CBP reporting category that counts each time an agent or system detects or processes a person — so repeat attempts by the same person are counted multiple times — and also mixes apprehensions, inadmissible encounters at ports of entry, expulsions under Title 42, and “gotaways” detected by technology but not apprehended [2] [4]. For example, Migration Policy reports about 9.4 million unauthorized-migrant encounters from FY2021 through February 2024, explicitly noting many were repeat encounters; other outlets and committees cite total-encounter figures that exceed 10 million for various spans of the Biden term [1] [3].
2. Evictions, expulsions and removals are large components of the totals
A substantial portion of those encounters were not loitering migrants who entered and remained undetected but people immediately removed or returned under policies such as Title 42; FactCheck reported that about 2.8 million people were removed or returned from CBP custody through October of a recent year, the vast majority under Title 42, while roughly 2.5 million were released into the U.S., and others were transferred to HHS or ICE custody [4]. Migration Policy similarly emphasizes that combining deportations, expulsions and other actions yields roughly 4.4 million repatriations — the most for any single presidential term in decades — underscoring that many encounters resulted in rapid returns rather than settlement [1].
3. Political actors use different metrics for different narratives
Republican leaders and GOP-aligned committees have produced higher-looking summaries — for instance, a Senate Republican page cited “more than 7.8 million illegal border crossings plus at least 1.5 million gotaways,” and a House committee cited 10.8 million total encounters since FY2021 — language and framing aimed at portraying a crisis and justifying tougher enforcement [5] [3]. Conversely, independent analysts and outlets stress nuance: the count of encounters grew because of repeat crossings, Title 42 expulsions, and migration surges from multiple regions, and the administration argues policy shifts and later measures reduced flows [6] [7].
4. Trends across the period — surge then decline
The pattern through Biden’s term was a major surge in 2021–2023 — including a record number of Border Patrol apprehensions in FY2022 and peaks like nearly 250,000 arrests in December 2023 — followed by policy responses and later declines in 2024 and beyond, with data showing sharp falls in monthly encounters and analysis noting downward trends after executive actions and enforcement changes [6] [8] [7]. Different administrations and partisan actors selectively cite short windows to claim dramatic drops or surges; fact-checkers caution against cherry-picking daily or weekly averages to compare presidencies [9].
5. Bottom line and limits of available evidence
Answering “How many illegals crossed the border during Biden?” depends on definition: if using CBP encounters, the best public estimates place total encounters since January 2021 in the high single-digit to low double-digit millions (rough benchmarks: ~9–11 million encounters reported across sources), while unique individuals who successfully entered and remained cannot be reliably distinguished in public data because of repeat crossings, expulsions, transfers and differing classifications [1] [2] [3] [4]. Reporting limitations mean a definitive single-person count is not available in the cited sources; political claims often conflate encounters with unique entrants to support policy arguments [5] [3].