Fact Brief · Summer 2026
Immigration & Enforcement
Don't Be Played · A ClaimYourVoterPower.org Fact Brief
What is the issue?
Immigration is not one problem. It is a system with at least four connected parts: border security, undocumented immigrants already here, immigration court capacity, and legal pathways — all shaped by the debate over who should be able to join the U.S. community.
A claim about one part is not a claim about the whole system.
Know the terms
- Encounter
- — each time border officials stop or apprehend someone; the standard measure of border activity. Individuals may be encountered more than once.
- Unauthorized immigrant
- — someone living in the U.S. without current legal permission.
- Arrested vs. detained
- — two different populations: people ICE arrests over a period, versus people held in detention at a point in time.
- Alternatives to Detention
- — monitoring outside detention: scheduled check-ins, ankle monitors.
- Non-detained docket
- — people going through immigration court while living in the community, not in detention.
- Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
- — temporary legal status for people from countries facing war or disaster.
The border
Southwest border
Southwest land border encounters are down 82%: 2,475,669 in FY 2023, about 2.1 million in FY 2024, and 443,671 in FY 2025.[2]
The trend
Crossings fell in two steps, each after a policy change. In June 2024 Border Patrol encounters fell 29% after asylum eligibility was suspended for most people entering away from official crossings.[19] By December 2024, these encounters were down to about 47,330 (81% below December 2023).[20] January 2025 brought a second round: a declared national emergency at the border, military support for border security, and the shutdown of the app that had let people book asylum appointments at official crossings. Monthly encounters have since run under 10,000.[1] Mexican enforcement also increased over this period.[21]
The northern border
Border Patrol apprehensions away from official crossings on the Canadian border rose from 6,618 in FY 2019 to 24,968 in FY 2024. By early 2025 the monthly rate was back to about FY 2023 levels, when the year's total was 10,906. This counts only people caught away from official crossings — a narrower measure than the Southwest encounter totals above.[23]
Immigrants living in the U.S.
This section uses Migration Policy Institute estimates for mid-2023. Other sections use newer data; each fact gives its own date.
The number
13.7 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States in mid-2023 — 26% of everyone in the country who was born abroad. The rest, here legally: naturalized citizens (45%), green-card holders (24%), and temporary visa holders (5%). The immigrant population reached a record 50.2 million in 2024, 14.8% of all U.S. residents.[22][3]
Long-settled
About 80% lived in the U.S. at least 5 years, and 45% lived here 20 years or more.[3]
Family ties
4.2 million were married to a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident — about one-third of unauthorized immigrant adults. 6.3 million children lived with an unauthorized parent, 5.3 million of them U.S. citizens.[3]
Where people come from
About 10% of all U.S. immigrants come from European countries, with most others from Latin America and Asia.[6]
Crime, detentions & deportations
Arrested — the 70% claim
ICE arrests people over a stretch of time. In January 2026, DHS reported that about 70% of those arrested had criminal charges or convictions. (A charge is an accusation, not a finding of guilt.) This counts arrests made over a period; it does not describe the people held in detention on any given day.[14][13]
Detained — a different group
On a single day in July 2026, ICE held 65,765 people. Of those, 46,436 — about 70.6% — had no criminal conviction at all. Among the roughly 29% who did have a conviction, most were for minor offenses such as traffic violations.[10][13]
Who must be detained
Federal law requires ICE to detain people convicted of certain crimes: an aggravated felony, any drug offense (except a single case of possessing under 30 grams of marijuana), a firearms offense, or two or more crimes of "moral turpitude."[18] ICE may also hold others it considers a flight or public-safety risk. About 5% of people in detention had a conviction for a violent crime (November 2025).[9][13]
The peak — and now
ICE detention peaked at a record 70,766 on January 24, 2026 — up from roughly 40,000 a year earlier. It fell to about 60,300 in April, then rose again to 65,765 as of July 11, 2026.[14][10][7]
Beyond detention
Another ~183,200 people were monitored through Alternatives to Detention (check-ins, ankle monitors) in July 2026 — about 2.8× the number physically held.[10][13]
How long
Average detention runs roughly 45–55 days but ranges from days to over a year awaiting court.[10]
Deported in 2025
More than 1 in 3 people deported from detention in 2025 had no criminal record; among those who did, about 64% had nothing worse than a misdemeanor.[11]
Crime rates
Immigrants are jailed or imprisoned at far lower rates than U.S.-born citizens. Per 100,000 people: 674 unauthorized immigrants and 303 lawful immigrants, compared with 1,195 U.S.-born citizens. One example: Texas is the only state that records immigration status in criminal cases. From 2013 to 2022 its homicide conviction rate per 100,000 was 2.2 for unauthorized immigrants and 1.2 for lawful immigrants, against 3.0 for U.S.-born citizens.[17][8]
Policy shifts & the bigger picture
A 2025 policy shift
A 2025 policy directed agents to review people on the non-detained docket — including some attending their own check-ins and court dates — for detention.[11]
Third-country removals
A June 2025 Supreme Court ruling let the U.S. deport people to countries that are not their own — South Sudan, Eswatini and Paraguay among them, sometimes under paid agreements.[12]
How often — and where
Third-country removals are a small share of deportations: the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates about 15,000 of roughly 396,000 ICE deportations in 2025 — about 4% — went to countries not the person's own, 13,000 of those to Mexico. Most other receiving countries took a few hundred at most.[15][12]
The system
The courts
As of June 2026, about 600 immigration judges share a backlog of 3.20 million cases — roughly 5,300 cases each. About 72% of the backlog is asylum applications already filed and waiting for a hearing.[4]
Lawyers
In June 2026, only about 1 in 5 people (21.5%) had a lawyer when a removal order was issued — down from 27.7% a month earlier.[4]
Protected status (TPS)
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) covered about 1.3 million people in March 2025 — its high point. Termination has since been ordered or announced for more than 1 million of these people: a June 2026 Supreme Court ruling let the Haiti and Syria terminations proceed. As of July 2026, four countries still hold TPS: El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine; courts have paused seven more.[16][5]
When you hear a claim about immigration, ask
- What is being counted?
- What time-period and location does it cover?
- How many — and what percent — have criminal or violent convictions?
- Are these recent arrivals or long-settled residents?
- Does this focus on the whole system or a part of it?
- Crime rates? Compared to U.S. citizens?
What do the facts say?
- ✓Border crossings have fallen sharply — down 82% from FY 2023 to FY 2025, the lowest in more than 50 years. They can still rise or fall.[1][3]
- ✓Most undocumented immigrants are long-term U.S. residents.[3]
- ✓Detention remains near historic highs, and most people held have no criminal conviction.[10]
- ✓Many deported in 2025 had no criminal record — including some who were following the court process.[11]
- ✓"Arrested" and "detained" count different things. The ~70% figure for arrests includes people only charged, not convicted. Among people actually held in detention, about 70% had no conviction at all.[10][13][14]
- ✓Immigrants are far less likely to be jailed or imprisoned than U.S.-born citizens, including for homicide.[8][17]
Stay current
- TRAC Immigration — nonpartisan, government-data-based tracking of detention, deportations, immigration courts, and enforcement trends. tracreports.org/immigration
Sources & links
Verified August 13, 2026
Our research process
Every Fact Brief follows the same discipline — so you can trust what's on these pages, and check it yourself.
Prepared for educational purposes from publicly available sources believed reliable at the time of publication. Readers are encouraged to consult the original sources.
A www.ClaimYourVoterPower.org Fact Brief. Free to print, copy, host, and distribute unaltered, with attribution (CC BY-ND 4.0). Quotation with citation welcome. Published August 2026.