Biden’s Border Patrol Record: Encounters, CBP One, and Title 42

The Biden administration’s border patrol record from January 2021 to January 2025 combined the highest migrant encounter numbers in U.S. history with a pendulum of policy: sweeping reversals of Trump-era enforcement early on, new humanitarian pathways in the middle, and tightened asylum restrictions late in the term. Federal authorities logged roughly 10.8 million total encounters at U.S. borders during the four years, about 8.6 million of them along the U.S.-Mexico border.¹

Encounters by the Numbers

Border Patrol encounters climbed almost immediately after inauguration. January 2021 closed with about 75,300 encounters. Fiscal year 2022 brought nearly 2.77 million nationwide. Fiscal year 2023 peaked at roughly 3.2 million.²³ The single-month high came in December 2023, with nearly 302,000 encounters recorded along the southwest border.⁴

The Yuma Sector illustrated the local pressure. Apprehensions there rose from roughly 8,800 in fiscal year 2020 to 312,000 in fiscal year 2022, according to testimony from retired Yuma Chief Patrol Agent Chris Clem, who described a “gut-wrenching” shift as agents moved from patrolling to processing. DHS at one point closed the Lukeville Port of Entry for over a month to redirect officers to migrant processing.⁵

“Known gotaways,” meaning migrants detected by surveillance but not apprehended, totaled about 2 million from fiscal year 2021 through 2024, roughly four times the 2017-2020 total, according to House Homeland Security Committee figures. Former Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz testified the real number could be 20 percent higher.⁶

What Biden Undid on Day One

On January 20, 2021, President Biden signed a proclamation suspending border wall construction, revoked the national emergency declaration at the southern border, and directed agencies to redirect wall funds. The same day, he rescinded Executive Order 13768, which had broadly prioritized deportation of migrants with pending charges or minor criminal records.⁷

Within the first week, the Justice Department rescinded the “zero-tolerance” prosecution policy that had led to family separations. Biden established an interagency task force on reunification; as of February 2023, about 600 children had been reunited while roughly 1,000 remained separated.⁸

New enrollments in the Migrant Protection Protocols were suspended on January 20, 2021, with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas formally terminating the “Remain in Mexico” program on June 1, 2021.⁹ CBP rescinded Trump-era metering at ports of entry in November 2021, and in March 2022 DHS rolled back a 2019 expansion of expedited removal.⁷

New Legal Pathways: CBP One and CHNV

In January 2023, DHS launched the CBP One mobile app as the primary way asylum seekers could schedule appointments at ports of entry. Over 936,000 migrants used the app to schedule appointments during Biden’s term.¹⁰ By May 2023, capacity had expanded from about 740 daily arrivals to 1,000 per day at southern border ports.¹¹

The administration also created a humanitarian parole program for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, known as CHNV. Up to 30,000 people per month could fly to the United States if they had a U.S.-based financial sponsor. By late September 2024, more than 531,000 individuals had entered under the program.¹ A House Judiciary Committee investigation alleged widespread fraud, including thousands of applications filed using Social Security numbers of deceased people and clusters of applications from single IP addresses. DHS paused CHNV in July 2024 after an internal fraud analysis and restarted it in late August 2024.¹²

Title 42: Kept, Then Ended

Despite campaigning against Trump-era border restrictions, the administration continued using Title 42, the pandemic-era public health order allowing rapid expulsions without asylum processing, for more than two years. Title 42 was used roughly 2.9 million times at the southwest border, more than 2.5 million of them under Biden.¹ Processing under Title 42 took CBP about 15 minutes on average, compared with 30 minutes to several hours under standard Title 8 authority.¹³

Because Title 42 expulsions carried no formal legal consequences, the re-encounter rate rose from 7 percent in fiscal year 2019 to 27 percent in fiscal year 2021, and 49 percent for Mexican and northern Central American migrants by May 2022.¹³

Title 42 ended on May 11, 2023, when the COVID-19 public health emergency expired. Border Patrol facilities were quickly overwhelmed, and in El Paso, Texas National Guard troops set up razor wire as migrants surged across.¹⁴ After Title 42’s end restored formal consequences, the gotaway rate actually dropped, falling from nearly 73,500 in April 2023 to about 32,800 two months later.¹³

The Turn Toward Restriction

In May 2023, the administration issued the “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” rule, creating a rebuttable presumption of asylum ineligibility for migrants who crossed through a third country without first scheduling a CBP One appointment or applying for asylum in a transit country.¹⁵ A federal judge in the Northern District of California vacated the rule in July 2023, but the Ninth Circuit stayed that ruling, keeping the restriction in effect during appeal.¹⁶

With encounters still averaging about 4,000 per day in early June 2024, Biden issued Proclamation 10773, “Securing the Border,” on June 4, 2024.⁴ The proclamation suspended asylum processing between ports of entry whenever the seven-day average of daily encounters exceeded 2,500, lifting only 14 days after that average fell below 1,500. Unaccompanied children, trafficking victims, people with valid visas, and CBP One users were exempt.¹⁷

An accompanying interim final rule, effective June 5, 2024, sought to route most arriving noncitizens into expedited removal rather than slower proceedings that had contributed to a 3.6 million-case immigration court backlog by the end of fiscal year 2024.¹⁸¹ The ACLU sued, arguing the order was “flatly illegal” and violated statutory asylum protections.¹⁹ Encounters fell sharply through the second half of 2024, though analysts debated whether the executive order drove the drop or whether broader factors such as labor demand shifts and expanded legal migration pathways were responsible.³

Court Fights That Shaped the Record

Remain in Mexico

After Mayorkas terminated MPP on June 1, 2021, Texas and Missouri sued, and a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas ordered the program reinstated, ruling that the administration lacked the detention capacity to lawfully end it under the Immigration and Nationality Act.²⁰ The Supreme Court declined to block the order, and a revised MPP 2.0 began returning asylum seekers to Mexico in December 2021.⁹ On June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Biden v. Texas that the INA’s contiguous-territory return provision was discretionary, not mandatory, and that the administration could lawfully end the program. MPP 2.0 formally ended in October 2022.

The Border Wall

Biden’s January 2021 proclamation halted construction, but under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act the administration could not simply refuse to spend the roughly $1.4 billion Congress had appropriated for barriers in 2019 and 2020.²¹ DHS proceeded with about 13.4 miles of levee construction and remediation in the Rio Grande Valley on physical safety grounds. In October 2023, DHS announced up to 20 miles of new barriers in Starr County, Texas, waiving environmental regulations.⁷ Texas separately sued over the initial halt. U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton issued a permanent injunction in May 2024 ordering the government to use the appropriated funds. The Biden administration did not appeal, and the deadline passed on July 29, 2024.²²

Fentanyl Seizures

From fiscal year 2021 through 2024, DHS components led or assisted in the seizure of approximately 460,000 pounds of fentanyl and precursor chemicals. DHS seized more fentanyl in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 than in 2021 and 2022 combined, a trend CBP attributed to special operations launched in March 2023.²³²⁴ Roughly 68 percent of seized fentanyl originated in Mexico, while about 84 percent of precursor chemicals came from China.

Staffing, Budget, and Agent Morale

Funding for border operations grew substantially. The fiscal year 2024 Homeland Security Appropriations bill provided $19.6 billion for CBP, more than $3 billion above the president’s budget request, including $8.3 billion for Border Patrol operations and funding for more than 2,000 additional agents to reach a funded level of 22,000. ICE detention bed capacity was funded at 41,500, up from 34,000 in fiscal year 2023 and well above the 25,000 the administration had requested.²⁵

Agent morale was a running concern. The National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union, was openly critical throughout. After Biden claimed at a June 2024 debate that Border Patrol had endorsed him, the NBPC responded publicly: “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.” The union did endorse the bipartisan Border Act of 2024, with NBPC President Brandon Judd calling it “a step in the right direction” that would grant officers “new legally defined powers.”²⁶ That bill failed in the Senate. At a March 2025 hearing, NBPC Executive Vice President Jon Anfinsen testified there had been a “complete 180-degree change” in agent morale after the change in administrations.²⁷

Impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas

On February 13, 2024, the House voted 214-213 to approve two articles of impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and breach of public trust through false statements to Congress. An earlier attempt on February 6 had failed 214-216, with all Democrats and three Republicans opposed.²⁸ The House Homeland Security Committee’s investigation had produced seven reports across nearly 400 pages alleging violations of the INA, abuse of parole authority, and false testimony.²⁹ The Senate dismissed the charges without a full trial. Mayorkas was the second Cabinet member in U.S. history to be impeached.

How the Record Closed

By January 2025, Biden’s final month in office, Border Patrol encounters had dropped to about 29,100, a fraction of the December 2023 peak.³³⁰¹⁰ The CBP One app was replaced with a “CBP Home” app that included a self-deportation reporting feature. By August 2025, southwest border apprehensions had fallen 89 percent compared with August 2024.³¹

1
Migration Policy Institute. Biden Immigration Legacy
2
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP Enforcement Statistics FY2024
3
Pew Research Center. Migrant Encounters at the US-Mexico Border
4
ABC7. Border Encounters Numbers Data
5
U.S. Government Publishing Office. House Homeland Security Hearing
6
House Committee on Homeland Security. Fiscal Year 2024 Startling Stats
7
Peterson Institute for International Economics. Trump vs Biden Immigration Side-by-Side Policy Comparison
8
Council on Foreign Relations. US Detention of Child Migrants
9
American Immigration Council. Migrant Protection Protocols
10
NPR. CBP One App Migrants DHS Border
11
House Committee on Homeland Security. CBP One App One Pager
12
House Judiciary Committee. CHNV Parole Program Two Years Later
13
Migration Policy Institute. Title 42 Autopsy
14
NPR. Biden Administration Ends Title 42
15
American Immigration Council. CBP One Overview
16
Immigrant Justice. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v Biden
17
The American Presidency Project. Proclamation 10773, Securing the Border
18
Federal Register. Securing the Border
19
Houston Public Media. ACLU Sues Biden Administration Over New Executive Action on the Southern Border
20
Justia. Biden v Texas, 597 U.S.
21
FactCheck.org. Bidens Border Wall Explained
22
Houston Public Media. Texas Attorney General Says Biden Must Continue Border Wall Construction
23
U.S. Government Accountability Office. GAO-25-107667
24
USAFacts. How Much Fentanyl Is Seized at US Borders
25
U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations. Homeland Security FY24 Bill Highlights
26
KATU. Border Patrol Union Denies Bidens Claim Agency Endorsed Him
27
House Committee on Homeland Security. Homeland Republicans Detail the Cause and Impacts of the Biden-Harris Border Crisis
28
Missouri Independent. US House Republicans Impeach Homeland Security Chief Mayorkas on Second Try
29
House Committee on Homeland Security. Chairman Green Urges Passage of Articles of Impeachment Against Secretary Mayorkas
30
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS 2025 Year in Review
31
House Committee on Homeland Security. Border Brief Homeland Republicans Detail the Trump Administrations Border Security Success