Breaking Down the FY 2024 Southwest Border Numbers

It would be fair to call FY 2024 the worst year ever, at both the border and the ports

By Andrew R. Arthur on October 24, 2024
Lehigh

On October 21, I complained that CBP’s border and port encounter statistics for September—the last month of FY 2024—had yet to be released even though they were almost a week late and that early voting had begun in 34 states. I’m too modest to say that the squeaky pundit gets the grease, but shortly thereafter CBP finally released the September 2024 numbers. Here’s what they have to say.

First, a definitional note: “Encounters” is the term DHS has used since March 2020 to define both Border Patrol apprehensions of migrants who have crossed illegally between the ports of entry and aliens deemed inadmissible at the ports of entry by CBP officers in the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO). 

Border Patrol Southwest Border Apprehensions

In September, agents at the Southwest border made nearly 54,000 illegal migrants, bringing total apprehensions in FY 2024 to 1.53 million illegal entrants, the same total I predicted in that earlier piece. 

Border Patrol has published Southwest border apprehension numbers going all the way back to FY 1960 (the last full fiscal year of the Eisenhower administration), and in that period, apprehensions only topped 1.53 million on six occasions: FY 1986 (nearly 1.616 million); FY 1999 (1.537 million on the nose); FY 2000 (less than 1.644 million); FY 2021 (more than 1.659 million); FY 2022 (more than 2.206 million); and FY 2023 (nearly 2.046 million).

Most of those FY 2021 apprehensions occurred on the Biden-Harris watch—1.438 million (86.7 percent) occurred in an eight-month period after February 2021. But even then, FY 2024 was “just” the seventh worst year for Southwest border apprehensions in recorded history. 

In many ways, however, it was the worst year for apprehensions ever. Let me explain. 

Nearly all the apprehensions that occurred prior to FY 2007 involved single adults from Mexico (in that year more than 90 percent), and almost all of them were men. The vast majority were simply turned around and sent back across the border within a few hours.

Consequently, those early numbers were inflated by what is referred to in immigration as “border recidivism”, defined as “the rate at which people try to reenter the US illegally within one year of being caught and sent back to their home country”. 

According to a 2017 DHS analysis, the Southwest border recidivism rate was at or above 30 percent from FY 2005 until FY 2009, fell below 25 percent in FY 2011 and then below 20 percent in FY 2016 (when it was 12 percent). The total rate of recidivism as calculated by CBP for all U.S. borders was 10 percent in FY 2017, 11 percent in FY 2018, and 7 percent in FY 2019.

In FY 2016, however, for the first time in Southwest border history, the number of illegal entrants from Mexico fell below half of the total (46.7 percent), but even then, nearly all of the rest (48.7 percent of the total) were from just three countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (known collectively as the “Northern Triangle”).

There are three main reasons for this demographic shift, and for simplicity’s sake I’ll just provide links to more in-depth analyses for each: the Flores settlement agreement; the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), which provides special benefits to unaccompanied alien children who aren’t from Canada or Mexico); and USCIS’s implementation of the low statutory credible-fear standard.

In much the same way quick returns to Mexico boosted the recidivism rate prior to September 11, 2001 (when Congress increased then-meager border-security resources), Title 42 to a degree inflated it between March 20, 2020 (when the first Title 42 order was issued) and May 11, 2023 (when expulsions under those orders ended).

For example, of the more than 1.659 million illegal entrants apprehended by agents at the Southwest border in FY 2021, 1.04 million (63 percent) were expelled under Title 42. That year, CBP reported that the Border Patrol recidivism rate was 27 percent, and many of those individuals were double- and triple-counted after they attempted to enter repeatedly following expulsion. 

Under the Biden-Harris administration, however, Mexico increasingly refused to accept migrants expelled under Title 42 who weren’t Mexican nationals or single-adult nationals of the Northern Triangle countries. 

In FY 2022, Border Patrol’s Title 42 expulsion rate dropped to 47 percent, and by December 2022—a month in which agents apprehended more than 222,000 illegal entrants at the Southwest border—fewer than 51,500 (23.2 percent) illegal migrants were expelled. 

Not surprisingly, DHS hasn’t issued formal recidivism statistics since FY 2021, but in September 2023 (three months after Title 42 ended), CBP admitted that the monthly rate had dropped to just 11 percent.

None of the 1.53 million illegal entrants apprehended by Border Patrol in FY 2024 were expelled under Title 42, but worse, the number of illegal entrants who aren’t from Mexico or the Northern Triangle has surged. 

More than 643,000 illegal migrants apprehended at the Southwest border last fiscal year are “extra-continentals”, that is they are from farther abroad than North or Central America. 

And while the Biden-Harris administration struck a deal in January 2023 under which Mexico agreed to accept up to 30,000 expelled Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan nationals monthly: (1) it’s not clear whether that deal is still in effect; (2) more than 61,000 nationals of those countries were apprehended in December; and (3) just 12 percent of the illegal migrants apprehended in FY 2024 came from those four countries.

That leaves 493,000 illegal migrants (nearly a third of the total) who are neither Mexican nationals, nor from the Northern Triangle, nor nationals of the so-called “CHNV countries”. Removing them will be a significant challenge for either the Harris or the second Trump administration—CBP can’t simply open the doors of the ports and release them back to Mexico. 

Given all of this, it would be fair to state that, qualitatively if not quantitatively, FY 2024 was the worst year ever for border security at the Southwest border. Despite that fact, CBP still lauded its enforcement efforts in its September 2024 “Monthly Update”. 

OFO Southwest Border Port of Entry Encounters

If FY 2024 wasn’t quantitatively the worst year at the Southwest border for Border Patrol apprehensions, it was far and away the worst for OFO Southwest border port encounters. 

Last fiscal year, CBP officers stopped more than 604,000 inadmissible applicants for admission at the ports along the U.S.-Mexico line, nearly 41 percent more than in FY 2023, but more significantly, a 380-percent increase compared to FY 2019 (126,001), and 8 times as many port encounters as in FY 2021 (75,480).

But as strange as it sounds, that increase is exactly the Biden-Harris administration’s plan. 

In January 2023, to drive down illegal entries (and likely to hide apprehension totals, the key metric used in the media to measure border security, too), the White House began allowing would-be illegal entrants to preschedule their illegal entries at the Southwest border ports using the CBP One app, a gambit I have dubbed the “CBP One app interview scheme”. 

On June 30, 2023, CBP increased the number of app interview appointments available to 1,450 per day (up from 1,250 per day previously), and while not much is known about what occurs during those port appointments, two things are clear. 

First, congressional disclosures have revealed that 95.8 percent of those who schedule appointments using the app are subsequently released into the United States on parole. 

Second, according to CBP, more than 852,000 facially inadmissible aliens have made appointments using the app through the end of September. Put those two facts together and you’ll see that more than 816,000 aliens with no visas and no right to be here have entered the United States thanks to the CBP One app interview scheme—more people than reside in San Francisco, Seattle, or Denver. 

Because all of those CBP One app interviewees are inadmissible, they register as CBP “encounters”.

Nationwide OFO Port Encounters

FY 2024 also saw the largest number of OFO port encounters nationwide: nearly 1.344 million. 

Of those, as noted, more than 604,000 involved inadmissible aliens at the Southwest border ports, and an additional 175,000-plus were stopped at the Northern border ports. Put the two together, and you will arrive at just fewer than 779,700.

Where did the rest, more than 564,000, come from?

From the seaports and international airports, the latter of which brings me back to nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for “CHNV Parole”. 

CHNV Parole is another innovation the Biden-Harris administration launched in January 2023 in an attempt to drive down the number of illegal migrants apprehended at the Southwest border. Under that program, up to 30,000 inadmissible nationals of the four countries are allowed to fly directly into the United States, with grants of two-year periods of parole.

There’s no statutory sanction for CHNV Parole, and (contrary to the parole statute) no real plan to detain those parolees or to make them leave once their two-year parole periods expire, but thus far states have been unable to stop the program in the courts. 

As CBP explains, “more than 110,000 Cubans, nearly 211,000 Haitians, more than 93,000 Nicaraguans, and more than 117,000 Venezuelans arrived lawfully and were granted parole” through the end of September—531,000 individuals in total, or more people than live in Atlanta.

I should note that some of those 564,000 air-and seaport cases involved other aliens who did not use CHNV Parole. Subtract roughly 360,000 from that total, though, and you will arrive at a more historically consistent encounter figure. 

The Two-Handed Pundit

On the one hand, Border Patrol apprehensions are down, largely thanks to internal efforts made by the Mexican government to impede “other than Mexican” illegal migrants from traversing the country. (My colleague Todd Bensman has reported on these efforts from southern Mexico.)

On the other hand, total CBP encounters are running just short of the all-time record set in FY 2023 (2.9 million last fiscal year compared to 3.2 million the year before). 

Cities (like New York City and Aurora, Colo.) and towns (like Springfield, Ohio, Charleroi, Pa., and Logansport, Ind.) aren’t dealing with migrant crises because of how many illegal entrants Border Patrol is apprehending. Rather, it’s because so many inadmissible migrants without jobs or families are coming and DHS continues to release into the country. As long as that continues, the crisis will, too.