“[Under the Biden administration there were] 25 million people coming across [the border].”

The "25 million" figure has no basis in official counts. CBP's nationwide "encounters" series counts enforcement events, not people: Border Patrol apprehensions, port-of-entry inadmissibles and Title 42 expulsions. Even the House Homeland Security Committee majority, hostile to the Biden border record, counted "more than 10.8 million encounters nationwide" from fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2024. And "encounters refer to events, not people": around a quarter of pandemic-era encounters involved repeat crossers, so the number of distinct people is lower still.

The strongest point for the claim is that some crossers were never encountered: the same committee counted "roughly 2 million known gotaways" since fiscal 2021. Adding those gives about 12.8 million events, about half of 25 million. Pew estimates the entire unauthorized immigrant population of the United States reached a record 14 million in 2023, up 3.5 million in two years: a real surge, but nowhere near 25 million people coming across under Biden.

"It is important to note that encounters refer to events, not people, and that some migrants are encountered more than once." (Pew Research Center)