Unauthorized Immigrants in the U.S. : How Many are There and What’s Their Status Now That Trump Has Arrived?

In the course of a few days, Donald Trump has begun laying the groundwork to deport millions of unauthorized/undocumented immigrants and seal the border. His executive orders include ending birthright citizenship for persons born to undocumented immigrants in the United States, declaring a national emergency to use the military to block entry into the United States, revoking temporary protected legal status for people from certain countries like Venezuela and Haiti, and denying even the opportunity to present applications for asylum at ports of entry. Lawsuits against the legality of these actions, such as a challenge to ending birthright citizenship, have already been filed. 

A good summary of who Trump wishes to deport and their current status is offered by the New York Times, including an explanation of why the term unauthorized immigrants is a misnomer because it includes many people who have temporary legal status. Estimates of the number of unauthorized immigrants in this summary is about 14 million, 40% of whom currently have some form of protected status, including Trump targets like the Venezuelans and Haitians.

Recently, I wrote the Handy Reference Guide to Trump Lies 2.0, a picture of the American economy and society prior to Trump’s arrival. Among its many items is a picture of improving social stability in the United States from a decline of violent crime and homicides to the level they were at in 2019, when Donald Trump was president, before a surge in crime  that began in 2020 (while he was still President). This social stabilization is quite similar to what has happened at the border, where illegal crossings have dropped 76% from a year ago and are the lowest since the summer of 2020.

This review provides a picture of border security and immigration enforcement in the Biden years to bring us to today. Tables include encounters at the US-Mexico border, drops in encounters after Biden restrictions this year, total numbers of asylum seekers and others seeking protection, persons under some form of protected status, how many asylum cases are there currently, and estimates of how many unauthorized immigrants there are in US. Lastly, there will be a look at current ICE statistics for arrests, detentions, removals, and expulsions. The goal here is to have publicly available information on these matters at the time of Trump’s arrival.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: ENCOUNTERS AT US/MEXICO BORDER

Encounters at the US Mexico Border grew rapidly after the pandemic, when Trump was able to partially halt crossings under Title 42, used during the National Pandemic Health Emergency in 2020.

President Biden curtailed the ability to apply for asylum except at ports of entry in June 2024 and by November 2024 encounters had sharply declined, as this press release from Customs and Border Protection reported.

CBP, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), continue to expeditiously process, remove, and strengthen consequences for individuals who cross the nation’s borders irregularly.

In November, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded approximately 46,610 encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border. The U.S. Border Patrol’s encounters in November were 18% lower than in October 2024 and 76% lower than in November 2023, continuing the downward trend in encounter numbers since June. Total southwest border irregular encounters in November, including encounters at ports of entry of noncitizens without a CBP One appointment, were 51,190 compared to the 61,420 recorded in October. This included month-to-month decreases of 19% in family units, 18% in single adults, and 2% in unaccompanied children.

Prior to November 2024 encounters had also been falling. (See Pew Research Center chart below.)

Altogether, nearly six million immigrants have been allowed into the US during the Biden years, 80% at the Mexican border, either through points of entry or in between. This does not include people who escaped capture or overstayed visas. The table from the Migration Policy Institute below provides estimates of where they came from:

 

The table below, also from the Migration Policy Institute, (see link above), shows the categories and numbers of persons for whom the Biden administration provided some form of temporary protection (TPS):

President Biden extended TPS status to nearly one million migrants very recently, likely many of whom are reflected in the list above.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION – ASYLUM CASES

Asylum and other court cases increased by more than 4 million during the Biden years, according to the Migration Policy Institute graph below:

The review notes that just as many persons were deported or otherwise removed by Biden as by Trump, about 1.5 million as of last year.

The backlog of asylum cases is about 1.3 million. Other cases include removals, deportations, and many others, including ordinary citizenship applications

TODAY – AGENCIES OVEREXTENDED, UNDERFUNDED

The Migration Policy Institute has described the backlogs as follows:

Still, many adjudication functions are more overwhelmed than ever. New applications have increased but funding from Congress has not kept pace. In FY 2023, the budget for the immigration courts (formally the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR) was just 9 percent of the ICE budget. The backlog in the immigration courts has increased over the past decade, going from 656,000 cases pending in FY 2017 to 3.6 million at the end of FY 2022. The USCIS backlog has steadily increased as well, with 9.2 million applications pending as of July, including 1.3 million asylum cases, up from 290,000 at the end of FY 2017. The agencies have sought to reduce these backlogs, including by allowing online submissions of more applications, and EOIR in July launched an online portal for applicants without lawyers. USCIS also increased application fees for the first time since 2016 to hire more staff and expedite processing.

SUMMARY: HOW MANY UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANTS ARE THERE IN THE UNITED STATES?

The Pew Research Center provided the following graph. Updated information post-2022 from the Pew Center is below:

What has happened with unauthorized migration since July 2022?

The Pew Research Center estimates presented here use the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS). The 2022 ACS provides data for July 1, 2022. Pew says:

About 1.5 million immigrants have received protection from deportation since 2022, according to a Pew Research Center review of federal immigration data. However, it is not appropriate to derive a new estimate of the unauthorized immigrant population by adding these 1.5 million immigrants to the estimate of 11.0 unauthorized immigrants in 2022. This would be inaccurate because the unauthorized immigrant population changes for many reasons, including outmigration from the U.S., deaths and transitions to lawful immigration statuses.

CHNV parolees. A new program allows people living in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to apply to enter the U.S. as parolees. Since these migrants are not admitted for permanent U.S. residence, they would be included in our estimate of the unauthorized immigrant population under current definitions.

The program began full operation in January 2023. By the end of 2023, about 320,000 new immigrants had entered the country under CHNV parole.

Temporary Protected Status (TPS). TPS allows migrants to live and work in the U.S. and avoid deportation because their home countries are unsafe due to war, natural disasters or other crises. Some people with TPS have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

The population of immigrants eligible for or receiving TPS recently increased to about 1.2 million. Most of these people were already in the country as of July 2022, so they do not contribute to growth in the unauthorized immigrant population. Further, many newer additions to the TPS population are counted in other groups.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA allows unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the U.S. before their 16th birthday and who were in the U.S. on June 15, 2012, to live and work in the country. Initially, about 700,000 individuals received benefits under DACA.

Since then, the number of DACA recipients has dropped steadily as some have acquired permanent status and others have left the country or otherwise not renewed their status. At the end of 2023, about 530,000 people had DACA status. These individuals are in our unauthorized immigrant population estimates for 2022.

The information in the Pew materials is somewhat duplicative of other information above, but the bottom line is that the number is somewhat above 11 million since several million people have entered since 2022, but some people have left, died, been deported, or naturalized. The New York Times research article estimates the number could be about 14 million, including backlogged asylum cases and people under other forms of temporary protection.

ICE ARRESTS, DETENTIONS, REMOVALS, AND EXPULSIONS

ICE arrests for the four years FY’21 through FY’24;  total 500,853; dark blue, criminal convictions; light blue, pending criminal charges; orange, other immigration violations.

ICE DETENTIONS Total 1,074,161

ICE REMOVALS 545,252

ICE EXPULSIONS 149,347 (only 3 yrs. of data colors relate to countries of origin)

WHAT HAPPENED?  WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

It’s hard to know what was really in the minds of President Biden and his top advisers as the political dangers of public perceptions of a loss of control at the border grew.

Did they think the economy needed the immigrants and public concerns would subside, or did they think it was really politically ok to allow millions of people into the country and suffer no consequences at the polls? Yes, many Democrats, myself included, didn’t view unauthorized immigration as a crisis, but, at best, that’s half the country, and the Biden team should have known that. It turned out, of course, that immigration and inflation were the top two reasons the Democrats lost the election.

Could President Biden have curtailed the ability to apply for asylum outside of ports of entry a year, or two years, earlier, and mitigated the political damage? Now, President Trump has gone even further than Biden did, cancelling the ability even to apply through the Asylum App for an asylum appointment at ports of entry at the border, rather than just eliminating the ability to apply outside ports of entry.

The bipartisan border security bill, negotiated between the Biden administratoin and conservative Senate Republicans in late 2023, which Trump torpedoed, was, in retrospect, too little, too late, in relation to the election. Biden was already three points behind Trump in the polls by then.

Now, we watch as litigation attempts to stop the many depressing and crazy executive orders. As the Trump administration moves past the political consensus point – deporting criminals – and begins cruel actions that also affect the economy, like deporting farm workers, meatpacking workers, construction workers, and the like, a backlash may follow.

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