How many illegals crossed the border between Biden and Obama administration
Executive summary
The ask—“How many illegals crossed the border between Biden and Obama administration”—is ambiguous: it could mean the total encounters during Biden’s term compared with Obama’s, or the number who crossed in the interval between those presidencies; the available reporting documents large numbers of “encounters” under Biden but does not supply a single, directly comparable aggregate for the Obama years in the provided sources, so any direct numerical comparison must be hedged [1] [2]. Using publicly reported CBP encounter tallies, the Biden era (beginning January 2021) registers roughly between 9.4 million and more than 10 million encounters through early 2024–2025 in multiple analyses, while the sources in this packet do not provide a consolidated Obama-era total suitable for a precise head-to-head arithmetic comparison [2] [1] [3].
1. What the term “illegals crossed” usually maps to, and why that matters
Reporting and agency data track “encounters” — every time Customs and Border Protection contacts a person — not a count of unique individuals who successfully settled in the United States; encounters can include repeat attempts, interdictions at ports of entry, expulsions under pandemic authority and “gotaways” unseen by agents, so encounter totals overstate unique crossings if treated as people permanently entering the country [4] [5]. Several sources underline that the key public metric is encounters, and that gotaways and repeats complicate any headline figure about “how many crossed” [4] [5].
2. What the reporting shows for the Biden era
Multiple analyses place Biden-era encounters in the millions: Migration Policy reported about 9.4 million unauthorized-migrant encounters from FY2021 through February 2024, noting this was more than three times the comparable volume under the prior Trump period and stressing that many encounters were repeat attempts [2]. Other outlets and trackers situate the Biden start-to-2024/25 period above 10 million total encounters, with roughly 8 million at the southwest land border alone in one BBC account; official and partisan releases supply variant monthly and annual averages but converge on the fact that encounters surged under Biden compared with earlier recent years [1] [2].
3. Why simple comparisons to Obama are not possible from the supplied material
None of the provided documents present a consolidated, apples-to-apples aggregate of encounters or crossings covering President Obama’s two terms that can be directly subtracted from the Biden totals; the data here focus on FY2021–2024 and more recent months or present comparative claims versus Trump or post-2024 months rather than Obama-era multi-year totals [2] [6] [7]. Secondary context in these sources notes that enforcement practices, Title 42 expulsions, and counting conventions changed across administrations, meaning even if an Obama-year total were available it would still require careful normalization before a straight comparison [5] [8].
4. Conflicting narratives, political framing, and the best interpretive frame
Political actors and agency releases use encounter figures to make sweeping claims—Trump administration releases and DHS statements in 2025 emphasize dramatic declines or historic lows relative to Biden averages, while fact-checkers like PBS caution that short-term percentage claims often compare mismatched windows and omit seasonal and policy drivers that change flows [6] [9] [10]. Migration Policy, the BBC and independent trackers provide the most consistent empirical baseline for the Biden period (roughly 9.4–10+ million encounters through early 2024), but none of the provided sources supply the Obama-era aggregate needed to deliver the exact numeric difference requested; policymakers and journalists therefore should compare normalized, like-for-like fiscal-year encounter counts rather than raw rhetorical totals to avoid misleading impressions [2] [1] [10].