How many crossed the border illegally under Trump from 2016-2020?
Executive summary
The best public tally of people encountered trying to cross the U.S. border illegally during the period covering the end of 2016 through the end of 2020 is found in U.S. Border Patrol “encounters” (apprehensions and expulsions), which total roughly 1.995 million for fiscal years 2017–2020 plus the 415,816 recorded in 2016 — matching aggregate monthly and yearly CBP counts rather than any claim about unique people who stayed in the country [1]. Government data do not provide a clean count of “how many crossed and remained,” so headline totals must be read as encounters, not net inflows [2].
1. The raw government numbers: encounters and apprehensions
CBP’s official historical table shows nationwide Border Patrol apprehensions (encounters) of 415,816 in 2016, then 310,531 in FY2017, 404,142 in FY2018, a spike to 859,501 in FY2019, and 405,036 in FY2020 — numbers issued by U.S. Border Patrol and used in public analyses [1]. Summing those fiscal‑year figures yields roughly 2.4 million encounters across the period often attributed to “the Trump administration” when commentators include late‑2016 through 2020, a figure that the BBC cites when noting “under the Trump administration, there were 2.4 million encounters on this border” [3] [1].
2. What these counts mean — and what they do not
Those CBP figures measure encounters (apprehensions, expulsions, “turnbacks”), not a census of unique migrants who successfully remained in the United States; the federal government does not publish a net inflow number of people who entered illegally and stayed, a key limitation repeatedly noted by analysts [2]. Consequently, stating “X people crossed illegally” requires caution: the same person can generate multiple encounters by trying again; many were expelled or returned under public‑health or immigration authorities’ procedures; and some encounters represent apprehensions that did not result in long‑term stays [3] [2].
3. Why totals rose and fell: policy, migration flows, pandemic effects
Encounters rose sharply in FY2019 to 859,501 as family migration and asylum seekers increased, then fell in FY2020 largely because of enforcement shifts and the COVID‑19 pandemic and associated expulsions under Title 42 beginning March 2020, which led to rapid returns and changes in counting and processing [4] [5] [3]. FactCheck.org and other analysts highlight month‑to‑month volatility — for example, apprehensions plunged in April 2020 and then climbed again toward the end of Trump’s term, producing high counts in late 2020 that complicate simple comparisons [6].
4. Different ways reporters and analysts package the same data
Different outlets present the period’s totals differently depending on whether they sum fiscal years, calendar years, or include “encounters” versus “unique individuals,” producing numbers like “about 2.4 million encounters under Trump” (BBC) or focused comparisons showing 2019 as an outlier year (CBP table; Newsweek) [3] [1] [7]. Some policy groups and think tanks add deportations and expulsions to derive measures of government removals; Migration Policy Institute and others compare deportation totals across administrations but caution those are distinct from encounter counts [5].
5. How to answer the original question accurately
If the question is interpreted as “how many encounters at the border occurred while Trump was in office (roughly 2017–2020)?” the authoritative CBP fiscal‑year totals sum to roughly 2.0 million for FY2017–FY2020 and, if one includes late‑2016 figures sometimes lumped into “under Trump,” the period’s encounters cited by multiple outlets round to about 2.4 million [1] [3]. If the question intends “how many crossed illegally and remained,” the available public data cannot produce that number, because the U.S. does not publish a definitive net‑entry figure and encounters can reflect multiple attempts and expulsions [2].