Nancy Pelosi’s wrong comparison about illegal immigration under Joe Biden, Donald Trump

In a New York Times interview about the 2024 election, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the Democrats lost partly because of cultural issues. Journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro, co-host of "The Interview," pointed out that most voters said they voted on inflation, the economy and immigration. 

"Those aren’t cultural issues," Garcia-Navarro said. "Those are policy issues."

Pelosi countered, "When the candidate for president is saying that these people coming in are murderers, rapists, thieves and all the rest of that. He made that a cultural issue."

Garcia-Navarro said millions of people crossed the U.S. border under President Joe Biden’s administration. Pelosi said, "I don’t think we were clear enough by saying fewer people came in under President Biden than came under Donald Trump."

Illegal immigration under Biden has dropped significantly in the past four months, reaching levels lower than President-elect Donald Trump’s last few months in office. But it’s wrong to say illegal immigration, which reached historic highs under Biden, is lower overall than it was during Trump’s first term.

Pelosi’s office did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment, but illegal immigration data contradict Pelosi’s claim. A Pelosi aide told The Washington Post that Pelosi was referring to deportation data. That data shows that Biden’s administration repatriated more people than Trump did, but that’s not what Pelosi said in the interview.

From February 2021, Biden’s first full month in office, to September 2024, the latest month with data, U.S. Border Patrol agents encountered migrants trying to illegally cross U.S. borders between ports of entry 7.2 million times.

Under Trump’s administration, from February 2017 to January 2021, Border Patrol encountered immigrants between ports of entry 1.8 million times. 

The encounters data does not represent how many people were let into the U.S; there’s no specific data for that. But according to federal data, Customs and Border Protection released about 313,000 people under Trump’s administration and about 3.6 million people under Biden’s administration, to await court hearings. (Biden’s data includes people given humanitarian parole, a legal authorization to live and work in the U.S. for up to two years.)

Based on the available data, fewer people did not come to the U.S. under Biden than under Trump, as Pelosi claimed. But there are important caveats about the data to consider.

The pandemic changed data tracking: Before March 2020, border data tracked the times people were apprehended crossing the border illegally under immigration law. During the pandemic, the Trump and Biden administrations apprehended people under that law. But officials also began tracking expulsions under a public health policy, Title 42. People expelled under this policy were not let into the country; whereas people apprehended under immigration law in some cases could still be let in.

Starting in fiscal year 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began reporting encounters, a combination of apprehensions and Title 42 expulsions. (Title 42 enforcement ended in May 2023.) 

So, the change in immigration data tracking makes it hard to fairly compare entries across different administrations.

Encounters represent events not people: Not everyone encountered is let into the country. Immigration data represents events, not people. If one person tries to enter the country three times and is stopped each time by border officials, for example, that equals three encounters, even if it’s the same person encountered. People expelled under Title 42 were not penalized for repeat attempted entries, so many tried coming in multiple times.

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In recent months, encounters have drastically dropped: In June, Biden issued a policy limiting people’s ability to apply for asylum at the southwest border. Since then, Border Patrol encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped sharply, from more than 117,000 in May to fewer than 54,000 in September. 

From July to September, monthly Border Patrol encounter counts have been below the counts during Trump’s last four months in office.

Despite the data caveats and the drop in encounters in the past few months, Pelosi’s claim that fewer people came into the U.S. under Biden than under Trump is inaccurate.

As with encounters data, comparing prepandemic deportation data to deportation data during the public health emergency is challenging. There are multiple ways people can be repatriated — sent back to their home country or another country that will accept them. 

• Removals: This is when people are sent out of the U.S. via an official court order, often penalized for the illegal entry. This can include people who have lived in the United States for years and people who recently arrived. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is usually involved.

• Returns: This happens at the border when people are returned to their home countries without legal penalties and without being placed in formal removal proceedings. 

• Title 42 expulsions: These happened from March 2020 to May 2023 under the public health policy. Many people arriving at the border were not let into the United States and were expelled without legal penalties.

When combining the data for all these types of repatriations, Biden has sent out more people than Trump did (4.3 million compared with 2.2 million.)

But when looking only at Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, Trump removed more people than Biden did (about 294,000 compared with about 114,000.)

We asked immigration experts whether more encounters under Biden factored in the higher number of total repatriations under his administration. They said only partly, because despite the rise in illegal immigration encounters, the resources available for deportations have remained largely the same.

"The government has a finite capacity to identify, detain, and remove individuals, so it is not as if removals capacity can be dramatically scaled up or down based on a changing encounters picture," Michelle Mittelstadt, the nonpartisan think tank Migration Policy Institute’s communications director, told PolitiFact in September.

The rise in encounters influenced the decrease in Immigration and Customs Enforcement removals. Biden focused on repatriating people at the U.S. border, rather than deporting people who have been living in the U.S. for decades. Biden also had more total repatriations because he executed quick public health expulsions that didn’t require court orders much longer than Trump did. 

Also, under Biden, many more immigrants came from countries other than Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras than under Trump. It is harder to deport migrants from those other countries for "legal and logistical reasons," a Migration Policy Institute report said.

Pelosi said, "Fewer people came in under President Biden than came under Donald Trump." 

Under Biden, Border Patrol agents encountered migrants trying to enter the U.S.7.2 million times; under Trump, officials encountered migrants 1.8 million times. Encounters don’t mean people were let in, and there’s no data for how many people who were encountered are now living in the U.S. But the numbers of people released to await court hearings don’t corroborate Pelosi’s statement, either. There were about 313,000 under Trump compared with 3.6 million under Biden.

Pelosi’s team didn’t respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment. But it told The Washington Post that Pelosi was talking about deportation data.

Overall, Biden has carried out more total repatriations — sending people out of the U.S. — than Trump. But that’s not evidence that fewer people were let into the U.S. than under Trump. 

We rate Pelosi’s statement False.