What you need to know
- Anecdotal accounts describe American communities overwhelmed by large numbers of undocumented migrants
- There is no systematic analysis of where the undocumented live
- We use data on deportation proceedings to identify communities with large migrant populations, both large in absolute terms and large as a percentage of local population
Millions of migrants have entered the United States across its southern border since 2021. Some reports describe these entrants as overwhelming communities throughout the country because of increased crime or demands for bilingual education, medical care, housing, or other social services. Where in other regions, such as those which employ a higher number of lesser-skilled farm, non-credentialed home healthcare, and hospitality-related labor, migrants are filling otherwise less desirable or unwanted jobs with lower wages that are satisfying the needs of local employers. For all the media attention, we know very little about where these migrants actually live. Are they settling in high-population urban areas, near the southwestern border, or throughout the country? Which communities might be finding it difficult to deal with larger migrant populations, either in absolute terms or relative to their population?
Finding Migrants
U.S. authorities do not track where migrants live. However, the Transactional Records Access Center (TRAC) at Syracuse University used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain over 9 million records of deportation proceedings over the last decade. The TRAC data identifies all counties in the U.S. with 1,000 or more migrants who faced or are facing deportation because they were denied asylum, overstayed visas, or entered the country illegally and came to the attention of local authorities.
While the number of deportation cases in a community does not tell exactly how many migrants or recent migrants live there, it is a good indicator of migration’s impact and general movement of migrants throughout the country. An initial look at the data suggests that recent migrants to the U.S. are extremely concentrated, as only 415 counties in the U.S. out of 3,244 total (12.8%) have migrant cases over 1,000.
Where Do Migrants Live?
The table below shows data on the 30 counties with the largest migrant caseloads over the last decade – in all, about half of 9 million individuals in the TRAC data. We combine adjacent counties in California, Florida, and New York. For each county or grouping of counties, the table identifies the total population and the percentage of the population that are in the TRAC data.
The data regarding migrant cases reveals several things about migration. First, it reveals the majority of the burden related to migration is placed on major urban areas. For example, in New York City, the number of migration cases is over six percent of the total population.
Our analysis also shows that a disproportionate percentage of migrants live in counties located in border states, particularly border counties such as Cameron and El Paso counties in Texas and the Dade-Broward area in Florida. The percentage of migrants is also notably high in a few non-border counties, such as Essex County (Newark), New Jersey and Pierce County (Tacoma), Washington.
Our second analysis identifies all other counties where the number of migration cases is more than 5% of the population. This group is broken into two groups: counties adjacent to one of the urban areas discussed previously and those not. The first table below has the adjacent counties.
Here again, the migration caseload in these counties is high as a percentage of the population, suggesting that in these areas, migration is a regional problem rather than being limited to a particular community.
Our final analysis identifies counties with high migration caseloads that are on their own – they are geographically separate from metro migration clusters. Informally, these are counties with surprisingly high migrant caseloads, as most are not border counties or even in border states, and are not near a metro migrant cluster.
What is especially notable are the low-population counties with high migrant caseloads, such as Hall County, Nebraska, with a population of just over sixty thousand and approaching six thousand migration cases. Counties like Hall have fewer resources than major urban areas to deal with a large migrant population, yet have proportionately similar caseloads.
The Take-Away
Most recent migrants live in larger cities or adjacent communities, such as the New York area or the Los Angeles - San Diego region.
Border states (Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas) and, in particular, border counties in these states, also have a disproportionate share of migrants.
There are also several isolated counties throughout the U.S. with a disproportionately high migrant population.
Further reading
Moslimani, M. & J. Passel. 2024. Key findings about US immigrants. Pew Research. Available at https://tinyurl.com/58zw82ec, accessed 11/8/24.
Gonzalez-Gorman, S. (2022). Underlying push and pull factors in undocumented immigration in the United States. Policy Studies, 43(5), 920-942.
Sources
Moslimani, Mohamad and Jeffrey Passel. 2024. Key findings about US immigrants. Pew Research. Available at https://tinyurl.com/58zw82ec, accessed 11/8/24.
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). 2024. Syracuse University. Available at https://trac.syr.edu/, accessed 11/1/24.
American Community Survey. 2023. US Census Bureau. Available at https://data.census.gov, accessed 11/1/24.
Contributors
John Arnold (Intern) Is a sophomore at Binghamton University majoring in Political Science and Economics
Dr. Robert Holahan (Content Lead) is Associate Professor of Political Science and Faculty-in-Residence of the Dickinson Research Team (DiRT) at Binghamton University (SUNY). He holds a PhD in Political Science in 2011 from Indiana University-Bloomington, where his advisor was Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom.
Dr. William Bianco (Research Director) received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Rochester. He is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Indiana Political Analytics Workshop at Indiana University. His current research is on representation, political identities, and the politics of scientific research.
