The number of people in the United States illegally surged to an all-time high of 14 million in 2023, a research group said Thursday, a major increase that still falls well short of estimates from President Donald Trump and some critics of immigration.
The Pew Research Center’s closely watched gauge rose from 11.8 million a year earlier and surpassed the previous high of 12.2 million in 2007. The increase was driven by some 6 million who were in the country with some form of legal protection. Trump has stripped many of those protections since taking office in January.
Pew, whose estimates date back to 1990, said that, while 2023 is its latest full analysis, preliminary findings show the number rose in 2024, though at a slower rate after then-President Joe Biden severely restricted asylum at the border in June of that year. The number dropped this year under Trump, but is still likely above 14 million.
While the findings are unlikely to settle debate, Pew’s report is one of the most complete attempts to measure illegal immigration. Nearly all the increase came from countries other than Mexico. Guatemala, El Salvador and India accounted for the largest numbers after Mexico. Totals from Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Ukraine and Peru each more than doubled in two years.
Trump said in an address to Congress in March that 21 million people “poured into the United States” during the previous four years, far exceeding estimates from Pew and what figures on border arrests suggest. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group largely aligned with his policies, estimated 18.6 million in March.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors immigration restrictions, reported that there were 14.2 million people in the U.S. illegally last month, down from a peak of 15.8 million in January. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem touted the reported drop of 1.6 million in six months. “This is massive,” she said in a press release last week.
Noem’s own department, through its Office of Homeland Security Statistics, estimates there were 11 million people in the U.S. illegally in 2022, its most recent count. The Center for Migration Studies, author of another closely watched survey, most recently pegged the number at 12.2 million in 2022, topping its previous high of 12 million in 2008.
Pew’s findings, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau survey and Department of Homeland Security, reflect an increase in people crossing the border illegally to exercise rights to seek asylum and Biden-era policies to grant temporary legal status. Those policies included a border appointment system called CBP One and permits for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
Trump has ended those policies and also sought to reverse Biden’s expansion of Temporary Protected Status for people already in the United States whose countries are deemed unsafe to return to.
Mexicans were the largest nationality among people in the country illegally, a number that grew slightly to 4.3 million in 2023. The increase came almost entirely from other countries, totaling 9.7 million, up from 6.4 million two years earlier.
States with the largest numbers of people in the country illegally were, in order, California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, though Texas sharply narrowed its gap with California. Even with the increases in recent years, six states had smaller numbers in 2023 than in the previous peak in 2007: Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Oregon.
Pew estimated that a record 9.7 million people without legal status were in the workforce, or about 5.6% of the U.S. labor force in 2023, with Nevada, Florida, New Jersey and Texas having the largest shares.
The overall U.S. immigrant population, regardless of legal status, reached an all-time high of more than 53 million in January 2025, accounting for a record 15.8% of the U.S. population. The number has since dropped, which Pew said would be the first time it has shrunk since the 1960s.
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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat contributed. Follow Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social
