Chart claiming to show immigrants' 'illegal entries' to US under Biden misrepresents real data

In early 2026, a chart appeared on social media sites like X claiming to show during former U.S. President Joe Biden's four years in office, 8% of Nicaragua's population entered the United States illegally. The chart displayed similar percentages for five other Latin American countries — Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Venezuela and Guatemala. 

It implied that "illegal entries" among people from those six countries were so high during Biden's presidency between January 2021 and January 2025 that it made sense to count them in terms of a percentage of countries' populations. 

Snopes readers contacted us asking whether the chart was accurate. 

We verified that the figures on the chart approximately matched data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency that tracks who enters the U.S. from other countries. However, even though the chart's data came from an official government source, it did not accurately represent reality.

This analysis of the chart aims to serve as a reminder that statistics are tools, and tools can be misused. 

Snopes contacted the chart's creator Jonatan Pallesen via email to ask him about the chart and its flaws. He initially declined to comment, saying he had "identified an error in the chart after posting, issued a correction, and deleted the chart," and therefore did not feel he had to "defend the methodology." (Pallesen did delete the chart, but Snopes could not find the supposed correction he issued.) He later provided brief responses to follow-up questions from Snopes, the details of which are below.

Despite the fact Pallesen removed the chart from his profile, social media users continued sharing it, claiming it proved 8% of Nicaragua's population entered the U.S. illegally during Biden's administration. That was not the case. 

Data tracks 'encounters,' not people

We tracked down the chart's creator by looking at its subtitle listing Pallesen's X account. Using web archiving tools, we separately confirmed that Pallesen created the visualization.

Pallesen has a Ph.D. in statistical genetics, according to his X bio and thesis from Aarhus University. His X bio says he creates "analyses and visualizations" and concludes with the phrase, "Less mass immigration, more births," a talking point echoed by right-wing figures. Pallesen has publicly called for less immigration and published works with scholars who The Guardian said "have been broadly criticized as eugenicists, or scientific racists."

Pallesen produced the chart using datasets marked "Nationwide Encounters" in the CBP's publicly available data repository. (Snopes reproduced the chart using that source, as well.)

To track people's interactions with federal authorities while attempting to enter the country, CBP's data counts "U.S. Border Patrol Title 8 apprehensions, Office of Field Operations Title 8 inadmissibles, and all Title 42 expulsions for fiscal years 2020 to date." Pallesen's chart, however, only included cases that immigration authories categorized as Title 8 encounters, so we did not consider non-Title 8 encounters while analyzing the chart.

Here's how the CBP data portal describes Title 8 encounters (the agency seems to use the terms "enforcement actions" and "encounters" interchangeably):

Title 8 Enforcement Actions refers to apprehensions or inadmissibles processed under CBP's immigration authority. Inadmissibles refers to individuals encountered at ports of entry (POEs) by OFO who are seeking lawful admission into the United States (U.S.) but are determined to be inadmissible, individuals presenting themselves to seek humanitarian protection under our laws, and individuals who withdraw an application for admission and return to their countries of origin within a short timeframe. Apprehensions refers to the physical control or temporary detainment of a person by USBP between POEs who is not lawfully in the U.S. which may or may not result in an arrest.

In more plain english, a Title 8 encounter happens when CBP does one of the following things:

• apprehends an undocumented immigrant;
• processes an individual looking to enter the country legally but is determined to be inadmissible (i.e. turned away at the border);
• processes an individual seeking humanitarian protection (Snopes interpreted this as meaning humanitarian parole and asylum);
• processes an individual who quickly withdrew an application for admission into the country and returned to their country of origin (Snopes interpreted this in reference to situations in which an application for entry was withdrawn before it could be reviewed).

That definition of Title 8 encounters breaks the chart's logic.

Take the following circumstance: CBP apprehends and deports an immigrant without legal documentation to live in the U.S., and then that person later attempts to reenter the country. Immigration authorities then determine the person is inadmissible. How many Title 8 encounters will the CBP's data show? 

The answer is two, because the database tracks individual encounters, not people. 

Even though the chart's title correctly described its data as showing "Illegal entries as % of home population," many readers were led astray. They incorrectly assumed that each encounter on the chart represented a new individual attempting to enter the U.S. 

This misunderstanding may partially be a result of the statistic the chart used. Instead of presenting raw numbers (such as displaying 442,120 encounters for Nicaragua), the chart divided the number of encounters (again, not the number of individuals) by the country's home population.  

In effect, dividing encounters by people is like dividing apples by oranges. The ratio between the two numbers is meaningless because its units are not the same.

That presentation of data also affected which country, among the six, appeared to have the most people try to enter the U.S. during Biden's term. A cursory reading of the chart might suggest that Nicaragua had the highest number. However, the exact same chart without factoring the countries' populations (i.e. without dividing the number of encounters by the countries' populations) placed Nicaragua as the country with the fewest entries.

In an email to Snopes, Pallesen acknowledged that the chart measured encounters, not individuals. He said he would "put this in a plot note" if he was to remake the visualization.

Chart double-counts some entries, includes unsuccessful attempts

In addition to the misleading presentation of "encounters" at border offices, the chart misrepresented numbers of immigrants who temporarily moved to the U.S. from Cuba, Haiti, Ncaragua and Venezuela under a now-cancelled parole program.

The Biden administration announced the so-called CHNV parole program in 2022 after starting a similar program for Ukrainian citizens during the Ukraine-Russia war. Potential applicants needed a U.S.-based sponsor to vouch for, and financially support, them. If the applicant passed background checks, they would fly to the U.S., where immigration authorities would vet them at border offices. The CHNV program accepted its first applications in January 2023. As of November 2024, over 500,000 individuals had entered the country under the program, according to a news release by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

U.S. President Donald Trump cancelled the CHNV program in 2025, during the first few months of his second term. In a June 2025 news release, DHS said it was immediately revoking immigrants' authorizations to live in the country through the program, and that it was sending letters to parolees telling them to leave the country. The Trump administration partially justified the CHNV program's cancellation by framing its participants as "illegal aliens." 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration considered the same interactions between immigrants and border officials as lawful. In other words, the legality of the program depends on who you ask.

While making the in-question chart, Pallesen initially assumed that individuals who entered the country through the CHNV program were not included in the CBP's Title 8 encounter statistics, considering the Trump administration's view of the program (that it's supposedly not legitimate).So, he added those estimates himself.

However, that was not the case. CBP's categorization of Title 8 encounters included cases of individuals seeking humanitarian protection, and detailed CBP data show the federal government considers entries by immigrants under the CHNV program as humanitarian protection. 

In simpler terms, Pallesen unnecessarily added CHNV flights, which resulted in those entries being double-counted.

That double-counting appeared to be the reason why he removed the chart from social media. "The values are too high in the withdrawn figure," Pallesen said. "This especially has an impact for Haiti, which has a large number of [CHNV entries]."

Furthermore, the CPB's data included scenarios between people and federal authorities that were not "illegal entries," contrary to the chart's title.

The data (and Pallesen's chart) included individuals who rescinded an entry application before it was reviewed, or who were turned away at a legal port of entry. Because those people never entered the country, it's incorrect to include them in a final count of "illegal entries." (The CBP statistics Snopes reviewed did not provide details to separate those cases from the category's total).

We produced our own versions of the chart, using encounter data from CBP and population data from the World Bank, both with and without duplicated CHNV figures to allow readers to see the difference.

(X user @jonatanpallesen)

In sum...

The number of immigrants from each country who entered the U.S. illegally during Biden's presidency is unknown, based on available data. That's because DHS and CPB data tracks "encounters" instead of individual people attempting to immigrate to the U.S.

However, we can speculate about what such a chart would look like. Primarily, its values would be lower than the in-question chart because they would not include the aforementioned double-counting.

In sum, the chart is an example of how a skilled statistician can present data to fit a chosen narrative. In this case, the chart used a confusing statistic by dividing the number of federal authorities' encounters with immigrants by a country's total population. It also double-counted cases of immigrants temporarily moving to the U.S. under a Biden-era parole program and erroneously included instances of people making steps to enter the country but not actually making it happen.