Number of undocumented in U.S. is lowest in years, report shows

The number of immigrants in the United States illegally has dropped to the lowest in more than a decade, according to a new report.

Tuesday’s report from the Pew Research Center analyzed census and immigration data to estimate that in 2016 there were 10.7 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

The number is 2.5 million less than its peak in 2007.

The center crunched its numbers by subtracting the number of foreign-born people living in the country legally from the total foreign-born population and adjusting with estimated numbers for the many immigrants in the country illegally who do not respond to government surveys. It included more than 1 million immigrants who are temporarily in the country legally under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status pro- grams, because the future of such protections is unclear under the Trump administration.

The decline comes from a sharp drop in the number of Mexicans residing in the country illegally, even as the population of Central Americans illegally crossing the border or overstaying visas has grown.

“Mexico is still the dominant birth country (for immigrants in the country illegally) but the explanation for the decline has a lot to do with Mexico,” said D’Vera Cohn, who co-wrote the report. “We think the decline in the number of unauthorized immigrants was almost entirely due to fewer Mexicans entering the country without authorization.”

The number of Mexicans in the U.S. illegally dropped 1.5 million between 2007 and 2016, the report said, leaving Mexican nationals to make up about half of the immigrants in the U.S. without permission. In the same time period, the number of Central American immi- grants in the U.S. illegally increased by 375,000. Pew found 1.85 million Central Americans to be residing in the country illegally, with a significant number from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Pew did not look at data from 2017 because the American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau’s ongoing population estimate, came out as the Pew report was close to completion. But Pew researchers said they expected the trend of de- creases in the Mexican population to continue even as the Central American population increased.

Because the report does not look at 2017 or this year, researchers could not say what effect the Trump administration has had overall on the number of immigrants in the country illegally.

Border apprehensions dropped during the first year of Trump’s presidency to the lowest number since 1971. Since then, they have increased.