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Fact check: What was the average annual number of illegal border crossings during Trump's presidency?
Executive Summary
The evidence in the provided materials shows no single, undisputed figure labeled explicitly as the “average annual number of illegal border crossings during Trump’s presidency”; instead, reporters and agencies present year-by-year enforcement encounter and apprehension totals that must be averaged to answer that question [1] [2]. Sources disagree about framing and whether to count Title 8 apprehensions, expulsions, or total enforcement encounters; this leads to divergent conclusions and politically charged claims about whether crossings were “lowest in decades” or still substantial [3] [1].
1. Numbers that matter — why there’s no single agreed average
The datasets underlying the discussion include multiple metrics: Border Patrol apprehensions, CBP total enforcement encounters, Title 8 apprehensions, and Title 42 expulsions, each reported separately in the provided material [1] [2]. Journalists cite fiscal-year totals that vary dramatically depending on which categories are included; one summary notes total Southwest land border encounters across fiscal years while other pieces emphasize apprehensions in single fiscal years or months [1] [3]. These definitional differences explain why the question of an “average annual number” cannot be answered without first specifying which metric will be averaged [2].
2. What the administration-focused sources claim and their framing
Pro-Trump administration sources and statements emphasize steep declines and dramatic removals, citing month-to-month and year-to-date figures such as nationwide encounters being “93% lower than the peak under the Biden Administration” and claims that “over 2 million illegal immigrants have left the US since January,” framing enforcement as singularly effective [4] [5]. These accounts focus on short-term declines and operational outputs like deportations and parole denials to support the narrative that crossings during the Trump presidency were low, sometimes comparing to early-1970s levels in media summaries [3] [5]. The framing selectively highlights metrics that support policy goals.
3. What neutral data sources in the set actually show
CBP’s enforcement statistics in the provided materials list annual encounter totals by fiscal year; these show substantial variation across years, with fiscal-year totals peaking in some years and dropping in others, but the dataset does not present a precomputed “average for Trump’s presidency” in the supplied extracts [1] [2]. The authoritative statistical tables allow calculation of an average if one aggregates the fiscal years corresponding to the Trump terms, but that arithmetic is not provided directly in the assembled analyses; reporters instead summarize trends or pick single-year comparisons to make broader points [1].
4. Media summaries and selective year comparisons — differing narratives
Major media pieces in the dossier present contrasting headlines: one reports that unlawful crossings “plummeted to the lowest annual level since the early 1970s,” relying on a specific fiscal-year comparison, while others point to continued enforcement actions or month-to-month increases elsewhere along the border [3] [6]. These narratives are driven by choice of baseline and timeframe — for example, comparing a single low year during Trump to recent high years under another administration yields a sharp-looking decline, whereas averaging across multiple Trump years would moderate that impression [3] [6].
5. Political claims vs. data limitations — agendas and omissions
Political messaging in the materials focuses on achievements (deportation counts, voluntary departures) or failures (high totals under other administrations), often without presenting the full multi-year arithmetic needed to produce an average annual crossing figure [5] [7]. Omissions include explicit averaging across all Trump fiscal years and clarity about which encounter categories are counted, which creates room for competing claims. The dataset provided can support either a narrative of historic lows or one of substantial cumulative movement depending on selective inclusion of categories [1] [2].
6. How to compute a defensible average from these materials
To compute an objective average, one must select a single metric (e.g., Border Patrol apprehensions or CBP total enforcement encounters), identify the fiscal years covering Trump’s presidency, and calculate the arithmetic mean from those annual totals supplied in the CBP tables referenced [1] [2]. The supplied materials include the necessary year-by-year counts but do not show the computed average; therefore, any precise average number would be a derived figure, not a direct quote from these documents. Reporters choose different metrics, yielding different avenaged results and divergent headlines [1] [3].
7. Bottom line — what the evidence supports and what it doesn’t
The materials collectively support the fact that annual border encounter totals fluctuated significantly across recent years and that framing depends on metric choice and baseline, but they do not provide a single, undisputed “average annual number” for illegal crossings during Trump’s presidency within the supplied excerpts [1] [2]. Calculating such an average is possible from the CBP tables referenced, but readers should be warned that different defensible methods (which categories to include and which fiscal years to count) will produce different averages and correspondingly different narratives [3] [5].