How many illegal aliens enter the US during the Biden Administration

1. Politicians’ Loud Totals vs. Agency Counts—Why Numbers Diverge

Political statements often present raw encounter totals as the number of people who entered the country, but CBP’s enforcement statistics count multiple event types: encounters (apprehensions at ports and between ports), releases, expulsions/removals, and recorded gotaways. Senator Cornyn’s claim that CBP logged over 7.8 million illegal border crossings and at least 1.5 million gotaways reflects a political framing that emphasizes total border interactions without distinguishing outcomes; that framing is in tension with other tallies that treat removals and expulsions separately ^[1]. A separate Committee on Homeland Security fact sheet reports more than 10.3 million cumulative encounters and cites roughly two million known gotaways since FY2021, showing a different aggregation and reinforcing that definitions drive the headline ^[2]. Fact-checking outlets and analytic groups emphasize that counting encounters alone inflates the picture if removals and expulsions are not subtracted ^[3].

2. Reconciling Encounters, Releases, Removals and “Gotaways”

CBP enforcement reports and independent analyses distinguish four categories relevant to any total: encounters (contact with Border Patrol or port agents), releases/receipts into the U.S. (people allowed into the interior pending adjudication), removals/expulsions (returned or expelled), and gotaways (suspected crossers not taken into custody). One analytic summary calculates roughly 6.5 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border, with 2.5 million released, 2.8 million removed or expelled, and about 1.6 million gotaways, yielding an estimated ~4.2 million people entering or remaining after accounting for removals ^[3]. Migration-policy oriented reporting also documents 1.1 million deportations through February 2024 and broader repatriation totals around 4.4 million across various actions, underscoring that enforcement actions substantially offset raw encounter counts ^[5].

3. Fiscal-Year Sequencing and the 8–10 Million Encounter Claims

Large aggregate claims—8.3 million to 10.3 million enforcement encounters across FY2021–FY2025—derive from summing annual CBP encounter tables, but those totals do not represent unique individuals and include repeated encounters and multiple event types ^{[4] [2]}. One worksheet lists FY2021 through FY2025 encounter figures that sum to ~8.3 million, while a partisan committee paper cites more than 10.3 million, reflecting differences in included months and category definitions ^{[4] [2]}. Fact-checkers caution that citing multi-year encounter aggregates as the number of people who “entered” the U.S. misleads because it omits the scale of expulsions, removals, and repeat encounters—an important methodological omission that explains much of the variance ^[3].

4. Gotaways: The Uncertain Invisible Component

“Gotaways” are a particularly volatile variable and a source of political dispute. CBP estimates of gotaways vary and are based on sensor detections, agent observations, and post-hoc intelligence; published ranges in the reviewed materials run from about 1.5 million to two million since FY2021 ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Because gotaways are by definition unprocessed and often recorded as estimates, they inject substantial uncertainty into any total of people who actually entered the interior. Analysts note that including high gotaway estimates without transparency about methodology inflates totals; conversely, omitting gotaways understates potential entries. The disagreement over methods and confidence intervals is central to why stakeholders dispute single-number claims ^{[1] [2]}.

5. The Bottom Line: Numbers Matter—and So Do Definitions

There is no single authoritative figure for “how many illegal aliens entered the U.S. during the Biden administration” without first specifying whether the count refers to encounters, unique individuals, releases, removals, or estimated gotaways. Using the available datasets and analyses, a defensible statement is that CBP-recorded enforcement encounters total on the order of 8–10 million across FY2021–FY2025, while a reconciliation that accounts for removals and expulsions produces an estimated 4–4.5 million people who were either released into the U.S. or not removed, with 1.5–2 million additional unconfirmed gotaways—figures that depend on methodological choices and are presented differently by partisan and nonpartisan actors ^{[4] [3] [2] [1]}. Readers should demand clarity on definitions and timeframes before accepting any headline number as definitive.