Reported Border Encounters have Jumped over the Past Three Years
Between October 2019 and January 2024, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported over 9.8 million border encounters across the country. That’s roughly equivalent to the current population of Michigan,the 10th most populous state.
Monthly encounters peaked in December 2023, with over 370,000 people. Nearly 12,000 individuals were encountered at the border daily in December 2023, more than eight people every minute. That month’s encounters alone were approximately 70% of the total encounters in 2017, which had around 527,000.
Border encounters dropped slightly between March and April 2020, around the start of the pandemic, around when the Trump administration invoked Title 42 to authorize border expulsions in the interest of public health. The Title 42 public health order ended in May 2023, so CBP officers could no longer expel illegal migrants for COVID-19-related reasons. Encounter numbers gradually rebounded over the remainder of 2020, surged 66% between February and March 2021, and have since remained elevated.
The CBP indicates that people processed under Title 42 had a higher recidivism rate than those processed under Title 8, so that may explain part of the increase in encounters during 2020-2023. According to the CBP, this higher-than-normal recidivism rate means "the actual number of unique individuals attempting to cross the border was substantially lower than total encounters."