I made a comment in another thread about Biden's failure on the southern border.
It made me wonder what the real picture is. When and why did this issue suddenly become one of the hot topic buttons - if not the most important hot button issue. Certainly I remember trump and MAGA being somewhat obsessed with this topic and White Replacement theory during his run up to term 1 ... I've seen the numbers under Biden - but I wondered what the numbers were like in previous administrations ... so I went to ChatGPT to see what actual data there is. The answers sort of surprised me.
Here's some of the information I gathered.
Using fiscal-year data, the broad picture is:
Administration ------- Fiscal years used SW Border Patrol apprehensions / encounters Average per year
George W. Bush ------- FY2001–08 ------------ ~ 8.02 million ------------------------------------- ~ 1.00m
Obama ----------------- FY2009–16 ------------ ~ 3.31 million ------------------------------------- ~ 413k
Trump term 1 --------- FY2017–20 ------------ ~ 1.95 million ------------------------------------- ~ 488k
Biden ------------------ FY2021–24 ------------ ~ 7.46 million ------------------------------------- ~ 1.86m
important context:
Bush actually had extremely high illegal-crossing traffic, particularly early in his presidency. Southwest Border Patrol apprehensions were about 1.24m in FY2001, 1.17m in 2005 and 1.07m in 2006, before declining sharply to 705,000 in 2008. DHS's historical data show those numbers directly.
Obama inherited that downward trend and experienced historically low numbers. Southwest apprehensions fell as low as 327,577 in FY2011, then rose during the Central American migration waves: 479,371 in 2014 and 408,870 in 2016
Trump's first term wasn't uniformly low. FY2017 was extraordinarily low at about 304,000, and FY2018 about 397,000. But FY2019 jumped to 851,508, driven heavily by Central American families. FY2020 fell to about 401,000, although that year was heavily affected by COVID and Title 42
Biden's numbers were on an entirely different scale from Obama or Trump 1. Border Patrol southwest encounters were roughly 1.66m in FY2021, 2.21m in FY2022, 2.06m in FY2023 and 1.53m in FY2024.
BUT .... some nuance.
The Biden/late-Trump numbers contain substantial repeat crossing because of Title 42. Someone expelled rapidly into Mexico could try again and be counted again. CBP estimated that between March 2020 and February 2021, about 38% of encounters involved people who had already been encountered previously. CRS therefore estimated roughly 1.27 million unique individuals for FY2021 versus the headline encounter count of about 1.66 million
Also: Border Patrol was much less effective at detecting/intercepting crossings during the Bush era than it later became. DHS estimates its southwest-border apprehension rate at only about 33–41% during much of 2001–08, versus roughly 72–80% in the later Obama/Trump years. That means Bush's ~1 million annual apprehensions probably represented considerably more attempted illegal crossings than the same number would today.
So what might be the historically fair conclusion?
The data tells a more interesting story than either party's talking points:
Bush: enormous illegal migration problem, especially 2001–06. In absolute attempted crossings, it was undoubtedly much worse than the apprehension statistics appear because Border Patrol caught a smaller percentage.
Obama: by far the lowest sustained southwest-border apprehension levels of these four presidencies. There were serious surges in 2014 and 2016, but nothing approaching Biden-era totals.
Trump 1: very low initially, followed by a major 2019 crisis, then COVID/Title 42 dramatically altered migration and enforcement in 2020.
Biden: unquestionably the largest recorded border-encounter surge of the modern period, particularly 2021–23. The idea that there wasn't an exceptional border surge during Biden's presidency simply isn't consistent with CBP data. But saying "7.5 million illegal immigrants entered America under Biden" is also incorrect: 7.5 million is encounters, not successful entries or unique immigrants who remained in the country.
One other fact worth noting: Biden eventually tightened the border substantially in June 2024. After his asylum restrictions were introduced, Border Patrol encounters fell more than 50%, reaching 83,536 in June, the lowest monthly level since January 2021
AND: Something I saw about Biden jumped out at me related to how many migrants were "released into the USA" - the numbers were much higher than Trump but not recorded for Obama and Bush .... May 2023 and March 2024, 67% of unauthorized migrants encountered at the southwest border were released into the United States to await immigration proceedings. ** that sounds horrific - but additional digging shows: 67% released into USA for processing but → 15% granted asylum + 45% deported + 7% disappeared.
SO --- I would assume the big Biden numbers are going to get the attention and spammed across Social Media platforms without any nuance, certainly that was what I had experienced. But these are only encounters and they now include this 38% of previous people encountered/returned. The processing numbers were much bigger under Biden - people being allowed entry to be processed. I am sure the headline number gets the attention - not the number that were later deported or the number of cases that were legitimate or granted.
AND SO
--- Obama had better numbers than any of them, so how did this become an issue that MAGA believed Democrats were soft on and that there was an 'open border' ??
--- And while Bushes numbers were bad, the reality is undoubtedly they were much worse. Using the numbers above - 1m per year at a say 37% rate vs 1.86m at 76% apprehension rate .... the total numbers of those attempting to cross become Bush (2.7m per year) and Biden (2.44m per year) .... so a bit like the myth that Reagan was for small government, or that Republicans are fiscally responsible, or that the economy does better under Republicans ... this narrative that Republicans have traditionally been stronger on the southern border than the Democrats is one more fake narrative. Not surprising ... but yes, I was actually surprised.
