Migration Policy Institute

The foreign born from Central America accounted for 9 percent of all 47.8 million U.S. immigrants in 2023, representing a fast-growing population. A significant share of these immigrants lack legal status, although nearly one-third are naturalized citizens, and many others are lawful permanent residents (LPRs, also known as green-card holders). While employment rates differ among nationalities, Central Americans are more likely than the overall foreign-born population to be in the U.S. labor force and to have arrived since 2010, but less likely to have a high school diploma.

Roughly 1 in 10 immigrants is the US is from Central America

We’ve combed through government data to gather the facts on this fast-expanding population
bit.ly/CentAmImm

NEW CBP data for July confirm US-MX border trends continue to be low and relatively constant: ~8K encounters at/btwn POEs.

Mexicans & Central Americans again represent the vast majority of arrivals and are more likely to be detained/deported.

More @migrationpolicy.bsky.social takeaways here⬇️

There were 2.4 million asylum applications pending as of June 2025

That means that 63% of cases pending at the immigration courts include an asylum claim

And the number of judges available to hear them has decreased, down to 685 due to firings & buyouts

⚖️ Noncitizens are filing more asylum applications than ever before in US history

New govt. data shows the immigration courts are on track to receive *1 million asylum applications* in fiscal year 2025

Judges are denying more asylum apps than ever, but...

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Fronteras: $1,000 and a free flight home — Examining the Trump administration's self-deportation campaign The article "Can the Trump Administration's 'Self-Deportation' Campaign Succeed?" by the non-partisan think tank, Migration Policy Institute addresses the unanswered questions surrounding the administ...

On #Fronteras:
DHS is promising a $1,000 "exit bonus" and a chance to return to the US legally if immigrants w/o legal status choose to self deport.
Are these empty promises?
Hear more with Muzaffar Chishti of @migrationpolicy.bsky.social
@texaspublicradio.bsky.social
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it's easy to talk about immigrants on sports teams in platitudes -- sports as the "universal language" and all that. But public conceptions of immigrants' role on the field reflects broader thinking about their role in society

Who is being told to adapt to whom?

Trump called for doing this 5 years ago, too. My colleagues estimated it could lead to the exclusion of as many as 20 MILLION US CITIZENS from the census

www.migrationpolicy.org/news/million...

Millions of U.S. Citizens Could Be Excluded under Trump Plan to Remove Unauthorized Immigrants from Census Data The Trump administration's plan to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the 2020 Census data used to reapportion 435 congressional seats among the 50 states could misclassify as many as 20 million U.S...

Summary of study on a citizenship question & response rates: www.npr.org/2025/03/25/n...

MPI article on how using administrative data would very likely incorrectly label citizens as unauthorized: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/million... (2/2)

Setting aside legal questions, this ask raises BIG methodological questions. Would the census ask about citizenship and immigration status? We know this would lower response rates even by citizens. Would they try to use admin data? That approach could mislabel up to 20 million US citizens. (1/2)

Beyond ICE: State and Local Authorities Become Central to Trump Administration Deportations Strategy U.S. immigration enforcement is undergoing a marked transformation, as state and local law enforcement authorities—once largely on the sidelines—have become central partners to the Trump administratio...

The Trump administration is leaning on state & local governments to aid immigration enforcement, encouraging authorities to sign deputization agreements & scolding “sanctuary” jurisdictions that limit cooperation with ICE ➡️ www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stat...

Great to talk to @palabrasdeabajo.bsky.social about the overwhelmed immigration courts & concerns arrests there raise

While nations such as the Netherlands have focused on funding and supporting local-level programs, others (including Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway, and Sweden) have embedded sport-based integration goals within pre-existing national sports or migration strategies. However, narratives that present sports as inherent facilitators of integration frequently overlook the many different understandings of what integration means, how it should be achieved, and how sports are used within those frameworks.

Governments & communities have spent decades viewing sports programs as vehicles for immigrant integration

@ndmu20.bsky.social & Zahra Termeh Eskandari provide an overview in our magazine, the Migration Information Source‬‬‬
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/spor...

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On 10/9, join CLINIC, @migrationpolicy.bsky.social & @georgetownlaw.bsky.social for our annual Immigration Law & Policy Conference. Offered in person and online, this conference will feature a day of smart, thoughtful analysis on the top current U.S. immigration policy developments.

There are signs these measures are working. In anticipation of federal funding freezes, Louisville in July backed off its resistance to cooperation with ICE and said it would begin holding deportable noncitizens who have already been arrested for 48 hours so federal officers could take custody of them. Attorney General Pam Bondi called the move “an example to other cities.”

The US Justice Dept just released a list of nearly 3 dozen “sanctuary” jurisdiction, after earlier retracting a much longer list

It’s part of a wide-ranging tactic to encourage cooperation with ICE—which is already paying off

We explain in our new article: www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stat...

📢 Save the date!
On 10/9, join CLINIC, @migrationpolicy.bsky.social & @georgetownlaw.bsky.social for our annual Immigration Law & Policy Conference. Offered in person and online, this conference will feature a day of smart, thoughtful analysis on the top current U.S. immigration policy developments.

Yes! We wrote about this in our @migrationpolicy.bsky.social article

@thehill.com also reported that ICE actually emailed police officers participating in 287(g) agreements trying to recruit them & sheriffs are NOT happy about the poaching effort

One demanded an apology from Secretary Noem

TRÁNSITO IRREGULAR DE EXTRANJEROS POR LA FRONTERA CON COLOMBIA POR REGIÓN SEGÚN ORDEN DE IMPORTANCIA: AÑO 2025

TRÁNSITO IRREGULAR DE EXTRANJEROS POR LA FRONTERA CON COLOMBIA POR REGIÓN SEGÚN ORDEN DE IMPORTANCIA: AÑO 2024

only 10 people crossed the remote Darien Gap between Colombia & Panama this June. Last June, more than 31,000 crossed

www.migracion.gob.pa/estadisticas/

The decision applies to parolees from the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua & Venezuela process, CBP One, Uniting for Ukraine, Afghans & more

So as of right now, these people cannot be put in expedited removal, which is a key part of the Trump administration's mass deportations push

Today's court decision limiting the use of expedited removal is a major development in immigration litigation

I think it will be quickly appealed, but DHS had predicted that this would limit their ability to quickly deport hundreds of thousands of parolees

DOJ is walking back the White House’s goal to arrest 3,000 immigrants per day It’s another discrepancy between what White House advisers say and the administration’s legal posture.

The Justice Dept. denied that ICE arrest quotas exist in court last week

"DOJ is walking back the White House’s goal to arrest 3,000 immigrants per day

It’s another discrepancy between what White House advisers say and the administration’s legal posture"
www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

for perspective, Columbia is one of the largest institutions for international students in the US. There were more than 20,000 enrolled international students in 2023-24

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/inte...

"In July, just 4,600 migrants were caught crossing the southern border illegally, the lowest monthly tally recorded by Border Patrol and a figure the Biden administration reported daily during many months"

Once again, @camiloreports.bsky.social has the scoop on the latest border data

Even as the Trump administration dramatically bolsters federal immigration enforcement efforts, it is turning to state and local authorities to pursue its goal of 1 million deportations per year, building out what is likely the widest-ranging immigration enforcement capacity in U.S. history. State and local law enforcement agencies have enlisted at unprecedented speed and in novel ways to support ICE and other federal agencies carrying out arrests. As of this writing, MPI estimates that more than 142 million U.S. residents (41 percent of the total population) lived in jurisdictions in the 40 states where local officers have been deputized to arrest and detain deportable noncitizens.

MPI estimates about 41% of the US population now live in a jurisdiction where local officers have been deputized by ICE to carry out immigration enforcement

Our Muzaffar Chishti and @kathleenbush.bsky.social explain what that means—and how we got here ‬‬‬

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stat...

U.S. Ends Interview Waivers for Most Renewals, Including H, L, F, M, and J Visas The U.S. will require in-person interviews for most nonimmigrant visa applicants, ending the Dropbox waiver for H, L, F, M, and J visas, starting September 2.

The State Dept. is rolling back its pandemic-era policy on visa interview waivers, meaning most nonimmigrant visa applicants, including those renewing H, L, F, M, and J visas, will once again need to attend in-person interviews starting September 2, 2025

www.boundless.com/blog/nonimmi...

This is a helpful overview of the current status of court cases concerning parolees and their applications for immigration benefits at USCIS

Immigration court hearings inexplicably canceled for ‘Alligator Alcatraz' detainees Aside from access to detainees, an immigration attorney believes clients’ court hearings are being canceled because they’re detained at “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Immigration court hearings inexplicably canceled for ‘Alligator Alcatraz' detainees

Cases contradict the governor’s assertion that everyone at the facility has “final removal orders.”

From @hatzelvela.bsky.social

www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/i...

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On 10/9, join CLINIC, @migrationpolicy.bsky.social & @georgetownlaw.bsky.social for our annual Immigration Law & Policy Conference. Offered in person and online, this conference will feature a day of smart, thoughtful analysis on the top current U.S. immigration policy developments.

#ICMPDEvents 📅 Join the final conference of the MIrreM project (Measuring Irregular Migration and Related Policies) on 11 September 2025 from 09:00 to 14:00 (CEST).

📍 Register before 8 September 2025: bit.ly/4lXpco4

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