By Mike Schneider

Nevada had the second largest share of undocumented residents behind only Florida in 2023, while topping the list of states with the highest percentage of undocumented people and households with an undocumented resident, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Pew Research Center.

The freshly released data — based on national immigration statistics — shows that the number of people in the United States illegally surged to an all-time high of 14 million in 2023, a major increase that still fell well short of estimates from President Donald Trump and some immigration critics who say that number is closer to 20 million.

In Nevada, the undocumented population grew by 30,000 from 2019 to 2023. Nationwide, the increase was driven by some 6 million who were in the country with some form of legal protection. Trump has stripped away many of those protections since taking office in January.

Although Nevada’s unauthorized population grew, it was one of just six states that had a smaller unauthorized immigrant population in 2023 than it did in 2007, when the population peaked, according to the analysis. The other states were Arizona, California, New Mexico, New York and Oregon.

Nevada also continues to have among the highest shares of unauthorized immigrants in the workforce at 9 percent. Nationwide, the industries with the highest shares of unauthorized immigrants in their workforce in 2023 were construction (15 percent ), agriculture (14 percent), leisure and hospitality (8 percent) and professional/business services (7 percent).

The state also had the largest share of households with an undocumented resident (10 percent) and 12 percent of K-12 students in the state had an undocumented parent.  

Pew, whose estimates date back to 1990, said that while 2023 is its latest full analysis, preliminary findings show the number rose in 2024, though at a slower rate after then-President Joe Biden severely restricted asylum at the border in June of that year. The number dropped this year under Trump, but is still likely above 14 million.

The overall U.S. immigrant population, regardless of legal status, reached an all-time high of more than 53 million in January 2025, accounting for a record 15.8 percent of the U.S. population. The number has since dropped, which Pew said would be the first time it has shrunk since the 1960s.

While the findings are unlikely to settle debate, Pew’s report is one of the most complete attempts to measure illegal immigration. Nearly all the increase came from countries other than Mexico. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and India accounted for the largest numbers after Mexico. Totals from Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Ukraine and Peru each more than doubled in two years.

While the report did not break out what countries drove the increase in Nevada, Mexicans comprise nearly 50 percent of the state’s unauthorized immigrant population as of 2023. 

Pew’s findings, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau survey and Department of Homeland Security, reflect an increase in people crossing the border illegally to exercise rights to seek asylum and Biden-era policies to grant temporary legal status. Those policies included a border appointment mobile app called CBP One and permits for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

Trump has ended those policies and sought to reverse Biden’s expansion of Temporary Protected Status for people already in the United States whose countries are deemed unsafe to return.

Trump said in an address to Congress in March that 21 million people “poured into the United States” during the previous four years, far exceeding estimates from Pew and what figures on border arrests suggest. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group largely aligned with his policies, estimated 18.6 million in March.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors immigration restrictions, reported that there were 14.2 million people in the U.S. illegally last month, down from a peak of 15.8 million in January. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem touted the reported drop of 1.6 million in six months. “This is massive,” she said in a press release last week.

Noem’s own department, through its Office of Homeland Security Statistics, estimates there were 11 million people in the U.S. illegally in 2022, its most recent count. The Center for Migration Studies, author of another closely watched survey, most recently pegged the number at 12.2 million in 2022, topping its previous high of 12 million in 2008.

States with the largest total numbers of people in the country illegally were, in order, California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, though Texas sharply narrowed its gap with California.