Topline
The population of unauthorized immigrants in the United States hit a record high of in 2023 after two years of unprecedented growth, new Pew Research Center data showed Thursday, with immigrants from Mexico representing their smallest-ever share of the population that year and Florida gaining more unauthorized immigrants than any other state.
A Mexican migration official checks the papers of asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico, on June 5, 2024.
AFP via Getty Images
Key Facts
The Pew data showed that the population of unauthorized immigrants—which includes people who overstayed their legal status or violated the terms of their residency—hit a record 14 million in 2023 and likely continued to grow in 2024, though only incomplete data is available for that year.
Pew estimates growth slowed considerably in the last half of 2024 after the Biden administration stopped or paused several immigration programs—like accepting asylum applications at the border—and that the population has likely started to decline in 2025 due to changes made under President Donald Trump.
The number of unauthorized immigrants grew sharply from 2021 to 2023—from 10.5 million to 14 million—and most were born in countries other than Mexico.
The unauthorized immigrant population from other countries spiked from 6.4 million in 2021 to 9.7 million in 2023, while Mexican immigrants grew from just 4.1 million to 4.3 million in the same time.
Mexicans represented a majority of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. through 2016 but their share in 2023 (30%) was by far the smallest on record and, after Mexico, the countries with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in the U.S. in 2023 were Guatemala (850,000), El Salvador (850,000), Honduras (775,000) and India (680,000).
The dispersal of unauthorized immigrants has also started to shift slightly—California, Texas, Florida, New York and New Jersey remain the states with the largest populations, in that order, but the gap between California and Texas has shrunk from 1.2 million in 2007 to about 200,000 today.
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Big Number
7.5 million. That’s how many U.S. households included unauthorized immigrants in 2023, a record high, with almost 70% of households considered “mixed status,” meaning that they also contained U.S.-born residents or lawful immigrants. About 4.6 million children under 18 born in the U.S. lived with an unauthorized immigrant parent in 2023, 600,000 more than in 2021.
Key Background
Trump campaigned on a platform that promised tighter immigration policies and the largest mass deportation operation in American history. Since his election, his administration has terminated the legal protections for roughly 60,000 people from Nicaragua, Honduras and Nepal, deployed thousands of service members to apprehend people illegally crossing the border and implemented new restrictions on asylum seekers, among other policy changes. The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office has amped up raids and deportations and, by the first week of August, deportations had reached nearly 1,500 people per day, the New York Times reported. The president has said he wants to deport 1 million people per year, and the national daily arrest rate of immigrants has doubled in 38 states in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the Times. Two weeks ago, Trump said he’d ordered the Department of Commerce to change how it conducts the decennial census by not counting “People who are in our Country illegally.” The census has always counted both citizens and non-citizens, whether they are in the country legally or not. Trump’s attempt to change how immigrants were counted during his first term, but was swiftly met with court action, including from the the American Civil Liberties Union and several immigrants’ rights groups. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against him.
What To Watch For
How Trump’s policies impact the immigrant population. Pew says the unauthorized immigrant population has likely declined this year, maybe by as much as 1 million people, but estimates it “almost surely remains higher than in July 2023.”
Further Reading
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/08/21/texas-is-catching-up-to-california-in-number-of-unauthorized-immigrants-pew-data-shows/