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Notes -
The estimates giving 6-7 million tend to be based around only CBP encounters, minus explusions/deportations, plus the CBP's own estimate for 'gotaways' or undetected illegal immigration. This isn't the absolute lowest-bound possible -- some number are repeat offenders -- but it's a very low estimate, especially when the CBP is also claiming that its apprehension rate has remained stable from the lowest part of the Trump/COVID lull til today, and as immigration courts have been increasingly swamped.
((And, obviously, this excludes visa overstays.))
I don't think 15m is correct (and it might just be taken from a Trump claim), and most of the ways to get anywhere plausibly close to it depend on some questionable assumptions (eg, declaring some of the weirder refugee categorizations "illegally imported" even if it's not strictly speaking illegal for the immigrants themselves), but the Biden admin numbers are pretty hard to believe.
Are there any estimates from relatively unbiased sources that give a much higher number?
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