Illegal immigration outpacing U.S. births? No, that claim is built on misused data | Fact check

Gabrielle Settles, Eric Litke and Kim Breen, USA TODAY
·5 min read
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Texas National Guard soldiers install additional razor wire lie along the Rio Grande on January 10, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. Following a major surge of migrant border crossings late last year, miles of razor wire as well as huge quantities of refuse remain along the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass.

The claim: Data shows immigrants entering the US illegally outnumber American births

A Dec. 30, 2023, Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a line graph that purportedly compares American birthrates to illegal immigration from 2019 to 2023.

The chart supposedly shows the number of immigrants entering the country illegally rising steadily before surpassing the number of births in August or September 2023.

“Wow, more Illegal Immigrants are entering our country than American's (sic) are giving birth,” the caption reads.

X owner Elon Musk, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other social media users shared versions of the graph and the claim. People who reacted to their posts said it was evidence that immigrants are taking over the country.

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Our rating: False

The graph and data behind it do not show the number of immigrants entering the U.S. illegally. It shows the number of documented encounters between border officials and immigrants, a tally that doesn't factor in the many immigrants who are turned away. Experts warn this figure isn't an accurate representation of the number of people entering the U.S. illegally.

Social media graph based on flawed statistics

Jack Malde, senior policy analyst of immigration and workforce policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the comparison the post sets out to make is not fundamentally sound.

"A comparison of number of births to illegal entry is random," Malde said. "There is no logical link between these two variables, and it isn’t at all clear what one should take from the fact that one is bigger than the other. I understand how a chart like that can stimulate discussion, but it isn’t useful to compare these two variables."

A closer look at the numbers shows this post got the specifics wrong as well, though, due to misunderstanding U.S. immigration data.

The graph was first shared in December 2023 on X, formerly Twitter, by an account called Datahazard that claimed illegal immigration surpassed births in August 2023. The user later said the switch actually happened in September 2023. Neither is correct.

The chart compares births to encounters, a tally that counts the number of incidents in which an immigrant is either apprehended or expelled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. There were fewer encounters than births in August 2023.

September 2023 data requires a closer look. There were 341,387 encounters that month, compared to 305,000 births.

But unlike the number of births, the encounter tally includes people who did not stay in the U.S. In September 2023, 68,210 people left or were expelled from the U.S. following encounters, according to Department of Homeland Security data. That alone would bring the illegal immigration tally below the number of births.

"Bottom line, the number of new illegal immigrants settling in the country is without precedent, but it does not exceed births," said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies.

But there are other problems with conflating encounters with illegal immigration, experts say.

The incidents identified as encounters don't all involve people attempting to enter illegally, Malde said.

"The term ‘illegal entry’ can be highly misleading as some people who are classed as encounters who have not been removed from the country or sent back to where they came from may be legally seeking asylum but not had a final determination made yet," Malde said. "These people are not ‘illegal immigrants.'"

And an individual can be encountered more than once, which the DHS calls a “repeat encounter.”

There are no national statistics on repeated encounters publicly available. However, Customs and Border Protection records the number of repeated encounters at the Southwest border. For example, the border agency reported it had 232,972 encounters in August 2023. But the agency said there were only 164,911 unique encounters along the Southwest border that month, which refers to people who have only been encountered once within 12 months.

Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, told USA TODAY that repeat encounters happened more frequently under Title 42, a public health order that prohibited border control agencies from detaining migrants in holding stations where COVID-19 could spread. The order, which lasted from March 2020 to May 2023, allowed for immigrants to be quickly expelled, but those expelled to Mexico could return to the U.S. fairly quickly without certain penalties.

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Experts also note that the concept of comparing official illegal immigration data to any other number is misleading because no count will factor in the number of people who enter the country undetected.

“While DHS employs a number of concrete metrics to track border security operations, it is difficult to precisely quantify illegal flows because illegal border crossers actively seek to evade detection, and some flows are undetected,” reads a DHS fact sheet.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response. Datahazard did not return a request for comment.

PolitiFact also debunked this claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Data doesn't show illegal immigration outpaces birthrate | Fact check