How many undocumented border crossings were recorded during Biden's presidency (2021-2024)?
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Executive summary
Available reporting documents between roughly 8.6 million and more than 10 million recorded “encounters” at the U.S. border during President Biden’s term through late 2024; Southwest‑border encounters are commonly reported as about 8–8.6 million while nationwide encounters exceed 10 million [1] [2] [3]. Different groups count different things — “encounters,” “apprehensions,” “removals,” “gotaways” and repeated crossings — so a single definitive number for “undocumented border crossings” is not present in the sources [4] [5].
1. What the headline figures actually measure
Government and press sources most often report “encounters,” a CBP metric that counts each time an officer or Office of Field Operations records contact with a noncitizen; that total can include repeat attempts by the same person, expulsions under Title 42, and people denied at ports of entry — it is not a simple count of unique people successfully settling in the U.S. [4] [3] [1].
2. The range you’ll see in reporting: 8–10+ million
Multiple reputable outlets and research groups report similar but distinct totals. Migration Policy Institute and related reporting cite roughly 8.6 million Southwest border “encounters” from January 2021 through October 2024 [1]. Other summaries — including congressional and news fact sheets — cite total nationwide encounters since Biden took office as more than 10.3 million (which includes ports of entry and non‑southwest contacts) [2] [3].
3. Why some sources give lower or higher counts
Analysts who aim to count unique individuals or exclude Title 42 expulsions get different numbers. FactCheck noted 2.8 million people were removed or returned directly from CBP custody through October (most under Title 42), while Migration Policy and other trackers count all encounters including expulsions and repeat crossers, inflating encounter totals relative to unique individuals [4] [1].
4. “Gotaways,” recidivism and double‑counting complicate totals
CBP also reports “gotaways” — people detected but not apprehended — and high recidivism rates mean many encounter reports reflect multiple attempts by the same person. For 2021, gotaways were estimated near 400,000 and recidivism rose versus pre‑pandemic years, which pushes encounter totals well above unique‑person totals [6] [4].
5. Political actors use different metrics for different narratives
Republican House and Senate offices and allied groups present the higher encounter figures (and sometimes add gotaways) to argue for a larger crisis — e.g., “more than 7.8 million crossings plus 1.5 million gotaways” — while independent outlets and migration researchers emphasize repeat encounters and expulsions when urging nuance [7] [1] [2]. The sources show an explicit agenda: partisan fact sheets select metrics likely to amplify perceived scale [2] [7].
6. What the data does not tell us (limits of current reporting)
Available sources do not provide a single, authoritative count of unique undocumented persons who crossed and remained during Biden’s presidency; they report encounters, removals, deportations, expulsions and appraisals of gotaways — often in overlapping ways — so the precise number of distinct undocumented border crossings (unique people who entered without authorization and were not removed) is not stated in the cited reporting [4] [1] [2].
7. Best short answer based on available sources
If you use CBP encounter totals as reported, the Biden years saw roughly 8–8.6 million Southwest border encounters through October 2024 and more than 10 million nationwide encounters through mid‑ to late‑2024. If you instead count removals/expulsions, FactCheck reports roughly 2.8 million removed/returned through October [1] [2] [4].
8. How to interpret these numbers going forward
Treat encounter totals as an operational workload measure — useful to show processing burden and trends — not as a one‑to‑one tally of unique people entering and staying. For policy or legal questions about residency or population change, use studies that attempt to deduplicate encounters and account for removals; for operational trends and political debate, encounter totals (and their caveats) are what most sources cite [4] [1] [3].
Limitations and sourcing note: this analysis relies solely on the documents supplied; readers seeking a precise unique‑person count should consult primary DHS/CBP datasets and demography studies because the provided sources report overlapping but non‑identical metrics [4] [1] [2].