U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) prevents people from entering the country illegally or bringing anything harmful or illegal into the United States, while facilitating lawful international travel and trade.
The CBP Encounters Key Homeland Security Metric (KHSM) includes any encounter of a removable noncitizen. This includes three sets of data:
- People who unlawfully crossed the border between ports of entry.
- People who entered at a port of entry but are inadmissible.
- People expelled under the Title 42 public health order between March 2020 and May 2023 due to COVID-19
Data Source
All Encounters KHSM data are from the OHSS Statistical System of Record (SSOR).The SSOR is the authoritative source of DHS statistical data and undergoes rigorous validation. We construct SSOR data for CBP encounters datasets from CBP provided administrative records stored in the Enforcement Integrated Database (EID).
Data Lineage
The United States Border Patrol (USBP) extracts EID e3Processing apprehension data from the Border Patrol Enforcement Tracking System (BPETS) Snapshot reporting system. The Office of Field Operations (OFO) extracts EID Unified Secondary (USEC) inadmissible data from the BorderStat reporting system. They both give us this data as a comma-separated values (CSV) file.
Units of Measure and Descriptive Variables
Units of Measure
Encounters
Any encounter of a removable noncitizen by CBP’s United States Border Patrol (USBP) or Office of Field Operations (OFO).
This includes:
- The apprehension of a removable noncitizen by USBP under Title 8 authority
- A determination of inadmissibility by OFO for a person requesting admission at a port of entry (land, sea, or air) under Title 8 authority
- An expulsion from the United States by USBP or OFO to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 disease pursuant to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Title 42 authority
The encounter unit of measure is CBP recorded encounters with removable noncitizens. We count people encountered more than once during a reporting period multiple times in the tables.
Descriptive Variables
Country of Citizenship
A country to which a person owes allegiance and by which they are entitled to be protected. Each country sets its own rules for granting citizenship. These rules may be based on birth or naturalization. Some people may not have a country of citizenship.
Encounter Agency
- OFO: OFO encounters include a mix of administrative encounters and enforcement encounters.
- USBP: All USBP encounters are enforcement encounters.
Family Status
The demographic status of the subject of a CBP encounter, at the time of the encounter.
Includes the following groups:
- Accompanied minor (AM): An individual younger than 18 years old encountered by CBP OFO who has no lawful immigration status and is traveling with a U.S. citizen or lawfully admissible noncitizen parent or legal guardian. AM data are limited to OFO encounters.
- Family unit individual (FM): A noncitizen encountered by CBP who belongs to a family unit. A family unit is defined as one or more minors plus their parent(s) or legal guardian(s) with whom they are traveling. The definition excludes minor children (under the age of 18) traveling with adult family members who are not their parents or legal guardians. All references to family units or FMs are to numbers of individuals in families, not to family groupings.
- Single adult (SA): A noncitizen encountered by CBP who is at least 18 years of age and not part of a family unit.
- Unaccompanied child (UC): A child under 18, who has no lawful immigration status in the United States and has no available parent or legal guardian in the United States.
Field office (CBP OFO)
Any one of 20 geographic areas into which the United States is divided for OFO activities plus CBP preclearance activities abroad.
List of Field Offices: Laredo, Miami, San Diego, Buffalo, Houston, New York, Seattle, Boston, El Paso, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tampa, San Francisco, Tucson, Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans, San Juan, and Portland
Sector
Any one of 20 geographic areas into which the United States is divided for the DHS USBP activities.
List of Sector Offices: Big Bend, Blaine WA, Buffalo NY, Del Rio Tx, Detroit MI, El Centro CA, El Paso Tx, Grand Forks ND, Houlton ME, Havre MT, Laredo TX, Miami FL, New Orleans LA, Rio Grande TX, Ramey PR, San Diego CA, Spokane WA, Swanton VT, Tucson AZ, and Yuma AZ
Region
Refers to one of four areas in which encounters occur:
- Southwest land border: Includes the 9 USBP sectors and 4 OFO field offices adjacent to the land border dividing the United States and Mexico. Doesn't include encounters at air and seaports in these OFO field offices.
- Northern land border: Includes the 8 USBP sectors and 4 OFO field offices adjacent to the land border dividing the continental United States and Canada. Doesn't include encounters at air and seaports in these OFO field offices.
- Coastal border: Includes the 3 USBP sectors adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico. Doesn't include the Rio Grande Valley sector and all OFO seaports.
- Air Ports of Entry/Interior: Includes all OFO encounters at airports, including those at the 15 OFO pre-clearance locations located within foreign airports. Includes referrals to OFO from other agencies.
Data Processing
We clean and de-duplicate United States Border Patrol (USBP) Apprehensions and Office of Field Operations (OFO) Inadmissibles data. We define the descriptive variables of the KHSM by values found within each observation in the respective event's data. Data Cleaning
- De-duplicate OFO data using the Sigma Subject Person ID field.
- Strip time values from dates in date fields.
- Strip special characters from the data columns.
- Delete extra blank columns or rows.
Integration
Once we stack USBP and OFO data into a CBP Master dataset. We produce all CBP data tables out of the CBP Master dataset.
Imputation
We don’t substitute any missing data for the CBP Encounter KHSM.
Limitations
Undercount and Overcount
This report includes every immigration encounter event by United States Border Patrol (USBP) and Office of Field Operations (OFO) secondary inspection of inadmissible non-citizen that took place during the reference period. Our de-duplication of OFO data indicates low rates of overlap (less than 0.1 percent).
From Fiscal Years 2020-2023, USBP identified all encounters of individuals in a family that resulted in a Title 42 Expulsion with a Family Unit/Group ID number. These encounters include a mix of family unit individuals (FMs) and other family members that classify as Single Adults (SAs), such as adult children, aunts, and uncles. We cannot differentiate between the FMs and SAs for these encounters, so we count them all as FMs. This results in an unknown overcount of FMs and undercount of SAs. The total number of these encounters is less than 320 thousand.
Accuracy
We extract data from live systems that are subject to change. Statistical information is subject to change due to corrections, systems changes, changes in data definition or adding information.
Previous months’ reporting may change during the same fiscal year as records mature and due to operational data quality efforts. We permanently lock data at the end of the fiscal year as part of the September monthly lock-down. Our encounter reporting always uses the most recent monthly updated data.
We round each row of data to the nearest 10 to protect privacy and security. As a result, the actual totals and the totals of the rounded rows can vary.
Timeliness
We update this KHSM on a 75-day delay following the end of the month to allow time for operational data quality checks and other data maturity efforts before release. We update this KHSM on the third Thursday of each month. Data are current as of the report date and update previous releases.
Linkage Error
There is currently no linkage of data for the Encounters KHSM report.
Reporting Period
USBP Encounter data are available from Fiscal Years 2000–present. OFO Encounter data are available from Fiscal Years 2004–present.
Changes from Previous Releases
The sources, methods, and definitions used in this report are not substantially different from previous reports. No special caution is required when comparing these statistics with those in previous reports.
