Illegal Immigration Statistics

With the controversy over family separations, much of the political rhetoric in recent weeks has focused on illegal immigration. We thought it would be helpful to take a step back and look at some measures of illegal immigration in a larger context.

For example, how many immigrants live in the U.S. illegally, and how many are caught each year trying to cross the Southwest border? How many of them are families or unaccompanied children? And how have these statistics changed over time? Let’s take a look at the numbers.

How many immigrants are living in the U.S. illegally?
There were 12.1 million immigrants living in the country illegally as of January 2014, according to the most recent estimate from. The estimates from two independent groups are similar: The Pew Research Center the number at 11.1 million in 2014, and the Center for Migration Studies there were 11 million people in 2015 living in the U.S. illegally (see Table 1 in the full report).