What was the total number of Title 42 expulsions from March 2020 to May 2023 and how did they affect recidivism rates?
Executive summary
Title 42 expulsions were a massive, event-based enforcement practice at the U.S. border from March 21, 2020, to May 11, 2023, and estimates of how many expulsions occurred in that window vary by data source and counting method—ranging from about 1.2 million in some academic tallies to roughly 2–3 million in public-health and policy analyses—because agencies count “encounters” (events) not unique people [1] [2] [3] [4]. The policy coincided with a sharp rise in recidivism: overall repeat-encounter rates rose from roughly 7 percent pre-Title 42 to an average near 27 percent during 2020–21, with much higher repeat rates for certain subgroups (single adults) and explicit warnings from analysts that expulsions inflated total encounter figures relative to unique migrants [5] [6] [2] [7].
1. What the raw counts say — why there is no single, uncontested “total”
Federal reporting treats Title 42 activity as encounters or expulsions by event rather than unique persons, and CBP’s public dashboards note the policy ran from March 21, 2020, to May 11, 2023, but do not present a single cumulative “unique individuals” total in the materials supplied here [1] [8]. Independent and policy analyses therefore report different cumulative figures depending on cutoffs and inclusion rules: Migration Policy described monthly averages and peak monthly expulsions and noted 87,200 expulsions in April 2023 as the last full month’s data point [9], while KFF’s synthesis characterizes the three-year span as encompassing “close to 3 million” Southwest border expulsions [3], and some academic work analyzing specific datasets cited about 1.24 million expulsions in their sample [2]. Advocacy reporting also produced multi-million event counts for particular subperiods — for example, a tally of roughly 2.35 million expulsions between February 2021 and March 2023 [4]. Those differences reflect choices about which months, geographies, and event types to include, not necessarily arithmetic errors.
2. How recidivism changed while Title 42 was in effect
Multiple datasets and policy analyses converge on the same pattern: recidivism — defined as the share of encounters that were repeat apprehensions of the same person within a period — increased markedly after Title 42 began. National summaries show overall recidivism rising from about 7 percent in 2019 to an average of roughly 27 percent in 2020–21 [5] [6]. More granular research finds far higher repeat rates for some groups: Border Patrol and NGO analyses focused on single adults from Mexico and the Northern Triangle reported monthly recidivism for that cohort in the range of roughly 43–55 percent during parts of the Title 42 era, while American Immigration Council reporting emphasized that about half of single adults expelled to Mexico from the four main sending countries were reapprehended [2] [10]. CBP and analysts also documented an increase in “gotaways” — encounters that did not result in detention — which rose during the policy and fell after Title 42 ended, further complicating how many unique individuals actually attempted to cross [9] [7].
3. Why expulsions increased repeat attempts — mechanisms and counterarguments
The dominant explanation in the published analyses is structural: Title 42 allowed rapid expulsions without the penalties tied to Title 8 removals (such as reentry bars and criminal consequences), so expelled migrants faced few formal disincentives to try again, which produced higher recidivism and more event counts per person [11] [7]. Governments experimented with “chain expulsions” and lateral flights to reduce repeat crossings, but analysts judged those measures of limited success for reducing recidivism [5]. Opposing interpretations point out that seasonal migration patterns and changes in smuggling and enforcement resources also influence repeat attempts and “gotaway” rates, so not all of the change is attributable solely to Title 42 mechanics [9] [11].
4. Bottom line, limits of the record, and what to watch next
The incontestable operational facts are that Title 42 ran from March 21, 2020, to May 11, 2023 [1], that event-based expulsions during that window number in the millions by several reputable counts (KFF’s “close to 3 million,” CBP-era monthly aggregates and advocacy totals in the 1–2+ million range) [3] [9] [4], and that repeat-encounter rates rose substantially — roughly quadrupling from pre-Title 42 levels in aggregate, with much higher repeat rates among some subgroups [5] [6] [2]. Available sources caution that the headline “how many people” question cannot be definitively answered from the encounter-based reporting here: CBP counts events, not unique individuals, and different analyses apply different filters and time windows [1] [7]. Future clarity will require CBP or researchers publishing person-level de-duplicated datasets or standardized cumulative figures that reconcile the event counts with unique-individual estimates.