Number of illegals entering the US 2021 to 2024
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Executive summary
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 10.8 million “encounters” nationwide from the start of Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 through the end of FY2024, with over 8.7 million of those at the Southwest border, but that raw encounter tally is not the same as a clear count of unique people who “entered” the country [1]. Independent researchers and advocacy groups offer widely divergent population estimates—ranging from roughly 10–11 million unauthorized residents in 2021–2022 (Pew/US data) to agency-adjusted and think‑tank figures that put the unauthorized population above 14 million by early 2024—highlighting methodological disagreement and data limits [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. What the official “encounter” numbers show and what they don’t
CBP and DHS publish encounter totals—people apprehended or otherwise processed at the border—and the House Homeland Security Committee reported “more than 10.8 million encounters nationwide” since FY2021, including “more than 8.72 million at the Southwest border” [1]; USAFacts similarly summarizes roughly 11 million unauthorized border encounters between October 2019 and June 2024 [3]. These encounter tallies include repeat crossers, people denied entry at ports, and those processed multiple times, so they cannot be read as unique new entrants without careful de‑duplication and modeling [6].
2. How many people were released, removed, or expelled after encounters
DHS processing outcomes vary: in the initial processing of millions of encounters, FactCheck.org reports government figures that about 2.5 million people were released into the U.S. while roughly 2.8 million were removed or expelled, illustrating that encounters lead to many different legal outcomes rather than a single “entered” number [6]. DHS datasets provide monthly enforcement and encounter tables but require interpretation; the Office of Homeland Security Statistics publishes the source tables used for these tallies [7].
3. Estimates of the undocumented population — competing methods, competing results
Population‑estimate methods produce wide disparities: Pew’s pre‑2025 estimates put the unauthorized population at about 10.5 million in 2021 and about 11.0 million in 2022, reflecting survey‑based estimation [2]. By contrast, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which makes different adjustments for undercount and legal migration, estimated around 13.7–14 million in early 2024, while FAIR and other groups produce even higher figures; these differences stem from assumptions about undercount, net migration, parole releases and how to apportion population growth to legal versus unauthorized flows [4] [8] [5].
4. Why a single “number of illegals entering 2021–2024” is elusive
No neutral official series exists that cleanly equates encounters to unique unauthorized entrants over 2021–2024 because encounters double‑count recidivists, do not capture “gotaways” with full precision, and include legal parole programs and asylum processing that affect net counts [6] [3]. Analysts therefore produce two types of figures: administrative encounter totals (tens of millions of encounters across multiple years) and population‑estimate totals (estimates of the stock of unauthorized residents), and each answers a different question [1] [3] [2].
5. Bottom line synthesis and caveats
The best‑documented administrative fact is that CBP recorded more than 10.8 million encounters since FY2021 (over 8.7 million at the Southwest border) through FY2024, which signals extremely high border activity but not a one‑for‑one count of unique entrants [1]. Population estimates that attempt to translate flows into how many unauthorized people live in the U.S. diverge: mainstream survey‑based work had the unauthorized population near 10.5–11 million in 2021–2022 [2], while administrative‑adjusted and advocacy‑driven analyses put the early‑2024 unauthorized population as high as roughly 14 million or more depending on assumptions [4] [5] [8]. Reporting entities carry clear institutional perspectives—Congressional committee releases and advocacy groups have political or policy aims while academic and nonpartisan centers emphasize methodological caveats—so any single headline number must be read alongside the underlying definitions and caveats [1] [4] [2].