US Border Surge Data Reveals Where 4.5 Million Migrants Settled

A decade of record border crossings has reshaped communities across the United States, with millions of people from more than 150 countries arriving and pushing the country's immigrant population to its highest level ever.

Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request offer an unusually detailed picture of where 4.5 million migrants said they were heading after being released at the Mexican border between October 2018 and July 2025. The data covers people who entered both legally and illegally and includes destination ZIP codes, citizenship by country, ages, genders, and the dates and border regions where they encountered authorities.

Migrants are required to give Customs and Border Protection a street address. Some likely never reached the addresses they provided, and authorities lacked the resources to verify them, though migrants must report truthfully to pursue their cases in court and obtain work permits. Some have since moved elsewhere in the country or left, voluntarily or otherwise. Many, however, stayed.

A shift in origins

The Border Patrol encountered migrants from 174 countries in a single year, a sharp break from earlier periods when arrivals were overwhelmingly Mexican and Central American. Expanding social media networks and new migration routes helped draw people from across the globe. Cincinnati received a large influx from West Africa and ranked among the most popular destinations for migrants from Uzbekistan.

While Florida remained the most popular state overall, Latin American migrants increasingly looked beyond it for better job prospects and quality of life, often settling in places with small but established communities from their homelands. Nine of the top ten destination ZIP codes for Cubans were in Florida, but others went to Louisville, Kentucky; Grand Island, Nebraska; and Odessa, Texas. Colombians headed to the Denver suburb of Aurora, Peruvians favoured Paterson, New Jersey, and Venezuelans settled in suburbs south of Salt Lake City as well as pockets of Atlanta, Chicago and Denver.

Smaller cities remade

Beyond long-standing magnets such as New York and Miami, the arrivals reached smaller cities with less developed immigrant footholds. Elkhart, Indiana; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Dodge City, Kansas were among the places whose neighbourhoods were remade.

In New York City, Queens registered at least 25 nationalities with significant arrivals, including five countries that each sent more than 7,000 people: Ecuador, China, Colombia, Venezuela and India. Philadelphia recorded 11 nationalities with at least 1,000 new arrivals, led by Brazil, Haiti and the Dominican Republic but also including Russia and Venezuela; its metro area also saw more than 1,000 migrants from Georgia. Chinese migrants, who crossed California's mountainous border with Mexico in large numbers, gravitated mainly to New York City, especially Queens and Brooklyn, and to a cluster of neighbourhoods in the Los Angeles area.

Women and children

Nearly six in ten migrants released at the border were women and children, a marked change from a few years earlier when men made up the bulk of arrivals. The pattern appears across many places and nationalities: Tulsa, Oklahoma attracted Mexican women and children, Ecuadorian women and children went to Spring Valley, New York, and Guatemalan women were drawn to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The immigration surge peaked during President Joe Biden's administration and became a major factor in voters returning Donald Trump to the White House. A subsequent rise in immigration arrests under the Trump administration has hit some of the most popular destinations of recent years, including Miami and New York, while areas such as California's Silicon Valley, Madison, Wisconsin and Stamford, Connecticut have drawn less attention from immigration authorities.