MPI also releases its latest estimates of the size & origins of the unauthorized immigrant population WASHINGTON, DC — While attention to federal immigration enforcement has long focused chiefly on operations at U.S. borders, significant activity also takes place within the U.S. interior. A new explainer today from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) examines the role of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), detailing how the agency identifies, arrests, detains and deports noncitizens in the U.S. interior who have violated immigration laws. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) carried out an average of 352,000 deportations per year overall in fiscal years (FY) 2020-24 through its U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE components. ICE was responsible for an average of 146,000 of these annually, the explainer notes. The number of people deported by ICE from the U.S. interior has been on a downward trend over the past 15 years, from an average of 155,000 removals per year in fiscal years 2009-16, falling to 81,000 in FY 2017-20 and plummeting further to 38,000 in FY 2021-24. Meanwhile, the number of noncitizens deported by ICE after a border arrest grew substantially over the past four years, reaching 224,000 in FY 2024, as the agency shifted resources from interior to border enforcement amid high border arrivals. The explainer, ICE Arrests and Deportations from the U.S. Interior, details: - Who can be deported and the consequences of removal.
- The ICE resources allocated to enforcement operations, as well as constraints.
- The pipelines for ICE arrests: the criminal justice system and at-large enforcement operations in U.S. communities and at worksites.
- ICE arrest and removal activity currently and historically.
- “Sanctuary” cities and 287(g) authorities.
- The top countries of citizenship of deportees.
Read the ICE arrests and deportations explainer here: www.migrationpolicy.org/content/ice-arrests-deportations-interior. Separately today, MPI issued its latest estimates of the size of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population, finding it had reached a record 13.7 million as of mid-2023, up from a revised 12.8 million the year prior. MPI has revised upwards its estimates for 2022 and earlier years, using an updated methodology to assign legal status that permits better addressing the Census Bureau’s undercount of new immigrants. Between 2019 and 2023, the unauthorized immigrant population grew by 3 million, or an average of 6 percent per year. The nation had not seen yearly increases this large since the early 2000s. “Immigration dynamics changed dramatically starting around 2021, as the U.S. economy recovered faster and more fully from the pandemic-induced downturn than much of the rest of the world and U.S. job opportunities expanded rapidly,” analysts Jennifer Van Hook, Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Julia Gelatt write. “At the same time, economic turmoil and episodes of insecurity in Central America and South America, eruptions of gang violence in the Caribbean and compounding political repression in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela together fueled new displacement—with some looking northward to the United States.” While the unauthorized immigrant population from Mexico increased slightly in 2022 and 2023, its 5.5 million total as of mid-2023 remains far below the 7.8 million peak set in 2007. Though Mexico remains the top origin country, it held a significantly smaller share of the overall unauthorized population in 2023 than it did in 2010: 40 percent versus 62 percent. Between 2019 and 2023, the unauthorized immigrant population from Central America increased by 1.7 million, a change driven primarily by migration from Honduras and Guatemala. Additionally, the numbers from South America increased by nearly 750,000, primarily due to large-scale migration from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil. Top Ten Countries of Origin for the U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population, 2010 and 2023  The analysis also examines the growth in a subset of the unauthorized population: Those holding a temporary legal protection that offers them short-term relief from deportation and access to work authorization. MPI has long counted asylum applicants and holders of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in its estimates of the unauthorized population, as have other demographers, and now also includes people with humanitarian parole. While the term unauthorized is an imperfect descriptor for noncitizens whom the U.S. government has granted the right of temporary stay, MPI includes these populations given their lack of a visa or other durable legal status, as well as the impermanence of statuses that could be revoked. “Migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border fell significantly from 2023 to 2024 as result of heightened levels of Mexican enforcement and a series of Biden administration asylum restrictions, suggesting that the growth in the unauthorized immigrant population may have slowed since mid-2023,” the analysts write. “Whether this trend continues into 2025 will depend on the actions of the newly inaugurated Trump administration, which is placing high priority on the deportation of large numbers of unauthorized immigrants living in the country and further hardening the U.S.-Mexico border against new arrivals.” Read MPI’s latest estimates of the size and origins of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/unauthorized-immigrant-population-mid-2023. * * *
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