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How many illegal border crossings occurred each year from 2021 to 2024 under the Biden administration?
Executive summary
Available sources do not provide a single, consistent annual count labelled “illegal border crossings” for each calendar year 2021–2024; reporting instead uses related measures—CBP “encounters,” Border Patrol apprehensions, expulsions, “gotaways,” and fiscal-year totals—which produce different totals and interpretations (e.g., “more than 10 million encounters since January 2021” [1]; “more than 7.8 million illegal border crossings” cited by Senator Cornyn [2]). Sources therefore offer multiple, sometimes competing ways to measure crossings rather than one definitive yearly illegal‑crossing number [1] [2] [3].
1. What reporters and officials are counting — encounters, apprehensions, gotaways
Journalists and government agencies use different metrics: “encounters” is CBP’s broad category that can include people apprehended between ports, inadmissible attempted entries at ports of entry, and people processed under Title 42 or expulsions; “apprehensions” or “Border Patrol arrests” are those physically taken into custody; and “gotaways” are people detected but not apprehended. BBC and other outlets sum these as “encounters” to reach a >10 million figure since Jan. 2021 [1]; Senator Cornyn’s office cites “more than 7.8 million illegal border crossings, plus at least 1.5 million ‘gotaways’” [2]. FactCheck.org highlights releases and removals (e.g., roughly 2.5 million released, 2.8 million removed/expelled in processing totals) to show another slice of the data [3].
2. Why a single per‑year “illegal crossings” number is elusive
CBP public data are reported in different ways (monthly, fiscal year, and cumulative “encounters”), and policy changes (Title 42, new proclamations, asylum rule changes) altered processing and counting during the period, making direct year‑to‑year calendar comparisons problematic [3] [4]. Congressional and partisan offices sometimes aggregate different categories to make totals look larger or smaller—for example, a House Republican factsheet cites “more than 10.3 million encounters” under Biden‑Harris [5] while conservative commentary or Senate Republican materials may present slightly different aggregates [2].
3. What the sources report for cumulative totals and trends
Multiple outlets converge on the broad scale: reporting puts total CBP encounters since January 2021 at roughly 10 million–10.3 million (BBC and House Homeland Security references) and roughly 8–8.3 million on the southwest border specifically, depending on cutoffs and what’s included [1] [5]. Senator Cornyn’s statement emphasizes 7.8 million logged crossings plus 1.5 million gotaways [2]. FactCheck.org breaks processing outcomes into releases and removals rather than a single crossing total [3].
4. Yearly patterns reporters flagged for 2021–2024
Coverage highlights high volumes in 2021 and 2022, spikes at the end of 2023, and a substantial decline through 2024 after new Biden policies and Mexican enforcement measures: CBS and Guardian articles note June 2024 as the lowest monthly total since Biden took office (~84,000 crossings in June) and CNN and DHS cite sharp drops in encounters after June 2024 policy actions [6] [7] [8] [4]. El País and Axios describe a downward trend in late 2024 and into 2025, attributing declines to restrictive policies and Mexican cooperation [9] [10].
5. How to produce an answer you can defend with sources
If you need a year‑by‑year table, use the specific metric you want and cite it: e.g., Border Patrol annual apprehensions for FY2021 are reported as “more than 1.7 million arrests” (note: that figure appears in a Wikipedia summary drawn from reporting; verify with primary CBP FY reports before publishing) [11]. For calendar‑year totals on “encounters,” cite BBC/House Homeland Security for the cumulative >10 million since Jan. 2021 and then extract or compute yearly splits only if you use CBP monthly/fiscal tables [1] [5]. Available sources do not provide a single authoritative calendar‑year illegal‑crossing count for every year 2021–2024 in this packet.
6. Competing interpretations and implicit agendas to watch
Republican officials and committees present larger totals and emphasize “gotaways” and cumulative counts to argue a crisis (Sen. Cornyn, House Homeland Security) [2] [5]. Government and administration sources emphasize policy effects and declines after mid‑2024 (DHS press messaging and CNN coverage citing administration statements) [4] [8]. Independent outlets (BBC, CBS, The Guardian) report the raw figures and note the definitional issues; FactCheck.org unpacks releases/removals to temper claims about how many migrants remain in the U.S. [1] [6] [7] [3].
7. Bottom line and practical next steps
There is no single, undisputed “illegal border crossings per calendar year 2021–2024” number in these sources; they offer competing aggregates and explanations instead [1] [2] [5]. Tell me which metric you want (CBP “encounters,” Border Patrol apprehensions, gotaways, or DHS removals/ releases) and I will extract the closest year‑by‑year figures from the available reporting and identify which sources and counting choices drive each total (not found in current reporting to produce a single unified calendar‑year table) [1] [3].