How many border encounters are there?
CBP recorded 34,428 encounters in August 2026, and 348,866 so far in fiscal year 2026.
Answer current as of
Encounters peaked at 370,883 in December 2023, and were 34,428 in August 2026
Every encounter CBP recorded in the month, across all components and areas of responsibility, October 2022 to August 2026. An encounter is an event: the same person encountered twice in a month is two.
The file CBP publishes begins in October 2022 and does not reach further back, so no comparison here extends beyond it.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection — Nationwide Encounters
The figures behind this chart
| Month | Encounters | Fiscal year |
|---|---|---|
| October 2022 | 278,317 | 2023 |
| November 2022 | 284,624 | 2023 |
| December 2022 | 302,392 | 2023 |
| January 2023 | 209,151 | 2023 |
| February 2023 | 213,911 | 2023 |
| March 2023 | 259,471 | 2023 |
| April 2023 | 276,036 | 2023 |
| May 2023 | 275,166 | 2023 |
| June 2023 | 211,457 | 2023 |
| July 2023 | 245,154 | 2023 |
| August 2023 | 304,073 | 2023 |
| September 2023 | 341,392 | 2023 |
| October 2023 | 309,024 | 2024 |
| November 2023 | 308,605 | 2024 |
| December 2023 | 370,883 | 2024 |
| January 2024 | 242,530 | 2024 |
| February 2024 | 256,071 | 2024 |
| March 2024 | 246,505 | 2024 |
| April 2024 | 247,929 | 2024 |
| May 2024 | 240,924 | 2024 |
| June 2024 | 204,932 | 2024 |
| July 2024 | 170,180 | 2024 |
| August 2024 | 158,893 | 2024 |
| September 2024 | 144,666 | 2024 |
| October 2024 | 142,742 | 2025 |
| November 2024 | 124,972 | 2025 |
| December 2024 | 124,482 | 2025 |
| January 2025 | 81,479 | 2025 |
| February 2025 | 28,613 | 2025 |
| March 2025 | 29,013 | 2025 |
| April 2025 | 29,197 | 2025 |
| May 2025 | 29,470 | 2025 |
| June 2025 | 25,185 | 2025 |
| July 2025 | 24,589 | 2025 |
| August 2025 | 26,162 | 2025 |
| September 2025 | 26,002 | 2025 |
| October 2025 | 30,636 | 2026 |
| November 2025 | 30,423 | 2026 |
| December 2025 | 30,714 | 2026 |
| January 2026 | 34,632 | 2026 |
| February 2026 | 26,980 | 2026 |
| March 2026 | 31,462 | 2026 |
| April 2026 | 31,358 | 2026 |
| May 2026 | 32,825 | 2026 |
| June 2026 | 31,620 | 2026 |
| July 2026 | 33,788 | 2026 |
| August 2026 | 34,428 | 2026 |
Where this comes from
The figure is the result of a checked-in query, hub_headline.sql, run against the published data. Every number on this page can be traced to it.