Border Crossings by Year: Lawful Entries and CBP Encounters

About 153 million people and vehicles lawfully entered the United States through land ports in 2025, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Over the same period, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded roughly 2.9 million enforcement encounters in fiscal year 2024. Border crossings by year come from two different federal datasets that measure different things, and the gap between them is where most public confusion starts.

Two Datasets People Mix Up

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics publishes Border Crossing Entry Data, which counts every person and vehicle that legally enters the country through a staffed land port. Totals run into the hundreds of millions because the count includes daily commuters, tourists, and commercial trucks. The data is collected by CBP and released through the BTS Border Crossing/Entry query tool.

CBP separately publishes enforcement encounter statistics. Those track people apprehended by Border Patrol between ports of entry and people found inadmissible at ports of entry. The numbers are much smaller but drive most of the political coverage. In fiscal year 2024, enforcement encounters came to about 2.9 million while lawful land crossings exceeded 150 million. Treating one figure as if it were the other is the most common mistake in discussions about border activity.

Lawful Land Crossings by Year

BTS reports annual inbound totals across all U.S. land ports, combining personal vehicles, pedestrians, trucks, and buses at both the northern and southern borders:

2019: about 161.9 million
2020: about 93.6 million (a 42 percent drop)
2021: about 103.6 million
2025: about 152.8 million

The 2020 collapse came from emergency travel restrictions that shut down non-essential crossings at both borders for months. Commercial truck traffic barely dipped, falling from 12.1 million crossings in 2019 to 11.6 million in 2020, because freight was treated as essential. Personal vehicles and pedestrians absorbed nearly all of the loss.¹

Recovery has been gradual and uneven. By 2025, personal vehicle crossings from Canada had declined 18.8 percent compared to 2024, while pedestrian crossings on the southern border climbed to nearly 45 million. The 2025 total remains below the 2019 baseline, so overall volume has not fully returned to pre-pandemic levels.¹

CBP Enforcement Encounters by Fiscal Year

Enforcement figures follow a very different trajectory. The federal fiscal year runs from October 1 through September 30, so these totals do not line up with calendar-year crossing data.²

FY 2017: 526,901
FY 2018: 683,178
FY 2019: 1,148,024
FY 2020: 646,822
FY 2021: 1,956,519
FY 2022: 2,766,582
FY 2023: 3,201,144
FY 2024: 2,901,142

The climb from FY 2020 to FY 2023 reflects both increased migration and a change in counting methodology. Starting in March 2020, CBP began reporting Title 42 expulsions alongside traditional Title 8 apprehensions and inadmissibility findings. Title 42, the public health authority used to rapidly expel migrants during the COVID-19 emergency, ended in May 2023. Some individuals expelled under Title 42 tried crossing multiple times and were counted with each attempt, so the totals overstate unique individuals.³

Fiscal Year vs. Calendar Year

Comparing the two datasets year to year requires attention to the time period each uses. BTS reports on calendar years. CBP and DHS report on fiscal years, so FY 2025 covers October 2024 through September 2025. A “2024” enforcement figure and a “2024” crossings figure describe overlapping but non-identical stretches of time.

One boundary worth noting: BTS land border data does not include air arrivals. The International Trade Administration reported 5.3 million non-U.S. citizen air passenger arrivals in December 2025 alone, so annual international air arrivals number well into the tens of millions and sit outside the land-crossing totals above.

Crossings by Mode

Personal vehicles dominate. In 2025, roughly 94.4 million personal vehicle crossings were recorded across both borders. Pedestrians accounted for about 45.1 million, concentrated on the southern border where walkable urban ports connect cities like San Diego-Tijuana and El Paso-Ciudad Juárez.¹

Commercial trucks are tracked separately because each crossing involves a customs inspection. In 2025, about 12.9 million truck crossings were recorded: 7.6 million from Mexico and 5.3 million from Canada. Laredo alone handled nearly 2.9 million truck crossings from Mexico, the single busiest commercial corridor in the country. Bus crossings are the smallest category, totaling roughly 414,000 in 2025.¹

Southern Border vs. Northern Border

The Mexican border handles roughly five times the volume of the Canadian border. In 2025, the southern border recorded about 128.5 million inbound crossings across all modes; the northern border recorded about 24.2 million.¹

Busiest Southern Ports

San Ysidro, California is the highest-volume land crossing in the Western Hemisphere. In 2025 it processed about 23.3 million crossings: 15.3 million personal vehicles, nearly 8 million pedestrians, and roughly 37,000 buses. El Paso, Texas came second with about 13.8 million crossings across all modes. Nearly all of the 45 million pedestrian crossings recorded nationally in 2025 happened at Mexican border ports, with San Ysidro, El Paso, Otay Mesa, Nogales, and Calexico accounting for the bulk. Many crossers are daily commuters who live on one side and work or shop on the other.¹

Busiest Northern Ports

Northern border traffic runs mostly on personal vehicles and commercial trucks, with little pedestrian activity. Buffalo-Niagara Falls led in personal vehicle crossings with about 3.7 million in 2025, followed by Detroit at 3.5 million. For commercial trucks, Detroit handled 1.1 million crossings and Port Huron processed just over 1 million, reflecting the dense manufacturing supply chains between Michigan and Ontario. Auto parts and finished vehicles cross the Detroit corridor repeatedly during assembly, and any disruption at these ports moves through North American manufacturing within days.¹

Where to Pull the Numbers Yourself

BTS maintains a public query tool that filters crossing data by port, mode, and time period. Data publishes monthly with an annual summary release, typically covering the prior calendar year. The most recent annual release covers 2025.¹

CBP publishes enforcement encounter data on a separate page, broken down by fiscal year, border sector, and encounter type. When you pull both, check the time period on each report before comparing them side by side.³

1
Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Border Crossing Data Annual Release: 2025
2
USAGov. The Federal Budget Process
3
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP Enforcement Statistics Fiscal Year 2024