Was there record high levels of immigration during Biden or are the numbers exaggerated
Executive summary
Border encounters and certain immigration metrics did reach historic highs during the Biden years, but the scale and meaning of those numbers have been widely mischaracterized: government data show record-high encounters in 2023 and large flows of people processed, while careful analysts warn encounters do not equal net new residents and that policy choices, counting changes and expulsions complicate comparisons [1] [2] [3]. Political claims that tens of millions “entered illegally” under Biden are contradicted by nonpartisan analyses and fact checks; the situation is complex, not reducible to a single sensational number [4] [2].
1. Record highs on the border — what the numbers show
U.S. border authorities recorded unprecedented monthly and annual contacts with migrants during the Biden presidency, peaking with what officials described as record encounters in December 2023 and very large totals across 2021–2024; Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and CBP figures document these elevated encounter volumes and widespread reporting shows encounters were far higher than in the Trump years [1] [3] [5]. Fact-checking organizations and data trackers confirm that Border Patrol encounters under Biden were many times larger than comparable periods under Trump — for example, multi-million encounter totals from 2021–2024 versus far lower totals in 2017–2021 [2] [6].
2. Why “encounters” can be misleading — definitions and counting matter
The headline “record” is technically true for encounters but can mislead because an encounter is an initial contact that may result in removal, expulsion under Title 42, release pending proceedings, or eventual entry; encounters do not equal permanent settlement [2]. Changes in policy, pandemic-era tracking, and new processing paths (like CBP One and various parole programs) altered how many people were recorded and how they were processed, so raw encounter counts across administrations are not apples-to-apples without context [7] [8].
3. Removals, expulsions and naturalizations — enforcement was not absent
Contrary to the narrative that enforcement vanished, the Biden administration combined expulsions, removals and parole decisions resulting in millions of repatriations and a large enforcement workload; MPI and other analyses report nearly 4.4 million repatriations through combined mechanisms and ICE recorded a large number of deportations in FY2024 [9] [1]. At the same time the administration restored legal admissions, expanded naturalizations—estimated at about 3.5 million—and issued hundreds of thousands of humanitarian protections, showing a simultaneous increase in legal immigration flows and citizenship grants [7] [3].
4. Competing explanations — policy, push-pull factors and partisan framing
Analysts disagree about causation: some researchers and think tanks argue the surge predated Biden and point to labor-market demand, regional crises and long-running trends rather than a single presidential policy [10], while other observers stress that Biden-era policy choices and a more permissive reception for asylum seekers contributed to larger recorded flows and public perception of a “crisis” [5] [11]. Political actors amplify these frames: some Republican messaging inflates totals into claims of tens of millions admitted illegally—a claim debunked by fact-checkers and contradicted by estimates of the undocumented population and encounter-to-entry distinctions [4] [2] [12].
5. Bottom line — record elements, but important limits to the headlines
It is accurate to say the Biden years saw record levels of border encounters and large-scale immigration system activity, including high numbers of expulsions, removals and naturalizations, but it is inaccurate to conflate encounters with net new undocumented residents or to accept unvetted claims of dozens of millions admitted illegally; reliable analyses and fact-checks show large flows occurred but far smaller totals when measuring net population change or proven illegal entries [1] [2] [4]. The data support a nuanced verdict: a historic operational challenge at the border and a highly active immigration policy record, not the simplified, extreme figures promoted by some partisan sources [3] [9].