How many people crossed the boarder illegally during trumps first term?

1. The metric problem: encounters, apprehensions and removals are not the same thing

CBP reports encounters and apprehensions—each time an agent or sensor processes a person seeking to cross—which can count the same person multiple times; the government does not publish a net tally of unique people who entered and remained in the country illegally ^[1]. Analysts therefore build estimates from “encounters” (and separate ICE removal statistics), but every such number carries the structural limitation that a single migrant who tries repeatedly will appear multiple times in federal data ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What the public sources actually show for Trump’s first term

Public analyses and reporting place the scale of irregular border contact under Trump in the low‑millions across his four years. Migration Policy notes that authorities recorded about 9.4 million encounters from FY2021 through Feb. 2024—“more than three times as many as under Trump,” implying roughly 3 million encounters in Trump’s four years if taken as a direct comparison ^[2]. Newsweek’s charting of CBP data highlights that the highest year in Trump’s presidency was 2019, which it reports as about 1.4 million encounters ^[3]. Pew’s read of CBP shows 851,508 apprehensions in fiscal 2019 under a particular counting method, underscoring that different CBP metrics (and different fiscal vs. calendar years or inclusion of ports of entry) produce different headline figures ^[4].

3. Why single numbers diverge so dramatically in public messaging

Different actors—administrations, media outlets and advocacy groups—select different CBP metrics to support narratives: the White House and DHS emphasize sharp percentage drops in encounters in the earliest days of Trump’s return to office and later months ^{[5] [6]}, while independent outlets and researchers stress the ambiguity introduced by repeats, “gotaways,” inadmissible encounters at ports of entry, and pandemic-era expulsions under Title 42 that heavily affected counts in 2020–2021 ^{[7] [2]}. Congressional and executive statements frequently mix “encounters,” “apprehensions,” “removals,” and “repatriations,” which are distinct processes and are counted differently in agency reports ^{[8] [9]}.

4. Alternative official tallies and removals

The Trump-era Homeland Security apparatus also tallied removals and deportations; Migration Policy and other trackers show cumulative removals and deportations in the hundreds of thousands to low‑millions depending on which actions are counted and whether Title 42 expulsions are included ^{[2] [9]}. For example, some DHS tallies discussed in public reporting put removals or “removed” counts in the hundreds of thousands under a particular window, while broader multi‑year deportation totals have been summarized around 1.5 million in other sources—differences driven by definitions and inclusion/exclusion of returns at the border ^{[9] [2]}.

5. Bottom line (the direct answer)

There is no single authoritative figure for “how many people crossed the border illegally” during Trump’s first term because federal data are built from repeated encounters and several distinct administrative categories ^[1]. Translating the available sources into a defensible answer: CBP‑measured encounters during Trump’s first four years are best described as “on the order of a few million,” with independent analyses pointing to roughly 2.5–3.5 million encounters across the term and single‑year highs (depending on the metric) in the high hundreds of thousands to about 1.4 million ^{[2] [3] [4]}. Any narrower claim requires choosing one CBP metric and accepting its limitations; the public record does not support a precise count of unique individuals who entered and remained illegally ^[1].